Single Black Foreigner

Two things happened to me recently.  A little over a week ago, I started a new job (thankfully, it is going well, there is nothing blogworthy to report - I go to work, I do worky stuff, I come home and do not sob/talk about work constantly - it's the dream).  You'll know that as part of the new job routine, you have to get set up with an e-mail account, and have your name put on the company website.  The woman who does all this at this new place is from the country of my birth, she speaks my first language, and she knows what the full version of my name is.  This might not seem too significant, but it is: I have been living in South Africa for about 18 years altogether (give or take a 4 year return to the birth country).  As a South African resident, I use the shortened version of my first name.  It's punchy (2 syllables down from 4), and pronounceable (as I said, 2 syllables down from 4), and I use it because it helps to avoid the racial-xenophobic-etc awkward conversation the full version elicits.  Anyhow, this woman knows my full name, as people from my country do.  So when it came time to set up my e-mail address, she naturally assumed that I would be using this full name.  I didn't correct her, probably because I was in awe at the fact that for the first time in I-don't-even-know-how-long, I didn't have to carefully and awkwardly spell my name ("D - for dog, M - for mother...").  So for the first time in I-don't-even-know-how-long, I am using my full name on an e-mail account.

The second thing that happened was that I read The New York Times's magazine this morning.  I do so love the Times, and I especially enjoy the essays that I find in the Sunday magazine.  They are invariably thoughtful, intelligent pieces that make me want to be a better writer (one day, New York Times, one day...) so I can be a better person.  Their cover story this week is about mob violence in South Africa.  Before you go to that link, I have to warn you: it is not an easy read.  It tells in excruciating detail (I believe there is also accompanying video footage - I'm not willing to go there, frankly) the story of a Zimbabwean man brutally beaten to death by a mob that was out to catch criminals who had done something (stolen? killed? raped? what is the scale used to determine which transgression deserves what punishment?!).  He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, on his cell phone, probably speaking the wrong African language.  The story goes that the mob assumed he was a thief because that's one of the discourses out there about foreign black Africans in South Africa (we steal - jobs, women, cell phones, whatever you got, we want it!).  I think it could just as easily have been about him being a black foreigner.  You don't need to have actually physically taken anything, the fact that you're here makes you a thief.  Anyway, they meted out the punishment they had decided on, and he is dead.

These two things seem worlds apart.  I have recently started a job that affords me financial security, and an e-mail account.  I'm on the company website.  This man was working as a painter for a (by the Times piece's account) racist man, and was living far away from his home and from his wife and child, in a South African township.  I am alive, he is dead. And although I am a black foreigner, like he is, I have never considered myself as that.  Because I moved here when I was so young, much of my life, and my story is tied up with this country.  I often refer to myself as a South African, not because I am posturing but because I feel South African, often.  I grew up here, I studied here, I work here, I love here and I live here.  Nothing about my relationship with this country and its people feels temporary.  But as I say, I often feel South African; I don't always feel South African.  There will always be a part of me that will never belong here.  There are many reasons for this, one of them being that, well - I'm not from here.  My birth country (which the observant reader will note I do not call my home country) is my birth country, and as complicated as my relationship with it is, there is still a relationship I cannot easily disavow (or make sense of).  It's pretty visceral and unexplainable, and I can't put it cleverly except to say that I will probably never say that I am from Cape Town when I am asked.  I am just not from here.  When I read a story like the one I read this morning, what will jump out at me and bring me to frustrated tears is not the appalling levels of crime and poverty that are robbing people of their humanity (though there is that), but the xenophobia that can push human beings to kill another human being with their bare hands.  When I meet someone who can pronounce and spell my name without skipping a beat, I will always feel a tiny frisson of...I'm not sure - excitement? recognition? comfort?

I read that story this morning and I cried.  Because it is just so godawfully beyond-words terrible.  But also because it brought up the fear that comes from living in a place where you don't belong (not fully, anyway).  It's a fear that I meticulously bury and deny because I am kind-of South African, and because I live far away from the 'danger zones' where xenophobic attacks are rampant.  But when my new co-worker instantly recognised my name, and I felt that rush of inexplicable emotion, I realised in that moment, as I did this morning that The Fear is never far from the surface.  It sits in all of us, whether we are here because we need to keep the people we left behind in our home fed and clothed, or because we consider South Africa our home.

Steve Biko, white guilt and me

*As much as I would love to write about Buffy some more, I have had this post in the works for a while and I have to get it off my chest.

In response to the post, On white maleness, one commentor contemplated whether social change is "an only black thing".  She confesses to having struggled with this particular part of Bantu Stephen Biko's ideas; the idea that in order for there to be real change (which in Biko's time meant the end of Apartheid), black people need to define their struggle and engage with that struggle seperately from the efforts of well-meaning white liberals. 

A few weeks ago, when I was really starting to understand who I was working for, and what was expected of my identity as a black woman at the place where I work, I revisited I Write What I Like, at the suggestion of my white male partner.  My relationship with this book, and with Biko is a complicated one.  I first encountered I Write What I Like four years ago, as part of a course I took on race and social identity.  We were assigned Biko, along with Frantz Fanon as part of our course work.  Funnily enough, I didn't struggle too much with Fanon.  It was Biko I had a problem with. I was especially bothered by the second chapter in I Write What I Like on white liberals.  Titled 'Black Souls in White Skins?' the chapter explores the role of white liberals in the fight against Apartheid.  Biko characterises liberal white South Africa thus:

...that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names -liberals, leftists etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country’s “inhumanity to the black man”. These are the people who claim that they too feel the oppression just as acutely as the blacks and therefore should be jointly involved in the black man’s struggle for a place under the sun. In short, these are the people who say that they have black souls wrapped up in white skins.

That palpable irony you detect is quite intentional.  Biko goes on to declare:

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both black and white. This has, by and large, come to be taken in all seriousness as the modus operandi in South Africa by all those who claim they would like a change in the status quo.

Biko insists that these champions of change are not what they seem: in continuing to interfere and, in many cases, define and run 'the struggle' these so-called liberals are recreating Apartheid hierarchies within the heart of the struggle against Apartheid.  He suggests that the place for white people truly committed to social change, and to the end of Apartheid lies not in the black struggle but in their own community.  It's basically a case of "white person, heal thyself":

Rather, all true liberals should realise that the place for their fight for justice is within their white society. The liberals must realise that they themselves are oppressed if they are true liberals and therefore they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous “they” with whom they can hardly claim identification. The liberal must apply himself with absolute dedication to the idea of educating his white brothers that the history of the country may have to be rewritten at some stage and that we may live in “a country where colour will not serve to put a man in a box”. The.blacks have heard enough of this. In other words, the Liberal must serve as a lubricating material so that as we change gears in trying to find a better direction for South Africa, there should be no grinding noises of metal against metal but a free and easy flowing movement which will be characteristic of a well-looked -after vehicle.

When I read this, I was volunteering for a large student-run civil society organisations, and many of my fellow volunteers (who were also my best friends - nothing quite like spending all your time volunteering together to bond you to people) were white.  I believed them to be genuinely committed to addressing the injustices Apartheid and colonialism had wrought on their country.  I also struggled with Biko because I struggle, in general, with black men who I feel make pronouncements about blackness that do not take the particular struggles of black women into account.  I remember a classmate telling me the story of how Biko used to dictate passages of I Write What I Like for some woman in his life (mother, sister, lover?) to record.  What about her ideas and what she liked?  What did blackness mean for her?

I also struggled with Biko because, for all intents and purposes, he could have been speaking about me.  I am not South African, I do not speak Xhosa, Zulu or any other African South African language, I am middle class.  I do not belong in 'the struggle' by Biko's accounts, but did that mean that I was not black?  Did the fact that I worked side by side with white people mean that I was an accessory to the perpetuation of white privilege?  I never quite answered any of my questions.  I subsequently left the student-volunteering world, due to unrelated burn out.  I'm ashamed to say that I didn't confront any of my race and identity issues until I entered into my current relationship.  I'm equally ashamed to admit that I didn't think about or revisit Steve Biko until I started my current job.  

Over the last few weeks, Biko has been on my mind a great deal more.  I find that he no longer makes me uneasy.  In sharp contrast to the confusion and anger he called up in me four years ago, Biko and his writing now serve as a source of sanity and as a way for me topull together the chaos of my workplace into a coherent narrative.  In other words, I Write What I Like, which I read all those moons ago, shortly before my first encounter with burnout and depression, has helped keep a fast-approaching second episode of burnout at bay.

Reading my experiences at work - and my white colleagues - through  Biko lens has helped me make some sense of the hot emotional mess that is currently my career.  Though Biko was writing about the anti-apartheid struggle, much of what he said applies to civil society in South Africa, with one key difference.  Apartheid (and its evil stepfather, colonialism) were - excuse the pun - black and white issues.  I am fortunate enough to not have lived through any of those, but I know enough to imagine that you could see the evil during those periods.  It manifested itself in every aspect of one's life, and in every interaction one had with fellow South Africans.  It was easier back then to reject the evil, purge it from one's identity and choose a new identity that was based on opposing the evil.  I believe that is what created white liberals: they saw apartheid and the particular segment of white society it was associated with, and decided to remake whiteness that was based on resistance to that which they saw as evil.

In post-apartheid South Africa, it is less clear where the lines are, and who the enemy is.  Where apartheid allowed clear lines to be drawn between white whites and whites, post-apartheid South Africa has pulled back the curtains that the apartheid regime so violently policed to reveal what was done in the name of all whites.  Note that it is not about what was done by all whites, it is what was done in the name of  all whites, on the basis that they occupied the same place in some imaginary (biological? metaphysical?) hierarchy, no matter what their politics were.  Where there once were white liberals, who drew lines in the sand to separate themselves from evil, there are now white liberals who, having seen what was done in the name of whiteness (theirs included) draw lines in the sand to cope with their guilt.  It is no longer easy to separate whiteness from apartheid in post-apartheid South Africa.  The result of this is white guilt, which is what I believe spurs some of the white liberals I have encountered to the work they do.  Instead of the development of black agency and black solutions for black problems, as Biko advocated way back when, there has been a rush of white liberals to the spots that stand as indictments on their whiteness - spots that could have been the sites of the development of black agency, but are now into sites on which white liberals work out their existential angst and guilt.

I know how harsh that sounds, I do.  But I am not saying that the same 'evil' as during apartheid is at play here. I am not saying there is anything evil about guilt (though, I was raised Catholic and could write a book debating that).  Of course any thinking white South African experiences guilt.  Of course the natural inclination is to do something to make right what went so wrong on (effectively) your watch.  But the mistake those of us who carry our (white or middle class, private school black) guilt into our work in civil society make  is to assume that the responsibility to 'make things right' is ours.  Yes, it is the social responsibility of those of us who are privileged to do what we can to change this country, but it is not our responsibility to define change for those who are less privileged.  Going into this kind of work from a place of guilt is both admirable and dangerous.  It is admirable because it signals a willingness to face the demons in one's self.  It is dangerous because guilt is all-consuming: you can never do enough to be rid of it, and the more you do, the more you do (did Imention I was raised Catholic?).  And so you do and do and do, until all you are is a flurry of activity, and you forget to reflect on the impact of your guilt and your privilege on the work you are currently doing.

So, Biko was right, I am sorry to say.  His work has given me some sense of comfort, and a frame with which to analyse what has been a difficult emotional journey (into unemployment, amongst other things).  However, my overwhelming emotion as I write this is one of sadness.  I am depressed at the thought that 34 years after I Write What I Like was published, Biko's work is still this frighyteningly on the nose.  What does this mean for men and women like Biko who died in the hopes that  their children's children would be born into an enitirely different world? And what does this mean for my children's children? 

 

Dreams from Obama

Finally, after four months of hand-wringing - and a detour in the form of a quick re-read of Eat, Pray, Love - I finished reading Dreams from My Father!  As excited as I am about finishing the book, I think I may have to revisit it at least once more as I journey through my own race, space and place.  The book is a rich and thick description of Obama's struggles with belonging, or the lack thereof.  And it is well-written and compelling, with just the right amount of schmultz and zero politicking.  I loved it!  And yet I trudged through this book: I sped past the 'Chicago' section, where he details his efforts as an intrepid community organiser, but I slowed to a complete stop (enter Liz Gilbert, who is also an amazing author and speaker - check her out) when I hit 'Kenya'.  In 'Kenya', Obama tells the story of his father, his father's father and what it was like going to the place from whence they came with his brothers and sisters.  He does not sugarcoat Africa.  The story is told in plain speech, and his descriptions of a country not quite recovered from the ravages of that centuries-old evil, colonialism, conjures images of my own Africa.  In short (before I begin to gush), he manages to go into details (including an episode of gastric misadventure) without sounding like a 21st century travelogue writer.

So, why did it take me four months to finish this impressive book?  Well, maybe it was that it was that good (yes, alright, that may have been slight gushing).  The honesty about Africa, and the psychosocial effects of socioeconomic, cultural imperialism was difficult to swallow.  The story contained in Dreams from My Father, and particularly in 'Kenya', is not just Obama's, but is the story of most Africans struggling to eke out a coherent identity on a continent crippled by structural racism.  In the following passage, he describes what he now understands about his father, and his father's father:

"I see my grandfather, standing before his father's hut, a wiry, grim-faced bot, almost ridculous in his oversized trousers and his buttonless shirt.  I watch his father turn away from him and hear his brothers laugh. [...] And as his figure turns, I know that for himthe path of his life is now altered irreversibly, completely.
"He will have to reinvent himself in this arid, solitary place.  Through force of will, he will create a life out of the scraps of an unknown world, and the memories of a world rendered obsolete.  And yet, as he sits alone in a freshly scrubbed hut, an old man now wiht milky eyes, I know that he still hears the clipped voice of a British captain, explaning for the third and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin.  The nerves in the old man's neck tighten, the rage builds - he grabs his stick to hit at something, anything.  Until finally his grip weakens with the realisation that for all the power in his hands and the force of his will, the laughter, the rebukes, will outlast him.  His body goes slack in the chair.  He knows that he will not outlive a mocking fate.  He waits to die, alone.
"The picture fades, replaced by the image of a nine-year-old boy - my father.  He's hungry, tired, clinging to his sister's hand, searching for a mother he lost.  The hunger is too much for him, the exhaustion too great; until finally the slender line that holds him to his mothernsnaps, sending her image to float down, down into the emptiness.  The boy starts to cry; he shakes of his sister's hand.  He wants to go home, he shouts, back to his father's house.  He will find a new mother.  He will lose himself in games and learn the power of his mind. 
"But he won't forget the desperation of that day.  Twelve years later; at his narrow desk, he will glance up from a stack of forms toward the restless sky and feel that same panic return.  He, too, will have to invent himself.  His boss is out of the office; he sets the forms aside and from an old file cabinet pulls out a list of addresses.  He yanks the typwriter toward him and begins to type, letter after letter after letter, typing the nevelopes, sealing the letters like messages in bottles that will drop through a post office slot into a vast ocean and perhaps allow him to escape the island of his father's shame. 
"How luck he must have felt when his ship came sailing in!  He must have known, when that letter came from Hawaii, that he had been chosen after all [...] He had almost succeeded in a way his father could've never hoped for.  And then, after seeming to travel so far, to discover that he had not escaped after all!  To discover that he remained trapped on his father's island, with its fissures of anger and doubt and defeat, the emotions still visible beneath the surface, hot and molten and alive, like a wicked, yawning mouth, and his mother gone, gone, away..."

This is who we are, Africa.  Constantly running, trying to escape the fear, the humiliation, the anger of our continent's demons.  As hard as it is to read about, it is almost impossible to live it.