South Africa

Greetings from Stellenbosch, the historical intellectual center of Afrikanerdom. I am here for a conference on sport history at the University of Stellenbosch, and as I did with Melville, I have seen changes in this picturesque little university town.

Clearly the city parents here are no fools. No longer  can Stellenbosch be merely the epicenter of Afrikaans intellectual life in South Africa. Seeing its potential as a tourist town, as the crossroads to the country’s booming and burgeoning wine routes, as a close bucolic escape from Cape Town, the city has marshalled ite resources. The Afrikaans accent might loom heavily over so many conversations here, but above all the universal language of trade and commerce looms largest of all. Where even a decade ago most shopkeepers and bartenders greeted patrons in Afrikaans as the default, now it is as likely that you’ll receive an English greeting. Whether this qualifies as progress or cultural abandonment is in the eye of the beholder.

Greetings from Stellenbosch, the historical intellectual center of Afrikanerdom. I am here for a conference on sport history at the University of Stellenbosch, and as I did with Melville, I have seen changes in this picturesque little university town.

Clearly the city parents here are no fools. No longer can Stellenbosch be merely the epicenter of Afrikaans intellectual life in South Africa. Seeing its potential as a tourist town, as the crossroads to the country’s booming and burgeoning wine routes, as a close bucolic escape from Cape Town, the city has marshalled its resources. The Afrikaans accent might loom heavily over so many conversations here, but above all the universal language of trade and commerce and tourism looms largest of all. Where even a decade ago most shopkeepers and bartenders greeted patrons in Afrikaans as the default, now it is as likely that you’ll receive an English greeting. Whether this qualifies as progress or cultural abandonment is in the eye of the beholder.

My three nights here follow one night in Cape Town, where I’ll be returning on Wednesday. Cape Town sits in one of the world’s most fortuitously beautiful settings. Nestled between the water and the mountains, with Table Mountain as the main though not sole backdrop,  Cape Town stands as the symbolic representation of South Africa to the world even if the vast majority of visitors to the country arrive via sprawling Oliver Tambo airport in the decidedly less picturesque megalopolis that is Gauteng. No longer is there a truly recognizable Midrand, that space between Johannesburg and Pretoria, as expansion and growth mean that the suburbs of the one city are close to blending with those of the other.

The conference is going well, though for a host of reasons I’ve missed most of it and will make up time tomorrow, when I’ll give my paper on rugby, race, and nationalism in the New South Africa. I’ve met some old friends — one a PhD student at UT, a five hour drive from my home, who I nonetheless seem only to see in South Africa — and made some new ones, and that, in the end, is the real purpose of conferences. 

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.]    

Sawubona!

I’m writing from the 7th Street Guesthouse in Joberg’s Melville. The trip here was quite the trek, involving many layovers (Houston, Jackson, BWI, Dulles, Dakar) and more than one trip in an automobile, but I finally got into my B&B at about 8:30 South Africa time last night.

Not wanting to go to sleep and end up wide awake at about 4 in the morning, I went out and visited some old haunts. One of the striking aspects of Melville, and I think it tells us something about South Africa, for good and ill, is the subtle but definite ways in which it has changed since I first started coming to this little Joberg semi-suburb a decade or so ago. It is still fundamentally the same — a little oasis of affluence and upscale dining, drinking, and shopping options in a village that feels far from the Central Business District that is actually not far away at all. Many of the restaurants and other businesses that were here in the late 1990s are still thriving, though there has also been turnover and there are new places competing with the old.

But what is remarkable, and I think telling, is how much more, well, African, Melville has become. Not so long ago Melville was affluent and white. It was rare to see a black person not involved in labor or else on the streets. But today Melville represents a ployglot mixture of the New South Africa. There is no ideal racial climate anywhere in South Africa yet, but Melville just about qualifies inasmuch as the South Africa tourism board could present a pretty good face with videos and pictures from just about any restaurant in these few blocks.

And yet black, white, Indian, or coloured, the crowds that descend upon Melville do share one thing that separates them from the masses across the country: overwhelmingly they are wealthy. I do not want to quibble about what I mean by wealth. I am not saying that everyone I saw last night is rolling in money, driving BMW’s (though many do), and could retire today. But I am saying that they are distinct from the vast majority in this country in that they could afford the R250 dinner, followed by round after round of R25 drinks and R15 beers.

And in a sense this is good inasmuch as the increased black presence in Melville shows that there is a growing black middle (and upper) class making their way in the country. At the same time what it tells me is that South African divisions, which have always been both class and racial, with the latter more powerful than the former, have turned 180 degrees so that while race will continue to be a dividing line in the country, class draws even more permanent lines.

And I have no idea what the solution to this is. I am no class warrior, I believe in at least the fundemental tenets of a capitalist market economy, and I do not resent success. I was, after all, one of them last night, and one of the changes in my own life since 1997, when I first came, and lived, in South Africa is that my own travels have become decidedly more upscale, though I’m still not far from rich. At the same time, believing in the fundamental tenets of market capitalism is far from saying that ours is a system that is unreformable. And in South Africa there is still need for massive reform. The gross disparities of wealth that any society has are acute here and without alleviating poverty the country will continue to see not only the violent crime that South Africa is so well known for, but also the paroxysms of mass violence such as the xenophobic backlash against immigrants that have convulsed the country in recent weeks.

It is good to be back. I’ve missed South Africa in the time that I’ve been away. I’ll post more reflections here — I’ll probably be light on the usual links-and-analysis approach in favor of these more discursive reflections in the weeks to come.  

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.]  

At 4:00 am tomorrow (or five hours from now) I’ll get up and begin a winding journey that will land me in South Africa Thursday afternoon. I’ll be there for three weeks, will be traveling extensively for two conferences, some research, travel and holiday, and reportage. I may be out of touch for a bit, but will be updating the blog all along the way as internet access allows.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.]

The dueling headlines tell of the tricky course South Africa has chosen for itself with regard to the situation in Zimbabwe. It is widely recognized that South Africa has the potential to be the biggest external power broker, whether through sticks or carrots, words or deeds. And so far, it is no secret, South Africa has chosen to act so tepidly that the country’s virtual inaction can only qualify as appeasing Robert Mugabe.

And so for readers of, say, the Cape Argus, it may have been reassuring that At Last, SA Condemns Mugabe. But for readers of The New York Times the message was quite different: A.N.C. Rejects Pressure on Zimbabwe. So which is it?

Well, as the Argus story makes clear, while South Africa did finally speak out against Mugabe, it also helped to block even stronger statements from the United Nations Security Council, which has unanimously rebuked Zimbabwe.  And in so doing, South Africa’s leaders have once again forced the world, which little understands the situation to begin with, to wonder, rightly, what on earth Thabo Mbeki could be thinking? Loyalty, even fairly blind loyalty, to the revolutionary generation is one thing. But at some point that currency was long ago spent. The idea that South Africa owes fealty to ZANU-PF at the expense of the masses of Zimbabweans desperate for change is absurd. Mbeki’s approach mystifies and infuriates much of the rest of the world. It is hard to see how either Zimbabweans or South Africans benefit from such an approach to the gravest regional crisis in years.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.] 

Despite the fact that South African farmers produced high yielding maize crops this year, a confluence of global factors means that this staple food for millions of South Africans may be unavailable or prohibitively expensive for the foreseeable future.  The poor, of course, will be the hardest hit: They rely the most on the crop and are the most vulnerable to scarcities and rising prices.  

Crises tend to escalate quickly in South Africa. Just weeks ago there were precious few South Africans who could have identified John Hlophe, the Cape Judge President. Now he is at the center of a row over his alleged involvement in the ongoing arms scandal that some are calling “the greatest showdown in South Africa’s legal history.” Let us assume that this charge is hyperbolic – from the Treason Trials to Jacob Zuma’s forthcoming charges related to those Hlophe faces, the country has not lacked for legal drama, especially in the era after 1948. Nonetheless, the fact that it can be written speaks to the gravity of this crisis.

The ANC is standing behind Hlophe, who adamantly rejects all of the charges, nationally as well as in some of the provinces.  As usual in South Africa, it is difficult to discern where justice, loyalty, and politics converge and where they separate. One tends to assume that all decisions are in some way political. Whether that is cynicism or realism talking, I’ll let readers decide. 

Talk about taking with one hand and giving with the other! Even as the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) seeks a way to have corruption charges against Jacob Zuma disappear and go over the top in their willingness to support him, the organization’s leaders have also made clear that if Zuma disappoints, the ANCYL will have no qualms with working to dump him. The leaders of the Youth League, such as Julius Malema, no stranger to controversy, clearly see their organization as king makers.

South Africa’s coasts have been battered with storms on both the Indian Ocean and Atlantic sides. Severe flooding has beset the coastal regions of the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Naturally the most vulnerable populations, the poor, those living in informal settlements, have been hit the worst. Cleanup has begun in KwaZulu-Natal, though the process will inevitably be slow. death tolls have surpassed the double digit levels, but many more are missing and it is hard not to fear the worst.

At H-SAfrica, the scholarly listserv on southern Africa, editor Peter Limb notes that there appears to be traction on the part of regional leaders becoming more vocal in their criticism of Robert Mugabe and his regime:

There certainly are signs of stronger views from Africa leaders:

In Kenya, PM Raila Odinga says the run-off is a sham and called for Mugabe to stand down.

Paul Kagame attacked Mugabe: “For me the question that it raises is why do you even call for elections?” Mr Kagame said.

ANC President-General Jacob Zuma says: “I think we’ll be lucky if we have a
free election,”; would it be fair: “I don’t think so.”

As John Leaver notes, the problem is more than Mugabe: namely, the military.

One wonders if this criticism will accelerate leading up to the runoff and if it will result in action in the very likely event that Mugabe simply seizes the election.

In a debate at the University of the Witwatersrand on Tuesday night Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool drew a link between the recent wave of xenophobic violence and larger currents of intolerance in the country. “Xenophobia, racism, sexism, in fact all fundamentalism, all acts of intolerance belong to one family and if you are to deal with one member of the family, you have got to be consistent in dealing with all members of that family,” he said.

In a sense Rasool’s arguments most reminded me of the larger debates about transformation that characterized South African politics in the second half of the 1990s. That the country has already moved away from these fundamental tenets of the process embodied in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process is dispiriting and Rasool is right to encourage South Africans to revive those principles and to remember the linkages of various forms of intolerance.