Profoundly South African

The word “xenophobia” is fraught with contradiction. It has kidnapped Zen from the realm of enlightenment and tossed it into a world of fear. A word that belongs to the shortest chapter in the dictionary, xenophobia is not only directed toward minorities but is a minority itself. Moreover, when pinned to the atrocities committed by South Africans in May 2008, the word slides from the tongue with clinical detachment.

Xenophobia seems to suggest that a combination of quantifiable conditions can account for violence and murder and evokes a less passionate outcry than the word “racism.” In contrast with racism, xenophobia is seen as an unfortunate result of complex socio-economic influences. In contrast with xenophobia, racism is considered an ethical perversion. Both acts are equally abhorrent yet one term is considerably “sexier” from an editorial point of view than the other.

Xenophobia is far more than the fear of strangers its etymology implies, far more sinister than unflattering assumptions about individuals based on their nationality or physical appearance, far more unfathomable than an innate collective mechanism designed to protect resources. The word is a linguistic cop-out designed to prevent reality from annihilating sanity. As long as we fail to see it as such, this strange brand of indiscriminate targeted violence will continue to elicit a cursory public response.

A little over a week ago, seven Zimbabwe nationals died in a fire in a township near Worcester. Less than seven newswire lines were dedicated to the story on IOL on Monday 23 February. The shack was “allegedly set alight” according to the report. The story reappears on Tuesday 24 February with the announcement of a murder probe via Sapa as well as a xenophobia probe according to an IOL writer.

On Wednesday 25 February, IOL posts a Cape Argus report that states that a suspect is to appear in court and mentions witnesses describing that “youngsters surrounded the shack, armed with knobkieries and sticks.” According to the residents, the uninvited guests “attacked the occupants, locked them in the shack and left them to die in the fire.” Despite the nationality of the victims and evidence of mob violence, police “ruled out xenophobia as the motive behind the attack.”

The latest and most comprehensive online report following the incident appears on a Zimbabwean site on Thursday 26 February. The ZBC News article reports a bungled robbery attempt on two Zimbabwe nationals who sought refuge in “a shack belonging to their compatriots.” The robbers then assembled “a reinforced group of about 10 to 15 people” who “doused the shack with an inflammable liquid that looked like fuel and set it alight.”

The fact that this mysterious story has created such a marginal blip in South Africa’s mediascape is worrisome. Given what occurred in South Africa last year, news like this demands adequate public response and debate. South Africans can’t afford to let even an alleged case of xenophobia escape scrutiny let alone the strange tale recounted above. If what it takes is a new word that strikes real fear into heart of the population, our scribes need to come up with something fast.

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“Thought leader” Khaya Dlanga has produced a series of profoundly South African album covers. Julius Malema’s Greatest Hits feature the miscalculated blunders of the President of the ANC Youth League pasted onto COPE election flyers. Albeit work of viral campaigning genius, these randomly snatched quotes do little to concretize the vision of a party that magically materialized no more than four months ago. Instead, COPE is positioned as the party to vote for in order not to vote for the ANC.

COPE can’t have expected to enter the national consciousness on its own two feet. With such little time on its hands, the fledgling party’s campaigning strategy can do little more than brandish an opposition flag and count on novelty appeal. Naturally, hinging its identity on the ANC is what it will take to carve out a piece of South Africa’s political pie. As such, COPE is raking in educated voters who are alienated by what Dlanga describes as Malema’s aptitude for eloquent buffoonery.

Malema certainly does have a knack for lending ammunition to the ANC’s opponents. His skills are such that conspiracy theorists have suggested that he could be a COPE mole! If you examine the howler above, a little bit of deconstructive linguistics has a lot to say. Malema employs the zero conditional to express certainty! Put bluntly, the condition is that Zuma is corrupt and the result is that we want him. In a single sentence, Malema maligns Zuma, himself, the ANC and its constituency. Is this an act of suicide or is Malema on a quest to bring down the ANC from within?

Clicks:

• Times Photo: Julius Malema’s Most Memorable Quotes (To Date)
  

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Should photography draw attention to a specific space and time or is seeking to capture universality a more venerable undertaking? A conversation between esteemed South African photographers Jo Ractliffe and David Goldblatt (held at the National Gallery in Cape Town on Wednesday 25 February 09) was inadvertently hinged on this question. Goldblatt played the role of interlocutor and described the discussion as a “regression.” The process saw him interrogating the trajectory of Ractliffe’s career from past to present and culminated in an introduction to her recently published book.

Entitled Terreno Ocupado, Ractliffe’s most recent body of work assembles emblematic photographs of contemporary Luanda. Nevertheless, she explained that the images aspire to something transcendental. By way of example, she drew a connection between the overalls she photographed on an Angolan roadside and T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” In contrast, Goldblatt was more concerned with the work’s response to the particular social reality it depicted. The sample of work exhibited at the event (which included the ironically-named Shack on the Boa Vista Cliff) portrayed crumbling makeshift dwellings in Luanda’s slums.

What makes Ractliffe’s work interesting is the fact that both hard reality as well as universal aesthetics are at play. What’s more, given the subject matter of her recent work, this dichotomy is fiercely conflictive and far more profound than the difference of opinions that was at the centre of the conversation. Ractliffe’s slumscapes are framed in a way that brings aesthetic balance to what in reality is a horrific environment. From a distance, these black and white images are beautifully textured while up close we can identify offensive piles of rubbish. The experience raises the more significant question of how misery can be pleasing to the eye.

Clicks:

• Terreno Ocupado at Warren Siebrits
• ArtThrob Review

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As the world grows more accustomed to the face at the helm of the United States, the phrase “first black president” is being less frequently tagged to the name Barack Obama. Given the history of discrimination in the United States, Obama’s achievement lent itself to being branded as symbolic of America’s progressive attitude towards race. The media, however, has all but exhausted this angle, providing an opportunity for free thinkers to reflect on what has really happened.

Naturally, President Obama’s physical appearance does have historical significance. In this respect, Obama’s inauguration provided an opportunity to reflect on America’s extraordinary Civil Rights Movement and the contributions of key African American figures to shifting the consciousness of the Unites States.

Nevertheless, by blindly dubbing Obama as “black,” the media has brought into play an old-school method of considering the slippery notion of race. Barack Obama is a person of dark-skinned Kenyan and light-skinned Hawaiian parentage. Describing him as “black” reflects a strain of binary mentality that harks back to America’s One-Drop Rule or South Africa’s profound Pencil Test.

What makes Barack Obama a really progressive choice from the perspective of race is that the fact that he is a figure who resists a simple racial tag. Ambiguity does a good job of dismantling defunct ideas! In reality, the concentration of melanin in Obama’s skin had as much to do with his success in the elections as the fact that his first name rhymes with Osama and his middle name is Hussein. The guy put together a much better campaign. Period.

If American liberals insist on patting themselves on the back for breaking the mould, let them take pride in contributing to bringing about regime change. As for the title of the world’s most significant “first black president,” this still belongs to South Africa. Nevertheless, South Africa’s national consciousness has yet to deal with prospect of a presidential candidate with a light complexion. Inconceivable? As a person of light-skinned Scottish and dark-skinned Jamaican parentage once said, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”

Clicks:

• Music Video: Brenda Fassie - Black President
• Brown Paper Bag Test: Chocolate News - First Black President?

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A profoundly South African bumper sticker weaves its way through Gauteng traffic on route to Tswane. While ascribing social characteristics to skin-colour or nationality is backward, there appears to be some truth to the fact that we all dance to the tune of money.

Clicks:

• Money Race: IOL Inequality Survey Article
• Do the Math: Gini Coefficient

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