South Africa

At the end of the day, travel is, for me, about people. Whether I am returning to Africa or to the UK, places I visit regularly, where I have lived and worked, or whether visiting someplace for the first time, such as when I went to China a couple of years back, the most important component to me is always the people I meet, and friends new and old. This is not to say that there are not other factors — work, for example, certainly requires me to travel quite regularly, and provides the justification for these trips. And like anyone who leaves home a lot, I like experiences as well, whether cultural, aesthetic, adventure, or what have you.

But the most important element of travel is people. I am staying in Sea Point, in Cape Town, with my good friend Doug, a black Zimbabwean who has lived in South Africa for more than a decade. We met in 1997 when we were at Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, and he is one of the people I always try to meet up with when I return. The time here will be too brief, but it is important, indeed crucial, that i spend it here. The conference in Stellenbosch provides another example. I walked into the conference venue knowing of a handful of the people there but actually knowing only one, a grad student at The University of Texas who I nonetheless always seem to see in South Africa. By the time I left Stellenbosch yesterday I has made a handful of new friends, some of whom I’ll maintain contact with professionally, a few of whom I will likely remain friends with over the years.

In some ways I think I’be grown almost sanguine about the opportunities travel affords me. I brought my camera on this trip, have been able to see some new places and revisit old ones, and have yet to snap a single shot, which probably seems like a waste, but in my eyes just remonds me of all of the time I have spent here and the ways in which I try to immerse myself.

In any case, Cape Town is raw this morning — rainy and damp, cold — and I have decided to devote a day to trying to catch up on work. I apologize for the fundamentally personal nature of this entry, which lacks much insight into South African politics or history or culture. But South Africa is, for me, more than simply a tableau for politics and work. It is a real flesh and blood place where I’ve spent a large proportion of my life and energies for nearly a dozen years. So today I’ll just work for a few more hours until Doug, my friend, gets home from work, and we’ll go out to eat and for a few drinks before tomorrow, when all too quickly, I’ll be leaving again.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog and dcat.]

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.]  

The Cape Argus on January 23, 2008, republished my latest Foreign Policy Association think piece under the title “Signs of a Magnificent Catastrophe.” (Pdf file) The piece appears smack-dab in the middle of the page. You can also track down a copy of Wednesday’s editions as well.

The posting has been light of light because of travel and a conference and the general need every so often to take a break. I will pick the pace back up soon. The Foreign Policy Association published my latest think piece last week, “South Africa’s Magnificent Catastrophe,” in which I make some tentative (and merely suggestive) comparisons between current South African politics and the state of United States politics in 1800. 

Your faithful scribe is in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where I am participating in the US Army Combat Studies Institute’s symposium on Warfare in the Age of Non-State Actors. I gave a presentation on policing in contested states using the South African security forces in the Apartheid era to explore implications for future policies across the globe. This will, I hope, explain the relative silence this week. I will post as I can, even if only to provide links.

The Foreign Policy Association has published another of my Great Decisions Analysis pieces. “The Vlok Trial and a Reconciliation With the Truth” looks at the recent criminal proceedings against Adriaan Vlok, South Africa’s Minister of Law and Order in the 1980s, and four other members of the security apparatus for a bizarre attempted murder that involved the attempted poisoning of the underwear of anti-Apartheid cleric Frank Chikane in hopes of killing him with neuro-toxins.

The case involves the intersection of my two main areas of interest in South Africa: the state response to the anti-Apartheid movement in the 1980s and the post-Apartheid push for truth, reconciliation, and justice. Almost literally as the piece was posted, it was announced that Vlok pleaded guilty along with his co-accused. By working out a deal, Vlok was able to avoid jail time, though he did receive a ten-year suspended sentence and one assumes that these may not be the last charges he sees.

(Cross-posted at dcat.)

My first FPA “Great decisions Analysis,” a piece titled “South Africa’s Regional Superpower Dilemma,” is now up and has also been linked on the FPA home page.