This is NOT a Hero, take two: Reject This Heritage!

September 24th is ‘Heritage Day’ in South Africa. Apparently some folks saw this as an occasion to strike out against the continuing glorification of the colonial ‘heritage’ in Cape Town. We saw in the company gardens that both our man Cecil Rhodes was attacked again, and also the Afrikaner, Jan Smuts. We read in the UCT newspaper that *both* of the Rhodes statues at UCT (one of which is a huge behemoth of a memorial) were vandalized. This is great news. Also great that the media took note. When we noticed the Smuts graffiti, we also took note that many regular people were intrigued by the artwork, and were even taking their own photos. Hopefully these acts of ‘vandalism’ will have some effect on changing the culture of ‘heritage’ in South Africa.

Steve Biko and his White Hero

“The biggest mistake the black world ever made was to assume that whoever opposed apartheid 

was an ally.”

- Steve Biko

True statement: white people participated in the struggle against apartheid. Another true statement: Donald Woods was one of these participants. Potentially true statement: the story of the life of Donald Woods, depicted in film, was a useful part of efforts to influence white, western audiences to oppose apartheid, in whatever small way that they might. White people have plenty of stories to tell to each other about their actions and non-actions which played a part in sustaining and undoing systems of oppression of which they were crucial benefactors. Donald Woods is not a hero (neither is Biko, of course) and nonetheless there are lessons other whites can learn from his life. Still, there is no justification for packaging the life of Donald Woods – or white activists generally – as the story of Steve Biko; and, whether intentional or not, this is essentially the consequence of the narrative structure utilized in Cry Freedom. 

Perhaps Attenborourgh didn’t intend his film to be so much slanted towards telling the story of Donald Woods’ life. Perhaps he was swayed by the political constraints involved with raising the tens of millions of dollars ‘needed’ to produce a film on the level of Cry Freedom. All the same, Peter Davis is fair in outright slamming the narrative structure of a black and white ‘buddy’ whose friendship ’shakes the nation.’ This kind of talk might make money for hollywood, but is otherwise rubbish. Vivian Bickford-Smith is also being fair when she reminds us that “the real Biko also believed that the white liberal had a role to play: to ‘address the white world not blacks’ and ‘to apply himself with absolute dedication to educating his white brother.’ This was surely – at least in part – what Woods and Attenborough were doing.” 

While one can believe that Woods internalized Biko’s critiques of liberalism to the extent that he was able, (and full of mistakes and contradictions, surely) it is harder to believe that Attenborough saw himself as giving Biko an international platform for attacking the attitudes and ideology of white liberalism. One gets the strong impression from Cry Freedom that liberal values are put forward not just for tactical reasons, but because the filmmaker wholeheartedly believes in them. The allegiance to liberalism may well be the single greatest flaw of the film. Rob Nixon, in trying to define the ‘penury of liberalism,’ explains that, “only a minority of South African whites ranked as liberals; more significantly, the ideology achieved very limited purchase among the black majority… leaving [liberals] marooned between a recalcitrant white right and an increasingly revolutionary group of outlawed African nationalist and socialist organizations.” In this context, the repeated theme of Cry Freedom – that Biko’s ideas are not so threatening as one (white person) might at first assume – rings deeply hollow. 

Furthermore, the repeated – and essential – clashes between the Black Consciousness Movement and white liberals are sidelined by the story laid out in Cry Freedom. The (all-Black) South African Student Organization (SASO) is brought to life precisely as a rejection of the paternalist structures and ideologies of ‘integration’ within the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and after repeated arguments with them. Even though Biko played a critical role in these formative contestations with NUSAS and in the operations and ideology of SASO generally, very little is mentioned of this in the film. There are scenes where Biko confronts Woods directly on certain points of view that Woods holds (as a liberal) and even one where the BCM critique of ‘integration’ is explained to some extent. However, in an unnervingly ironic juxtaposition, this scene is followed immediately by a scene in which Woods, as Editor-in-Chief, is welcoming two of the black people who participated in the conversation about integration onto the staff of his newspaper. Woods tells his white employees that the black militants have been hired to ‘tell about the real news affecting black people.’ But, in effect, he is telling the young blacks that their opinion is irrelevant. Whereas they had told Woods that they didn’t want to just be ‘invited,’ in ones and twos, into the ‘white world,’ but rather to ‘create an African table’ and then invite whites to it, Woods simply responds with, of all things, an invitation to join the white world. The structure of these two scenes speak to the fallacy of Bickford-Smith’s claim that the film argues “that we should accept black South African views ahead of those of whites, including those of white liberals.” On the contrary, the over-riding message is that the Black Consciousness Movement doesn’t present any ideas which can’t be easily recuperated into the liberal frame of mind and action. 

Perhaps the most damning critique of Cry Freedom comes in the carefully thought out and strategic decision of the apartheid state’s Publications Committee to unconditionally approve the screening of the film in South Africa. In defending their decision, the committee wrote:

   “In fact, it would be quite understandable if a substantial number of viewers were to find the film’s heavy accent on the actions of Woods, who becomes the hero of the film, questionable or even deplorable in the light of his real role in relation to that of Biko, who, in the eyes of many, is something of a martyr-figure.

   Such a reaction against the film and its producer and script-writer is, of course, not undesirable in terms of the Publications Act. In fact, it is likely to neutralise emotions which might otherwise have arisen as a result of the screening of the film.”

That Biko’s ideas and actions could threaten apartheid should be fairly well evidenced in his assassination by the security police. That Biko could threaten the stability and validity of liberalism and whiteness, both at home and abroad, is a point Cry Freedom deftly avoids raising.

Hiking and Biking: Sunset Bike Ride

Libby and I rode our bikes out past Sea Point, to sit for a bit and enjoy the beautiful sunset.

We went out along the high road, which allowed us to look down at the harbor, and all of Sea Point.

The ‘neighborhood,’ that we decided to stop at is an extremely wealthy area, called Bantry Bay. Having come in along the high road, we climbed more than 300 steps down to the lower road, to find a place to sit by the ocean. The wealthy people who live there don’t seem to use the stairs much, though, as many houses had their own, private elevators installed outside their houses:

Just across the street from these decadent homes, homeless people eek out a way to live, in the rocks beneath the scenic drive:

In addition to enjoying the sight of whales playing off in the distance, we played around ourselves with the sunset, taking it in deeply, and even upside down:

From that position, the sky and the sea look like this:

Life at home: Friends and Paintings

Starting in August, my friend Paul started moving out. There were some good things about living with him, and being his friend. One of my favorite things about having him around were the times when we made big feasts together. Paul especially loved meals where he would make a big pot of Pap, which ate with chicken, and my friends and I would eat the Pap with some vegetable dish that I would make.

My friend Bernard, a french chef in his 70s, used to run a wonderful little cafe near my house, but it became too much work and so he shut it down. Now we just meet to share a meal, or a salad, or a walk, and to talk a bit. He is a good man, interested in living a simple, anti-racist life, full of good vegetarian food.

Young, from Munich, contacted me on couchsurfing and spent the night. A radical philosopher, he was one of my favorite guests from couchsurfing. And, he help put up this painting I bought, which depicts a moment during the may anti-immigrant violence, when a group of refugees were sitting on the ground, waiting for the authorities to take them to a safer location.

Libby loves to paint her face, and loves it if her face painting skills can be used on others. I think she did a great job on this sun:

Life at home: Gardening

Libby’s arrival brought a new level of daring to the balcony gardening project. We bought a few new potted plants (a flower called a Red Devil, Oregano and Lavender) and started planting more from seeds (Morning Glories, greens, and we attempted peppers and tomatoes, but haven’t succeeded yet).

Hiking and Biking: From Tamboerskloof to Sea Point

Libby and I decided to take a ‘hike’ that took us from our house, up across signal hill and down to Sea Point. It was a simple, leisurely little walk. We got some pastries in the Tamboerskloof neighboorhood, wandered around checking out their houses, went past the Deutsch school and then up a little path to the top. Once at the top, we ate our pastries, listened to some music, and libby practiced her beautiful yoga moves…

drop n go?

Hiking and Biking: Bike Adventure to Athlone

I have gone on a number of hiking and biking adventures in the last couple of months. The first great adventure that Libby and I went on was to ride our bikes more than ten miles, from downtown, through the harbor, to a mixed race suburb called Brooklyn, to a white suburb called Pinelands, into coloured Athlone, over to Rondebosch, and home by train. It was a tremendously fun journey, and allowed us to see the different sides, and divisions of Cape Town.

Biking along the harbor, we were fascinated by the way that the touristic images of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head are obscured by the trucks and machinery of the harbor, and the freeway. 

In addition to checking out this cool little boat, we stopped at a cargo company, to look into taking a boat up the coast of Africa somehow. Seems we were the first person to ever come to them with such a request.

Leaving the harbor, we crossed the not-so-beautiful Salt River.

We carted our bikes up over the pedestrian bridge at Ysterplaat rail station, and took a minute to note the new view of the mountain.

(for images of Brooklyn, see “graffiti” post below…)

Pinelands is a completely “planned community.” It is fairly lifeless, despite the abundance of trees and wide boulevards. There is a park which runs along the little creek, which isn’t too bad. It’s full, as should be expected, with white people and with dogs.

Libby and I were wondering whether kids in Pineland would be allowed to do something that curious and playful as to explore the potentially fun aspects of construction piping. Turns out, they do, which is a great sign for the humanity of Pinelands’ inhabitants:

As Pinelands is necessarily a creation of policies of racial segregation, biking from there to neighboring (and coloured) Athlone is virtually impossible. One must go many kilometers out of their way, or, as we did, scramble across an empty field and up a hill onto the motorway…

This house in Athlone is amazing:

After getting some nice spices and a quick snack of veggie samoosa’s, we biked off into the sunset, stopping one last time to check the final view of the mountains, so much different from the view from the harbor:

 

Student Society for Law and Social Justice

The first weekend that Libby arrived in Cape Town, she and I went to a conference put on by the Student Society for Law and Social Justice. The conference had a couple of hundred participants, about half from UWC and half from UCT (with a handful of students from other universities in South Africa, as well). It was held at a Jewish, Communist retreat center near the ocean, about an hour and a half from Cape Town. 

Though the conference was very much created by and geared towards socially conscious law students (which limited our capacity to understand, at times) we found the discussions to be quite fruitful, and the conference allowed us to connect with quite a number of people who are active in social justice initiatives in South Africa. There was, for example, presentations by the Treatment Action Campaign, the Anti-Eviction Campaign, and a group called Proudly Manenberg, which is working to revitalize Manenberg, a township in Cape Town with over 100,000 inhabitants (one of the most densely populated areas in the city) that is known notoriously as a place of poverty, drugs and crime. The organization has a broad array of ways in which it seeks to uplift the community, from community safety patrols to community gardens to festivals to youth concerts, and so on, all with an emphasis on local democracy. 

I had the delightful opportunity, also, to meet a young man from a group called Equal Education, which is working on resource inequities in state schools, mostly in Kayelitsha. He had gotten a copy of my book (I gave a copy to a presenter at a talk at the National Arts Festival) and loved it. He had photocopied the chapter on the Algebra Project, so that his organization could consider implementing similar programs in Kayelitsha.

Though some folks stayed in cabins, we slept in this tent. It was quite comfortable, but the comfortable to sleep on those mattresses, but in the weeks to come, we learned that they had bed bugs, which took a lot of effort to kill:

Officially, the nearby beach was not allowed to be accessed by conference attendees. There was a barbed wire fence in our way.

But we found a little hole in the fence to climb through and had a wonderful afternoon playing on the beach, sitting and reading and writing letters, and just enjoying.

One tremendous aspect of the conference was the way in which it taught us so much about the new legal system in South Africa, after apartheid. All of the major social justice cases going on in the last ten+ years are rooted on commitments made by the new Constitution to guarantee a certain basic level of ‘human rights’ in the form of decent housing, health care, education, etc. South Africa apparently has one of the most extensive set of Constitutional commitments to social and economic justice, and a number of lawyers, judges and civil society groups are pushing hard to extend these guarantees as broadly as possible. We had the great fortune to be in the presence of many of these important activists, including Zachie Achmat from the TAC, a Minister of Parliament, and many activist lawyers.

The keynote address was given by Albie Sachs, who is now a Constitutional Court judge, and was for a long time involved in the ANC’s struggle against apartheid. He was bombed by the apartheid state, while living in Maputo in the 1980s, and lost one arm, part of his vision, and part of his mobility. He is a tremendously inspiring man, and it was wonderful to see him speak. He spoke in depth about the different decisions that the Constitutional Court has made, and he spoke in a way that allowed us to see his emotional side as well, speaking about the way in which certain decisions have forced him to consider whether he can, in good conscience, stay a judge and live by his principles of anti-racism (further allowing us to see his personal side, he at one point fell down on stage, and needed the assistance of two people to get him seated again, and the assistance of the audience to remember where he was in his speech, all the lingering effects of the bombing. And, then later his young child interrupted the speech to give him a biscuit, which was utterly beautiful.)

Chess Club Field Trip

Towards the end of August, I went with the University of the Western Cape Chess Club on a field trip to George, a small Afrikaans speaking town about 4 hours drive from Cape Town. We played in a fairly laid back chess tournament, which had many younger players. Despite my miserable performance, winning only 1 out of 6 games, our team did fabulous and won 1st and 2nd place. It was a ton of time spent playing chess, which was pretty cool, and it was an excellent opportunity to get to know some of the other players on the team, and to let them know me a bit.

my favorite part about the drive was the fields of endless yellow, which is apparently canola:

late nights, we played more chess:

here are the winners, one of whom is our coach: