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.]    

I hope every one of you had a wonderful Easter.  I especially wished for a safe holiday for my South African readers on this, the most dangerous and deadly weekend every year on the country’s roads.   

A United Nations Official has concluded that Africans will only pay attention to climate change when it can be couched in human consequences:

“Most people are unable to relate to the projections of increase in temperature or the impact of climate change on the economy, but if the climate change forecasts are linked to possible deaths, then countries will be forced to contemplate prevention plans,” said Yvette Stevens, the former UN Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“We need a ‘Stern review’ of the human costs; people are not motivated by the impact of climate change on a country’s gross domestic product (GDP),” added Stevens, who retired from the UN recently.

Actually, I cannot help but wonder if Africans are especially unique in this respect. For all of the attention this issue receives in the United States, for example, it seems pretty clear that huge numbers of Americans are pretty blithely untouched by climate change in terms of how they live their lives.

My name is Derek Catsam and I am thrilled to serve as a blogger and writer for the Foreign Policy Association’s “Great Decisions” series. I will be handling issues related to South Africa. I am a history professor at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and I work on issues of race and politics in the United states and South Africa, though as a militant generalist I also write about sports, terrorism, and other issues.

I have experience writing in this format at my own blog, dcat, where I write about just about everything under the sun, from pop culture to sports. But I am thrilled to be able to focus on South Africa here at the Foreign Policy Association. I have extensive experience travelling, living, and working in Southern Africa and am thrilled to share my ideas and whatever insights I might have with you on this vitally important country on that most overlooked of continents.