RIP Abdullah Ibrahim

Like many today, we have recently heard of the passing of Abdullah Ibrahim. An utterly unique musician and talented jazz pianist, Ibrahim is also one of the jazz legends we have had the good fortune to see live. His music takes the listener on a journey through many moods, landscapes, and images, employing dissonance, balladry, Monkish or Ellington-inspired blutopia. Our only regret is not pursuing the chance to see Abdullah Ibrahim again in the US. Requiescat in pace.

Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life

"After he left, there is a debate about what to do with the teacup. The custom, it appears, is that after a person of colour has drunk from a cup the cup must be smashed. He is surprised that his mother's family, which believes in nothing else, believes in this. However, in the end his mother simply washes the cup with bleach."

Coetzee's fictionalized memoir of his boyhood days is fascinating to compare with similar works by other South African authors. Although born before the official beginning of apartheid, the legacy of racial discrimination obviously preceded that, as Coetzee's youth indicates. Although coming from a white and on the surface, well-to-do background, John Coetzee (and the book is written in the third person, to distance the 'real' Coetzee from the fictionalized version of his younger self) experiences family dysfunction, loss, sexual discovery, a keen awareness of the suffering of animals, and acknowledgement of racial and class discrimination. 

Of course, anyone looking for a factual account of apartheid and white-minority rule in South should read Down Second Avenue or Kaffir Boy for insights into the Black South African experience, but it's interesting to see the evolution of Coetzee's identity and attention to social inequality from a sympathetic white perspective. The earliest reference to racial or ethnic discrimination is in the casual anti-Semitism of Worcester, something Coetzee's supposedly 'liberal' and English-minded mother and uncles participate in. "Natives" are rare in young Coetzee's world (except for the delivery 'boy,' a man, who is seen by Coetzee's parents as representative of a wasteful new generation of 'Natives'), but clearly inhabit the shadows. The Coloured (multiracial) inhabitants of Worcester, the Karoo, and Cape Town are clearly the major Other in the text, yet presented as being closer to the 'earth' and romanticized by a young Coetzee.

The numerous allusions to impoverished Afrikaans whites without shoes (and bearing brutish behavior patterns from the Anglophile point of view of John), the Coloured children abused and beaten, the Coloured children who cannot afford to see the circus but peer through the flaps of the tent, the Coloured farm workers who are the "real" inheritors of the land yet are forced to work it for white owners, or the absurd customs that Coetzee's supposedly 'English'-minded and nontraditional parents preserve about the need to smash a teacup used by any person of color in one's home indicate how before the Nationalists took power, white society in South Africa instituted a class/color hierarchy. Coloureds were not to touch guns, nor were they given the access to education that whites possessed.

The young John's hatred of his father, life in the dusty development of Worcester, and complete breakdown of the family by his teen years (back in Cape Town, after his father's wastefulness and foolish drove the family into deep debt) presents parallels with many other works by authors exploring their childhood. The archetypal loss of innocence, death, disillusionment, and constant search for identity are present here in this short memoir. Certainly, huge themes such as the aforementioned importance of race, as well as shame, disgrace, guilt, love (is it a prison, as a young Coetzee ponders) are also suggestive for the novels Coetzee wrote before and after the publication of Boyhood in the late 1990s. 

It's touching that only in the veld, or on the farm, where John can be free, is where he seems happiest, not afraid, feeling no shame, fear, or confines of family or society. On the Voelfontein farm of his father's family in the Karoo, where anything that grows in that arid landscape is blessed, he is most happy, yet, like all children facing adulthood, he knows life on the farm is not his future. Instead, the memoir ends on a rather unfortunate note in Cape Town, where John is attending poorly staffed  Catholic school, his alcoholic father, after driving the family into debt, does not look for a job, and his mother's willingness to sacrifice herself for the family (as well as see through her love, forcing John to realize his mother is an independent being with disillusionment, disappointment, hardship) propels him into adolescence.

As a short read in the three-part 'autobiography' of Coetzee, Boyhood is undoubtedly useful for fans of Coetzee's work and for a serious reading endeavor on an era in South Africa (the Western Cape in the 1940s). For anyone interested in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the divisions among white South Africans, Coetzee's embellished memoir also attests to the seemingly impenetrable divisions wrought by class, language, religion, culture, nationalism, war, and race. Indeed, many Afrikaans words or phrases permeate the text, in addition to the cultural and linguistic divides that separate English South Africans from the Afrikaans-speakers. A family like Coetzee's, of Afrikaans origins yet English speakers in the home, they are caught in the interstices of white South Africa, offering a unique vantage point on the nation's looming social inequities that ushered in the Nationalists and apartheid.

Favorite Quotes

"I'f being a Christian means singing hymns and listening to sermons and then coming out to torment the Jews, he has no wish to be a Christian." (24)

"Being a Catholic is a part of his life reserved for school. Preferring the Russians to the Americans is a secret so dark that he can reveal it to no one. Liking the Russians is a serious matter. It can have you ostracized." (26)

"Soon every one in his class knew about it: the new boy was odd, he wasn't normal. From that mistake, he has learned to be more prudent. Part of being prudent is always to tell less rather than more." (29)

"Afrikaans children are almost like Coloured children, he finds, unspoiled and thoughtless, running wild, then suddenly, at a certain age, going bad, their beauty dying within them." (56)

"There are white people and Coloured people and Natives, of whom the Natives are the lowest and most derided. The parallel is inescapable: the Natives are the third brother." (65)

"He does not see the point of having elections if the party that wins can change the rules. It is like the batsman deciding who may and who may not bowl." (68)

"With Coloured people in general, and with the people of the Karoo in particular, he simply does not know when they cease to be children and become men and women. It seems to happen so early and so suddenly: one day they are playing with toys, the next day they are out with the en, working, or in someone's kitchen, washing dishes." (86) 

Cape Town Goema Orchestra and Sathima in Cape Town

Enjoy this lovely video of the Cape Town Goema Orchestra playing Benjamin's "Music." One of my great regrets is not speaking to Sathima despite being in the same room on UCT's campus after a performance by Abdullah Ibrahim. After taking the time to appreciate Sathima's approach to song, sometimes I think I made the wrong choice by focusing on Abdullah Ibrahim as my sole South African jazz artist. Oh, and how could I forget that just weeks after I left Cape Town, Sathima performed in the intimate (and somewhat cramped) setting of Tagore's. To hear the original, click here.

Age of Iron

I read Coetzee's Age of Iron while traveling a few weeks ago, so my memory of the novel is fleeting. Nonetheless, I will share a few thoughts that lingered these past weeks. Like the last novel by Coetzee reviewed on this blog, this one is set in Cape Town during the last days of apartheid, and structured as a letter by a dying white woman to her daughter in the States, so written in second person. Stylistically and in terms of setting, it is reminiscent of Life & Times of Michael K in that the reader is treated to lengthy prose, similarly themed inner thoughts of the protagonists, and the landscape of Cape Town and its environs.  The narrator, Mrs. Curren, is a former professor who begins to befriend a homeless man whose race is not specified, Verceuil.

The title of the text refers to the 'iron generation' of black youth who are resisting apartheid while losing out on education, the innocence of childhood, and the decline of 'traditional' family life. This seemingly callous generation that is capable of great violence, shocks and disturbs the dying Curren, who sees the disillusionment, inequality, and hypocrisy of her own liberalism. Still, white South Africans have walked on the iron graves of the ancestors of black South Africans for generations, thereby causing this current generation of South African youth to lose their innocence to struggle for social equality in their country. Other themes of the novel include motherhood (Curren's relationship with her daughter, the use of motherhood to express the burdens of privilege and race white South Africans inherited long before apartheid), humanity, race, retaining humanity in the face of apartheid, death, animal rights (the graphic description of Florence's husband job of killing chickens for a living in an animal factory is quite chilling, or the power of animals as companions in the relationship between Verceuil and his likely stolen dog), as well as companionship.

Through Florence's son and his friend, children from Guguletu who are skipping their substandard schools and out in the streets resisting apartheid, Mrs. Curren is forced to examine her own relationship with white supremacy, her own complicity in the status quo. She experiences the death of Florence's son's friend at the hands of the police, witnesses the violence, roadblocks, and anger in the townships, befriends the homeless Verceuil for companionship and a friend to mail her letter to her daughter. Verceuil's race is never stated, perhaps because his ultimate role in the novel is to show the universality of the human experience and how companionship can transcend racial divisions in conditions of apartheid (although throughout the novel it is quite unclear what Verceuil's motivations are or if he will ever mail Curren's confessing letters).

I must say, some of the same themes of whiteness in South Africa and disillusionment recur in Coetzee's Disgrace, even in the similarities between the two protagonists (aged white academics). Coetzee seems to suggest that in Age of Iron, however, that there is more optimism and hope for a post-apartheid South Africa, even though Curren does not make it. Moreover, it is fascinating to see Coetzee tackle an older, female protagonist as a younger male writer. Just as thought provoking or troubling, is the disagreement Curren has with Florence's cousin, Mr. Thabane, a former teacher in support of the youth embracing anti-apartheid activism, a disagreement that symbolizes the seemingly unbridgeable gap between black South Africans and sympathetic white liberals who see black South Africans as going too far. One cannot help but think of the US Civil Rights Movement and how white moderates and liberals at various times endeavored to curtail or limit black mobilizing and activism.

Perhaps one day I will return to this novel, which clearly has much more to say on the state of affairs of South Africa (and the rest of humanity) below the surface. Likewise, Curren's relationship with Verceuil continues to fascinate me, perhaps suggesting what one New York Times critic suggests is the need for white South Africans to love the 'unlovable' to find redemption. The question of white South African liberalism also remains relevant to post-apartheid South Africa, just as the plight of the homeless and urban poor like Verceuil retains relevance to the social inequities, lack of love, and maintenance of an 'iron age' impedes actual reconciliation. Check out this for a well-written essay exploring Age of Iron, too.

Life & Times of Michael K

Whoa. It's amazing how Coetzee manages to write a novel both about and not about apartheid with few overt references to race. Life & Times of Michael K is a thin book, yet requires laborious reading due to slow-moving prose. However, it's effusive and detailed, painting a picture of the Cape Peninsula I had the fortune to see part of during my time in South Africa. In addition, one sometimes feels Coetzee 'hammers' some of the central themes of the text later on through the thoughts of the 'simpleton' protagonist, Michael K (read this review and check this one out for some other interesting criticism of the novel's debts to Kafka, etc.).

Nonetheless, it's a fascinating experience to read an anti-apartheid text with such a universal message, the struggle to live unfettered in camps, behind high walls, the struggle to be free. That very same struggle seems to transcend racial lines, too, even in a minority-dominated South Africa in the midst of war and unrest. That is best exemplified by the presumably 'white' doctor at the camp in Kenilworth, who also desires to live free, to live life without being in the confines of camps, literal or metaphorical. I believe that theme, that universal struggle to be 'free' is better explored in this fine essay, the wish to escape 'all camps.' Naturally, this theme relates to apartheid South Africa in horrific ways, just as it could be seen as allusions to the earlier history of 'rehabilitation' and labor camps in World War II, the Boer War, or even the German genocide in colonial Namibia. Similarly, the ordeals and experiences of Michael K, from living in a cave to the dugout on the abandoned Visagie farm near Prince Albert (possibly where K's mother lived, he'll never know), the labor camps, the streets of Cape Town or Stellenbosch,

For another fascinating review of the novel, the recently deceased Nadine Gordimer puts things into perspective from a South African anti-apartheid activist and literary background. She emphasizes race and the political oppression and violence of state terror (apartheid) as shaping social relations in profoundly negative ways that prevent relations between blacks (including Coloureds, such as Michael K) and whites taking the shape of anything besides master-slave. She also highlights the importance of gardening and examines some of the political implications of the novel, especially pertaining to how Coetzee perceives (or perceived, at the time) the future of South Africa.

Overall, my own opinion of Coetzee's work is positive. I am always intrigued by his densely layered prose, his fervent attention to describing the veld and landscape, and, even in this novel, his keen interest in animal rights (think of the killing of the wild goat on the Visagie farm). Intertextuality in the novel also intrigues me (the Kafkaesque allusions), as well as Coetzee's penchant for universality in a specifically South African setting. Much like Michael after leaving the cave (which seems like an obvious Plato reference), we, as readers, are led on an allegorical path out of the cave to see the world beyond the shadows of tyranny, to find meaning.

Abdullah Ibrahim

Powerful South African jazz reflecting Abdullah Ibrahim's Muslim faith. I thought it would be appropriate to pay homage to Freedom Day with superb South African music, especially given the fact I was blessed to see the legend perform live (alas, if only I stayed in Cape Town a little longer, I would've been able to see Sathima perform!). 

Macy Gray, Cape Town, Life

Apparently my brother met Macy Gray at a grocery store recently. He did not know of her at the time, so he was not as stunned as I would've been, but she is still a tall black woman with a gigantic afro. My brother should have promoted himself and his music to her, but opportunities come and go like the breeze. Also, check out this post about Cape Town and the shortcomings and hypocrisy from the DA. In my opinion, if the DA's only real claim to fame is being a little more efficient and organized than the ANC, that don't mean much and they will remain a political party lacking any broad-based appeal or legitimacy. 

Long Street, Cape Town

Long Street. It's the 'nightlife district of Cape Town and nothing but those two words does a better job of conjuring images of packed streets, fake cab drivers and thieves, hordes of college students and 'real people' enjoying themselves while inebriated, overpriced and mediocre clubs and some decent restaurants and take-away places. Long Street during the day is nothing like Long Street at night, however. During the day, it can be a busy street with lots of traffic, both automobile and pedestrian, but it's usually quiet for a busy area. It feels very 'urban' and nothing like the southern suburbs of Cape Town where I spent a lot of time. In addition, it's near the gorgeous Company's Garden, the Slave Lodge, the National Gallery of Art, and several other important sites and spaces in the city centre of Cape Town.

So, if you're in the area during the day (there is also an extension of the UCT campus nearby, so one could get to the city centre for free via the university's Jammie Shuttle system for UCT students), there are lots of sights to see, interesting restaurants (including Addis in Cape, a delicious though expensive by South African standards restaurant right off Long Street, or the best falafels I had in South Africa at a Turkish place on Long Street) and beautiful public spaces to see. There's even a decent and very clean McDonald's and lots of other options, depending on one's taste (McDonald's in South Africa is not too different from US McDonald's, which was a little surprising because the KFC menus differed greatly by offering pap and some specifically South African dishes one would never find in the US). I suppose if you take the trains or minibuses to the city center, one should always be careful at the Central Train Station (where minibuses and trains stop, several random businesses operated, and 'questionable' people congregated). I never went there at night after 8, but one gay European guy I knew was almost robbed by a group of men (he probably stood out, given his love for dressing stylishly and perhaps being too flamboyant and flashing a nice phone) so it's always wiser to not go through that station at night if you're alone. Surprisingly, the guy escaped unscathed despite hitting one of the men with an umbrella!

Anyway, back to Long Street. At night, it's a whole other story. Gone are the more family-friendly spaces in the city centre and welcome to a night of sin, lust, clubbing, etc. I went out a few times, but never enjoyed it much. One club, Joburg, was a hip-hop club with a high fee of about R50 for entry (women were exempted that night) but only playing loud, dated, and commercial hip-hop music. Long Street is packed with drunken revelers, a myriad of taxis operating with trustworthy and known companies or independent, mostly African (from other African countries of black South African) 'taxis' who were a little sketchy but sometimes very easy to negotiate a good price. One could have great conversations with Congolese, Kenyan, South African, and an assortment of African taxi drivers from across the continent, such as one nice Congolese man who was very interested in talking about Congo and Haiti with a Haitian-American friend and I. Of course, he was impressed by how much we knew about his country, probably because he's not used to meeting any Americans who know a damn thing about Congo DRC.

Moving on, some of the other clubs and restaurants were nice but, again, most of the music was often generic popular music or things that just didn't interest me. In addition, alcohol also has a tendency of bringing out the worst in some people and led to pointless, inane, and unnecessary conversations and fights (all verbal) within some of the groups I occasionally hung out with. So, if you like drinking, being around drunk people who will hit on any and all women in your group (well, almost all women), and being unable to hear someone due to loud music and loud crowds, Long Street just might be the place for you. Indeed, some women's inferiority complex and self-loathing due to sexist, patriarchal gender norms and the attention certain better-looking women got could incite immature and heated conflict, despite everyone being old enough to know better. Oh well, welcome to Long Street, and welcome to the expected reality of college girls with low self-esteem.

Though I did not spend too much time there nor did I 'party it up' often, Long Street provided me with one of the mos relaxing evenings. I was with an American friend on Long Street one night after not seeing each other for weeks, and so we ended up going to a hookah place after a bar and ran into two Bahai acquaintances. My friend, Jess, knew one of them through a dinner party, a South African from Durban, and he was with a close friend of his, a postgraduate student at UCT and from Paraguay (but spent a significant portion of his time in the UK). We ended up chatting for several hours, talking about life, the Bahai faith, etc. Some of it was beyond me due to my ignorance of the faith at the time (that would change somewhat after talking more with the two fellows), but there were endearing moments, such as the childish glee those two grown men (one a recent UCT graduate living and working in Cape Town, the other about to graduate and pursue a career abroad) revealed when telling me about the possibility of purchasing a peanut butter milkshake from a restaurant on Long Street. Regardless of my general disdain for peanut butter, the happiness on their faces over something so simple and the child-like way they said, "Peanut butter!" forced me to order it. Good times, perhaps the best of times, on Long Street.

Of course, one should also check out the Timbuktu Cafe, this decent Indian joint, and a plethora of other things on and around Long Street. There's so much to see, though the city centre of Cape Town is not very impressive in the way that Johannesburg wows. And if you're one of those nightlife people, taking the cabs to Long Street every weekend (and sometimes weeknights) and enjoying the overpriced drinks, etc. will be your day. I guess if one is coming from Europe or the US, they're not too expensive, and one can feel surrounded by fellow tourists and foreigners on Long Street. Most Coloured and Black South Africans in the Cape Town area don't make enough money to enjoy Long Street like the whites and non-Capetonian people of color (including 'black diamonds' from Jo'burg or international students, expatriates, and foreigners passing through Cape Town). Indeed, if one likes the idea of being in Africa but feeling like one is in Europe or North America, there are spaces in Long Street (and, of course, other parts of Cape Town) where the only people of color you see are waiters, cleaners, security and one can listen to mediocre European dance music or pop and hip-hop from the US.

Some Thoughts on Mowbray and My Usual Cape Town Neighborhoods

Well, I should probably begin with the place I slept in and spent a lot of time. The above is the house where I was over-charged by that horrid white woman from Johannesburg. It's quite beautiful though, as were the majority of the houses on that small block. If I remember correctly, the houses on my street were part of a Cape Dutch style with multicolored houses connected to each other and somewhat reminiscent of Mediterranean and colonial Spanish architectural styles in Latin America. With five large enough bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (unfortunately, only one shower though!), and a spacious kitchen (well, large enough), the house was perfect (besides being charged a fortune by that horrid woman!). 

The neighbors on the block seemed to be mostly white homeowners or students from at the University of Cape Town. The rest of the neighborhood, besides some other student housing in Mowbray (dormitories) and UCT properties, was mostly homeowners (often white, especially on the other side of Main Road and closer to the University of Cape Town), mostly black apartment dwellers, students, and an assortment of various peoples. I think Mowbray used to be much whiter back in the day, but after apartheid went through some tough years of crime, burglaries, and muggings. Oh, and one could never forget the call to prayer from that small mosque only a few blocks away, so there is definitely a Muslim presence.

Beautiful city, Cape Town, despite all its flaws. The natural landscape makes it beautiful much more than urban layout or architecture. Indeed, perhaps Cape Town truly is a bit of paradise. 

From what I could tell, Mowbray was mostly black and with its gritty and filthy streets, far less affluent than the nearby posh Rondesbosch or Claremont. There is not too much in terms of entertainment or interest in Mowbray. The house I resided in was very close to the Mowbray train station so there were a lot of minibuses and trains passing through, some restaurants and take away joints (but nothing fancy or upscale), a plethora of homeless people (mostly Coloured and black, including some who will ring your front door bell and beg for money), and some rather poorly lighted side streets (that could be somewhat frightening when I was walking around late at night solo, but nobody ever tried to rob me or anything). I also lived right next to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, so several students from there passed through the neighborhood (and some primary school students who appeared to come mostly from the townships and attended school in what, though better than 'mud schools,' was quite inferior to the infrastructure, equipment, and spaces alloted to white students in wealthier neighborhoods. 

I did not talk much to the neighbors, but went to a house party hosted by one house at the beginning of the semester. It was, as to be expected, mostly UCT students and nothing special (and wow, it took forever to use their filthy bathroom because of some inebriated fool taking his time and messing it up). The other neigbhors consisted of a gay couple (white, I believe) who complained about noise, some postgraduate students who could be very annoying but had an adorable cat, Shadow, who often slept in our house and was a 'people person.' Besides these folks and some other international students living ont he other side of the block, I did not spend much time talking to folks in the neighborhood. There was the cool Congolese manager of a sub-par restaurant/take away place by the train station I spoke to often, and some of the Somali-owned cornerstores I stopped by could be quite gregarious, I did not particularly care too much for Mowbray.

In retrospect, Mowbray was probably a better place to stay than, say, Rondebosch, or wealthier southern suburbs further away from the city centre. I was close enough to them that if I wanted to or needed something from upscale shopping centers (such as the mall in Claremont), restaurants, expensive supermarkets, or just plain bourgie spaces, I could get there easily. In addition, it was very close to UCT's campus, there was a lot of public transportation, etc. If only there was safe, affordable public transportation at night, then Cape Town would've been even better! 

Other benefits of the neighborhood was exposure to some of the working-class and lower middle class enclaves and environments of Cape Town, as well as the stark class inequality. I think I only saw one white homeless person or beggar, and he was a gay beggar who appeared in some documentary project on homelessness. The rest were mostly black or coloured, though I suppose the neighborhood is mostly black, too. In addition, the dirty streets and probably overexaggerated fear of crime aided me in learning to watch my back and keep it real about my surroundings at all times. Furthermore, I was close to Observatory and Main Road, so I could get to more 'nightlife-friendly' spots, restaurants, internet cafes, and even Woodstock, if I wanted to. Indeed, there is a weekly event (held every Saturday or Sunday morning) in Woodstock that illustrates the pervasive gentrification of that neighborhood), the Old Biscuit Mill.

This was taken at a Muslim cemetery in Observatory, a walkable distance from Mowbray. There was not much to do there (unless you're into necrophilia, maybe?) but it was interesting to read the names and see some of the history of the area. 

Woodstock was a perfect example of gentrification in an urban context where wealthy and middle-class whites (the market is overwhelmingly attended by whites, and they even hire private security to guard the area, if I remember correctly, so that mostly white folks could purchase overpriced junk, food, etc. The food was delicious though, probably the best or second-best falafels I ate in South Africa.) 'revitalize' and takeover urban spaces in a mostly Coloured and Black neighborhood. Indeed, I wish I had spent more time in Woodstock outside of that mall and some evening walks (including one unsuccessful trip for plantains that ended with delicious, fresh grapes instead!). 

What fascinated me about Woodstock, however, besides how close it was to Mowbray (the neighborhoods are separated by Observatory) was the prevalence of dilapidated houses, urban decay, African markets, and poverty (I once saw a homeless man sleeping in a structure composed of several boxes on the street) juxtaposed to wealthy bastions of whiteness at the Old Biscuit Mill or the young, 'hipster-like' white folks establishing themselves in the area. Like Observatory, which Woodstock resembled quite a bit in the designs and exteriors of private homes, the history of the area being a 'gray area' where housing segregation was not as strict as other areas of Cape Town made the area multiracial. Indeed, if I remember correctly, Mowbray always had a large Coloured presence before and during apartheid, largely to house domestics and industrial laborers for the white middle and upper classes.

All things considered, I actually like Mowbray. I miss the somewhat 'gritty' feel of the neighborhood, the large numbers of people from all over in that one place and the surrounding neighborhoods all somewhat well-connected to each other. The neighborhood itself was not amazing by any means, but the proximity to the city centre and other interesting neighborhoods, as well as the large number of black-owned barbershops, the decent KFC, Indian-owned corner stores selling meat-heavy versions of samosas (not as good as real Indian samosas by any means, but delicious), and a mixture of students, workers, middle-class professionals, an assortment of neighborhood characters (such as the nice Coloured beggar who actually asked me to give him a sip of my can of Coke one day and once followed me half a block over it, which of course I had to refuse and start walking faster!), and the lively streets as students from UCT, CPUT, and that primary school all walked the streets and added to the cacophony of street noise. It was, in its own peculiar way, magical. Mowbray lies, quite literally, between privilege and peril as the suburbs further south were increasingly whiter and bourgie while the other direction, toward 'downtown' Cape Town, was poorer, more Coloured or Black (yet, these neighborhood were of course better off than most of the Cape Flats, because it was integrated into the public transportation system, closer to the city centre and wealthy suburbs, etc.). 

Now, if only Mowbray and some of these other neighborhoods could quit with the walls, barbed wire, and extra security measures. That, in my opinion, made the neighborhood seem more dangerous than it really is (as well as fuel fear of public streets at night, etc.). Oh well, I didn't see anything as bad as some of the gigantic walls I noticed in parts of Johannesburg or the hiring of neighborhood private security, a path pursued by wealthy areas like Claremont to monitor and 'police' the area. 

An Evening With 'Black Diamonds' in Cape Town

Rest in peace, Sathima. I will eternally regret not introducing myself when I saw you at your husband's concert in Cape Town. You are a master of emoting who adds depths of soul to any jazz ballad. Check out "The Man I Love," too.

One evening in late April or May, I finally met up with a South African middle-class black woman from the Johannesburg area. And by Johannesburg, I mean, most likely from the nearby suburbs or wealthy enclaves of the city. The young woman, who I met on the street one night in Observatory kissing her girlfriend, was highly educated, interested in Haiti, studied Spanish, and lived in Gabon for some time. I can't recall what exactly brought her family to Gabon, but I believe her mother was an educated, professional South African who moved there for work purposes. Anyway, we exchanged numbers (she mistook me and a Haitian-American/Canadian sister for her friends) after talking.

Over a month or two later, after saying we'll meet up one night and then not contacting each other, she invited me to join her and some of her close friends. Now, anyone who knows me can tell I am not a 'nightlife' person, but in the interest of study and getting to know her better, I agreed. Furthermore, because UCT is still majority white and the class/racial inequalities in South Africa basically means most of the black students are from middle-class or elite backgrounds, it was an opportunity to spend more time with the 'black diamonds' (middle-class and wealthy blacks, largely from Johannesburg, who study, work, and live in Cape Town) I rarely interacted with off campus. Indeed, it was an interesting experience, and they reminded me of my brother, Sizwe, except he came from a working-class or lower middle-class family that lived 3 hours away from Johannesburg. Sizwe's racial politics and musical interests were quite different, however, and reflected his Pan-Africanist sympathies.

Anywho, I decided to meet up with the aforementioned group of 'black diamonds' at a bar/club in Observatory. Can't recall the name, but I believe the establishment is known for rock music. After  spending ten-twenty minutes looking for them, we met at the top floor of the establishment, which played dubstep, hip-hop, and electronica-styled music. Initially I regretted going, because I had to pay at least (it might have been even more) R30 just to get in. But out of boredom (I had no other plans for that evening) and curiosity, I decided to pay and saw her immediately. Her friends, unsurprisingly, were also 'black diamonds' from Johannesburg or its environs.

Moving on, the group consisted of the following: one tall, yellow-brown complected man who was a good dancer, a pretty but somewhat 'thick' woman, another good-looking woman who was stylishly dressed and more traditionally 'effeminate' than the previous beauty, and last but not least, the woman I met that night in Obz with her partner. They were okay dancers (but hey, neither am I), save the tall, wiry guy, who put them to shame. Each one was of means or from comfortable backgrounds, and they clearly enjoyed themselves quite a bit. They bought a lot of drinks, danced nearby each other while the one other male in our party put us all to shame. The music was not my cup of tea, consisting largely of dubstep and electronic garbage popular in the US and parts of Europe. The club's dancefloor was quite mixed, though, with lots of whites, Indians, some Coloureds, and blacks. Indeed, it was far more integrated than a lot of the places on Long Street I had spent some time at.

Besides dancing like fiends (the loud music made it very hard to communicate and I felt somewhat uncomfortable given my lack of appropriate 'dance or club attire'), we spent some time taking shots (I only participated once, and actually bought one of the 'diamonds' a drink, too) and relaxing. From what I can recall several months later, one was studying film and the rest were studying different areas. After about an hour of two, we left (our hands were stamped so we could get back in for free) and walked around the block for a while, mainly so that they could smoke that dagga (just playing, black South Africans seem to refer to it as weed for the most part, I think dagga is Afrikaans), which I did not take part in. While walking around, the woman who invited me to the group and I discussed her interests in Spanish, I asked a question about some slang I've heard lots of black South Africans use (ninga = nigga, which they confirmed for me), and I asked them about their homes and thoughts on Cape Town (unfortunately, I can only remember that one was from Centurion, and only because I briefly visited that area between Pretoria and Jo'burg).

Unlike some of the other middle-class black South Africans who were primary English speakers I talked to, they did not seem to feel discomfort in Cape Town's predominantly white upper-class spaces. Indeed, they all spoke highly of Cape Town and UCT, revealing nothing deeper in their thoughts on race relations, class inequality, or preferences of Cape Town or Jo'burg. I did realize that they, like too many young people from all over the world, idolize and closely mimic and follow US popular culture. Each of them talked to me about their love of the US, wanting to see New York and Los Angeles, how much they enjoyed that Kendrick Lamar song, etc. Indeed, like the mostly white students from the Southern suburbs of Cape Town I worked with in some of my courses at UCT, they also liked horrible American television shows (why the hell do people like Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother. Europeans could also be obsessed with those horrible American sitcoms, Justin Bieber, and other inferior US/North American cultural exports). Oh well, at least they didn't tell me I looked like the Indian nerd in Big Bang Theory like the middle-class man in Soweto!

Indeed, from what I can tell, those of means and engaged in popular culture to some extent, all consumed US culture (or what they think of as "American"), which entailed idolozing and dreaming of going to New York and Los Angeles. Since I have been to these cities they idolize, I tried to tell them life in New York or LA ain't all it's cracked up to be, but perhaps that experience is better left to experiencing it for themselves. Surprising, they did not ask too much about the cities I was from and lived in, but hey, they ain't exciting compared to NYC.

After dancing around some more, discussing films with the lanky individual, and then becoming exhausted (dancing is tiring, I don't know how young people do it so much!), we left the joint and caught a cab. I suppose due to their earlier smoking, everyone wanted to eat fast food, so we took the cab to the McDonald's on Main Road in Obz. It's kind of a new status thing for the black middle classes in South Africa to be able to eat at some of these international fastfood chains. In the past, a place like KFC was frequented overwhelmingly by white South Africans, but 'black economic empowerment' and the growth of the black middle class has led to joints such as the aforementioned KFC to lose their prestige to whites. Anyway, everyone enjoys and eats at KFC and McDonald's in Cape Town. Besides being assumed to be a nerd by the stylish, thin woman, we ended up finally leaving McDonald's driveway after the employee messed up our order and everyone decided what belonged to who. It was somewhat childish and annoying, because I did not order anything yet had to endure yelling and somewhat excessive arguing.

Long story short, I was dropped off first because I stayed in Mowbray, closest to Observatory. They got off the cab later in neighborhoods closer to UCT. I felt bad about not paying anything for the cab, but was short on cash and only rode with them for less than a mile. Also, they probably are wealthier than me! One could afford a flight to get back to Johannesburg of all things the next day! Some of her spending habits struck me as frivolous, but who am I to judge? But I digress, they were an interesting group that struck me as somewhat apolitical and complacent. Yet I did not interact with them in a non-clubbing setting. I am certain that on campus they're studious or serious students (they seemed that way when we crossed paths by Jameson Plaza). In addition, each one, especially the woman who introduced me to the group, are more informed and critical than I noticed that evening. They were in a 'let's get drunk, high, and dance' mood that's common among all university students, particularly those of means.

In the end, my experience with 'black diamonds' such as the above were always cordial and somewhat interesting, yet also occasionally dull in terms of depth or meaning beyond the superficial when focused on rather mindless activities, such as drinking and dancing at overpriced clubs (yet still much cheaper than some of the pseudo-fancy places on Long Street). Unsurprisingly, most felt no reason to discuss their privileges or how the growth of the black elite and middle-classes is the primary factor in class inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. But then again, how often do elite or middle-class Americans discuss poverty in a serious, meaningful way?

Oh well, perhaps because so many of the black South Africans at UCT are from similarly privileged backgrounds, I can see many socializing largely in that circle of diamonds from Johannesburg  and with whites. Indeed, that is what I witnessed with one 'diamond' who was dating the 'gay Nazi' neighbor of mine. So black diamonds don't even have to think about or confront some of these issues if their social circles (dictated according to lines drawn by class and, somewhat, race) and privileged membership in exclusive spaces such as UCT, the 'best university in Africa," never push them to confront the dire straits the overwhelming majority of the black populace of Cape Town and the Cape Flats face.

What do you think? Is this long, rambling post of any real significance on the topic of race relations and class in postapartheid Cape Town? And what of Coloureds, who constitute about 49% of Cape Town's population? I have no real understanding or exposure to Colored class/race dynamics that did not come out of a book. I would be fascinated to hear about how Coloureds at UCT conceived of themselves in Cape Town's social relations, the distribution of power, and race relations.

Holi One Festival in Cape Town and Discomfort with Appropriation

http://norient.com/en/stories/holi-southafrica/

"...besides the really fucking terrible music, and exploiting someone’s else’s sacred festival…I get to get drunk with my friends for a massive fee."

One of my most uncomfortable experiences (and biggest surprises) while living in Cape Town was the Holi One Festival. I had heard nothing of it beforehand, and was told it was a Hindu color festival. So, I went along with some housemates, expecting lots of Indians, Hindu rituals, and delicious Indian dishes. It was at the Grand Parade grounds in the city center, the very same historic ground where Nelson Mandela made a moving speech near the end of the apartheid regime.

Anywho, after taking the minibuses or a cab (can't remember which method of transportation we used, though we certainly took a cab back) to the city center and walking a block or two, we arrived at the entrance to the festival. It was not what I expected. Hordes of white people from South Africa and abroad were there, waiting in huge lines while chatting, drinking, and smoking until they could enter the festival grounds.

I wish I had just stayed home. The rest of the day (after waiting in an endless line) was spent listening to trashy European-influenced electronic music and related garbage. The aforementioned hordes of vanilla-colored faces danced, drink, threw colored powder around themselves and in the air, and drink copious amounts of alcohol (some smoked marijuana and probably used other narcotics, too). I stuck around with housemates for a few hours (I guess we had to after paying so much, R290, and waiting in that queue for so long) but quickly grew bored. I suppose it was nice to see all these 'adults' enjoy throwing colored powder at each other and in the air, but it was certainly offensive appropriation of the Hindu religious festival.

 I saw no people of Indian descent, the music, alcohol and drunken revelry were thoroughly removed from any Hindu meaning. Looking back, I am more than a little uncomfortable and ashamed of my participation in such foolishness. Of course, none of my mostly European housemates at the time seemed uncomfortable or anything, but that's no surprise. They're used to neoliberal colorblindness in European contexts and some said some of the most absurd and offensive things I've ever heard. Besides, some of them were likely used to this ridiculous appropriation of a Hindu celebration on the arrival of Spring (though the Hindu calendar is obviously different from the Western calendar and spring arrives at different times in South Asia versus, say, Germany, where much of the musicians/DJs came from.

Read some links to other articles on cultural appropriation of Holi and Indian cultures and religious holidays, here. It just doesn't right to 'celebrate' Holi in a way that trivializes and commercializes the Hindu significance and history so that whites have a fun and 'colorful' way of getting drunk. But hey, that's nothing new! As the internet world knows very well, many whites dressed up for 'ghetto parties' or donned racist costumes. If only Indian folks and some aspect of India's vast array of cuisines and Hindu rituals were at least mentioned or explained, the festival would not have been a gigantic insult to Hinduism. Again, I was expecting a 'real' Hindu event with families and all that, not hordes of white people dancing to bad music. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, different strokes for different folks.

http://norient.com/en/stories/holi-southafrica/
http://thisisnotindia.tumblr.com/post/28576930986/the-color-run-is-the-most-cultural-appropriative-shit
http://www.capetownmagazine.com/holi-one
http://browngirlmagazine.com/2013/04/color-run-controversy/
http://modgepodgefeminism.wordpress.com/tag/holi/
http://leilahlatief.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/how-holi-are-you/
http://africasacountry.com/what-the-post-racials-are-looking-for/

That Time I Went to Mzoli's

One of my better dining experiences in South Africa was visiting Mzoli's with a group consisting of a Ugandan postgraduate student, a South African graduate student, a Jamaican-American woman working in Ethiopia who flew down to Cape Town to see her old friend, my Haitian-American friend, and a South African postgraduate student and member of South Africa's black middle class from Johannesburg or thereabout (if I remember correctly, her father was a diplomat and the young woman had spent a lot of time in other African countries and is multi-lingual). I felt sorry for the young woman traveling from Ethiopia, she does not eat meat (Mzoli's is best known for its delicious and succulent braai, which is similar to barbecues in the United States or asados in Argentina) and she was exhausted after her long flight (from Addis to Dubai and then South Africa) yet she had no time to rest because we all squeezed into the same cab she took from the airport in Cape Town to get to Mzoli's in Gugulethu, a township.

Now, the only township near Cape Town I really ever spent a significant amount of time in was Athlone, which is a predominantly Coloured and decent place with lots of working-class and some middle-class households. Though it was not nearly as nice as the wealthier areas of Soweto, Athlone looked like some of the neighborhoods inside the city proper of Cape Town. As for Gugulethu, I unfortunately barely saw it, just taking the taxi to Mzoli's and back. I would have loved to spend some time there, but since I didn't have local connections there and transportation ain't easy (and fears of crime and how gangsters have taken control of the minibus public transportation system, apparently engaging in shootouts on the freeway connecting the Cape Flats to Cape Town, if one can believe my former professor at the University of Cape Town), I spent very little time in the Cape Flats (probably for the best, despite looking like someone who could be South African, I probably stood out because of the way I dress and walk).

Moving on, we got out of the cab in a very busy, dusty road full of traffic and pedestrians, including residents of Gugulethu and other townships peddling junk to wealthy and privileged students from the University of Cape Town and tourists. I am not sure how the community of Gugulethu feels about Mzoli's, but it certainly brings a lot of people into Gugulethu (though most of those folks probably only go to Mzoli's and spend there money there, occasionally buying tourist trap goods and other things from the persistent and sometimes annoying misogynistic men selling junk). Many white faces can be seen at Mzoli's, surely a rarity in most of the Cape Flats. Most of the folks I saw at the braai joint appeared young, too, no surprise given the blaring music they played (which was house and electronic, European-influenced garbage I mostly dislike. They did play that one song popular when I was in South Africa, something named after Orlando in Soweto, which was not hilarious and had the South African woman in our group dancing like a fool (which was what most people were doing while waiting for their food at tables under a protected area that essentially was a club and seating area.

Folks could bring in their own alcohol and go crazy, so I saw hordes of mostly educated and privileged young people and students from the University of Cape Town dancing, grinding on each other, consuming copious amounts of alcohol (the group I was in brought alcohol, too, but I am not into much of youth culture or drinking culture, so I just ate my delicious braai and observed while speaking to the young woman from Brooklyn and South Florida about her experience in Ethiopia. Long story short, she, despite her family's (as well as Jamaica's) penchant for Ethiopianism, she had horror stories about colorism in Ethiopia and how the Amhara and northern Ethiopians marginalize non-Amhara and darker-skinned peoples of Ethiopia. Moreover, she was afraid for her teeth's health, since people in Ethiopia drink a lot of coffee. Since she works in a small Ethiopian village, she does not spend too much time in Addis Ababa, where she said you always have to watch your back fro pickpockets and the chaotic street layout). It was a little sad to hear how unhappy and disappointed she was by so much of her experience in Ethiopia, but she was very interesting and enjoyed The Boondocks and The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, just like me!

After waiting for about 20 or 30 minutes for our braai (how it works is you wait in a usually crowded line, pick your choice of meat at the butchery (and if you like sides, such as delicious pap), take it to another line where you can pay someone to cook the meat for you (and if you pay a little extra, the cooks will accept your bribe and get your food out faster, which is what we did), and then you just eat, dance, drink, etc. I found myself engorging on boerewors, these nasty-looking beef sausages that were so succulent, well marinated, and outright addictive! The delicious other braai meats, all beef, were so juicy, well-spiced, and not dry or fake, processed meat like so much of what we consume in the US. I must say, eating meat like that in South Africa removed any silly notions of vegetarianism to me. Eating braai from a street grill in Johannesburg was also heavenly, particularly when combined with the peri-peri spice to keep it funky. Despite being a tourist thing for wealthy and middle-class South Africans, UCT students, and tourists to be somewhere 'cool' in the midst of severe poverty and inequality, Mzoli's is worth it.

We were probably there for about two hours, maybe a little more, or a little less. My Ugandan friend probably drink a little too much and also seemed obsessed with a chunky, unattractive German woman who was sitting at our table. I think his friend was in her group, as well as a beautiful Brazilian woman. They all seemed like nice people, but I spent most of my time discussing Ethiopia with my Haitian sister's Jamaican-American friend. And talking more to the bubbly South African woman, about her experiences in South Africa, her interest in gender studies and sexual violence in South Africa, her time in other African countries, and her own Tswana background (I hate admitting it, but I was probably trying to impress her with what I knew of precolonial southern Africa and current South African events).

After finishing our feasting, we called the taxi driver, and, because my Ugandan brother probably had too much to drink, he acted a fool in the car and made things a little awkward. He's a great guy, but despite being almost 30, he remains a child at heart. We dropped folks off and parted ways, with me thinking this was, for the most part, my best dining experience in South Africa. I will have to write a post about the Addis in Cape Ethiopian restaurant for my next post. Dining with an interesting and diverse group of people of Caribbean-American and African roots was far more stimulating than my other dining experiences with Europeans.

One of My Worst Dining Experiences: The Africa Cafe in Cape Town

One of my worst restaurant experiences was undoubtedly at The Africa Cafe in Cape Town, South Africa. I only went because my mostly European housemates and neighbors planned it, and had I known better (or perhaps possessed more commonsense), I would have chosen to not go. Moving on, the restaurant itself featured various dishes from different regions of Africa, including some decent Ethiopian food and a delicious mango chicken dish from Tanzania. In addition to various dishes from each corner of the African continent, I had the misfortune of witnessing the underpaid waiters being forced to 'sing African songs' and dance for the overwhelmingly white clientele. 

It was offensive. No explanations about what language the 'African music' was sung in or specific cultural/ethnic origins for the stereotypical monolithic 'African culture' put on display, such as "African face paint" the servers offered to  do for customers. Of course, a restaurant like The Africa Cafe is meant to appeal to ignorant tourists who likely know very little about Africa (beyond media generalizations), but it was just horrendous. Again, the food was good (super expensive, but endless rounds, though lacking in vegetarian options for some of my party), but the problem of a presentation of a monolithic Africa was disgusting. It would be akin to going to a Europe Cafe in Paris, Berlin, or Rome featuring Bavarian dancing, Portuguese folk music, and Italian opera all thrown together with dishes ranging from ratatouille to borscht. The fact that such resturants don't exist in Europe reveals the persistence of stereotypical and ill-informed narratives of the African continent and its vast diversity, history, cultures.

In addition to my discomfort surrounding the above, a tragic mulatta Dominican-American young woman felt the need to point out my blackness (even though herself, her mother and other siblings, based on photos, all look black or mixed) since, besides the restaurant staff, I was the darkest person in the restaurant. To be more specific, she asked, "Why are you so black?" (Apparently the African sun had darkened my skin a few shades, too, so that likely contributed to her anti-black stance and discomfort. Perhaps I reminded her too much of her mother's African heritage and she couldn't stand to be reminded of it in the presence of white Europeans?) At first I misheard her, but the tragic mulatta repeated herself and what proceeded was certainly one of the strangest restaurant experiences.

 I was initially shocked, and, in retrospect, should have left immediately, but perhaps moved by pity for the tragic mulattoes I have encountered nearly everywhere, I somehow did not tell her off. It's such a pity, too, the young woman's mother is clearly of Afro-Dominican descent and if you saw her walking down the street in the US, one would probably assume she was African-American. And on other occasions she would play up her 'minority card' and "Latino" identity by asserting a connection to a large East Coast city even though she's from a comfortable suburban background. It was clear she struggles with her identity and, depending on the time and place, would cling to stereotypical notions of Dominican and people of color identities while distancing herself from blackness and its disadvantages. Indeed, much like white folks emulating what they see as black youth culture, she wants the 'coolness' of blackness without any of the burden and difficulties because of racism.

But hey, defensive othering is key to so much of Dominican othering of Haiti and Haitians. In order to put on airs and presumably make herself fit in well with our white European dining partners, she had to make jokes about blacks to make herself feel better, distinct, and closer to the elusive whiteness she can't quite grasp. It's really quite pathetic, and though it seemed like some of the Europeans at the table were a little uncomfortable with it (even the proponents of a type of colorblindness ideology prevalent among some whites in Germany and France), nobody said anything.

 But this is the reason I find myself so bored and more than slightly annoyed by tragic mulatto types. Most of them and their obsession with identifying with 'whiteness' and their 'white roots' is really about hiding from blackness and entering into a broadened ideal of whiteness that is on the rise in the US, honorary whiteness. If Bonilla-Silva and other sociologists are correct, honorary whiteness  and the acceptance of such groups under that label by elites and middle-class America will include many light-skinned and 'successful' biracials, light-skinned Latinos, East Asians, and perhaps Arabs and South Asians who aren't too visibly Muslim in today's post-9/11 AmeriKKKa. So, with this expansion of 'whiteness' in American race relations, the multiracial movement reveals its ultimate aim of gaining entry through the gates into their beloved whiteness. 

Oh well, predominantly white tourists can continue reveling in their ignorance and confused and self-hating Dominicans and 'multiracial' Americans can engage in defensive othering in a seemingly endless game for the foreseeable future. All's I'm saying is I am done with awkward and racist dinners and restaurant experiences. Just say no, or get the hell up and go!

Thoughts on The District Six Museum

The District 6 Museum was a little underwhelming. It’s about the former community of working-class, mostly Coloured people living near downtown Cape Town and the harbor, which was demolished and its inhabitants forcibly relocated to the Cape Flats to live in squalor in townships such as Manenberg or Mitchell’s Plain. I was expecting perhaps more innovative or interesting displays, which the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg featured heavily through video, audio, and a plethora of visuals. We took part of it briefly, a tour guide, a former activist and self-proclaimed pan-Africanist, a Coloured Man who claimed to have been a follower of Robert Sobukwe, but in reality was perhaps a little too old and losing his memory and engaged in an conversation with my friend, Sizwe, that almost turned into an argument over nothing.

And these white South Africans in the group included an older woman who clearly had a lot of guilt for apartheid and slavery, since she on two or three occasions ensured the Coloured tour guide that NOT ALL white people supported apartheid and neither was she responsible for the man’s great-grandmother being a slave! Needless to say, that was a little awkward. Anyway, the museum was not as small as I thought, but the displays were often full of boring text, and, at times, were not explained in great detail. It was, as one would expect, a ‘traditional’ museum but lacking in enough depth and scope on District 6 to truly move me, despite the ugly history of forced relocation, racism, and segregation that parallel experiences of people of color in the US so well.

Highlights of the museum included watching children eat a meal while their teachers stood by, watching my friend almost get into an argument with the old tour guide over nothing because the latter kept talking down to him as if he was a fool, and pictures from houses, community institutions, and families that once lived in the area. The museum is one of those trips you 'have' to do in Cape Town, and I am sure for those less informed on the history of forced removals in apartheid South Africa, it will be more informative and educational. It is undeniably an emotional experience in some way, especially as one can see the names of people whose lives were forever altered written at the museum, as well as replicas and pictures of former houses in the area that illustrate the strong community that inhabited the region. Personally, I prefer the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, but this is a nice start.

All pictures courtesy of my friend, Sizwe, who fortunately brought his camera with him when we visited the museum.

A Trip to Robben Island

The tip to Robben Island on the 6th of April occurred just as the Cape Town Jazz festival was going on at the V&A Waterfront. It was my first time really seeing the Waterfront, and, although I am unlikely to return, it was not a horrible place to be. Anyway, after buying ginger beer (think root beer but with a strong, ginger-flavoured taste) and a smoothie at the Waterfront, we took the ferry from Nelson Mandela Gateway with scores of tourists. During the ride to Robben Island (which means Seal Island in Dutch and is about 11 or 12 km always from Cape Town), TV screens above our seats played short videoclips about the history of imprisonment at Robben Island dating back to the colonial period as well as short advertisements.

Upon arrival at Robben Island, we saw folks from the other house, waiting for the ferry to take them back to Cape Town. Then we walked toward the tour buses (they were all full by the time we sat down in the back of ours) and proceeded on our way, with a woman as our guide, telling us about the flora, fauna, buildings, and general history, such as that of the Sobukwe House (where Robert Sobukwe was incarcerated, one of the organizers of the Sharpeville anti-pass demonstration that resulted in dozens of deaths under apartheid rule as innocent, unarmed marchers were fired upon), the Pan-Africanist Congress, the old Irish village (Irish workers were brought there in the 19th century under British rule), the quarry where prisoners were forced to work endlessly and the cave nearby where political prisoners taught each other literacy and other skills, the “university” for many of South Africa’s liberators, an old Anglican church, the site of the former leper colony where those suffering from the disease were sent by the Cape Colony’s government, the Kramat, a beautiful Islamic shrine with a dome, naturally, built for a Southeast Asian dissident and holy man imprisoned on Robben Island under the VOC-government’s rule, and, eventually, to the maximum-security prison that housed political prisoners under apartheid rule. The bus-tour part was not the best since the tour guide’s voice was a little annoying and hard to follow at times. We were surprised to see that the dog kennels were larger than the cells in one prison (I think it was the medium-security one)!

As for the second half of the tour, we were taken through and around the maximum security prison while a former political prisoner (a man who was imprisoned there in 1978 with a group of four or five other anti-apartheid activists from Port Elizabeth or East London) explained basic facts about the function of apartheid, apartheid practices within the prison (differing allocations of food for meals of political prisoners based on Coloured or Black categorization), and showing us around the courtyards, sleeping rooms, cells, and former cell of Nelson Mandela! Alas, I don’t have a camera but Melly and Alexander have pictures of us there! We also took a photo at a café on the island for the tourists, where I made the mistake of purchasing disgusting coffee.

Unfortunately, the tour ended too soon (we did not get time to walk around the island, to explore the Kramat structure, or even really take it all in, and I did not ask our former political prisoner-now guide too much). To our collective detriment, the tour guide at this point was difficult to follow at times, and he did not fully explain what his group was imprisoned for or other essential details about his personal life. That struck me as odd, since another guide at the maximum-security prison we overheard while in the courtyard was speaking very clearly, loudly, and quoting from a speech by Mandela. If only our guide had that spirit…oh well, he survived incarceration on Robben Island and the horrors and humiliation of apartheid, he earned the right to relax and keep his own privacy.

Without anytime to really explore, we found ourselves rushed back to the dock to board the ferry. There were more waves so it was a turbulent return voyage, and a whale was sighted, both contributing to an expected tourist shrieks, shouts, and wails, which, to me at least, seemed disrespectful to the legacy of the ingenuity of the human mind to torture its fellow humans and the spirit of freedom that culminated in the freeing of Mandela, other political prisoners and, finally, all prisoners from Robben Island in the 1990s. There were beautiful, inspirational video clips and photographs at the Robben Island Museum that also helped contribute to the optimistic outlook for South Africa and humanity after Mandela was freed.

Overall, it was a beautiful day despite a dark, rainy beginning, ended well with mediocre Italian dinner from a Waterfront restaurant. As mentioned previously, some of the behaviour of the tourists seemed odd and disrespectful, including a group of what appeared to be South Africans from Durban or Johannesburg, in the delight of beign able to travel and take excessive photographs. But then again, who am I to judge them, South Africans probably only recently able to travel, from enjoying themselves and the island that symbolized their past oppression? My goal is to, one day, return to Robben Island when there are fewer tourists and to try to spend at least 3 or 4 hours there, seeing the Kramat and appreciating the beauty and horror of the prison.

Duke Ellington, Sathima Benjamin and "Solitude"

After watching segments of the documentary, Sathima's Windsong, I know understand how Benjamin describes her singing as "emoting" as well as noting the influence of Billie Holiday on her vocal style and outlook to jazz vocal artistry. "Discovered" in Europe while Duke was on tour in Zurich, back in 1963, "Solitude" was part of a series of recordings that were never released until the 1990s. Duke plays piano whilst members of Dollar Brand's South African trio accompany, though the somber tone and relatively sparse arrangement is based on an ethereal Sathima's longing vocals, heartbreaking yet optimistic. Indeed, this is perhaps my favorite recording of Ellington's standard, "Solitude," along with an instrumental take from the Money Jungle sessions with Max Roach and Charles Mingus from the same decade. Her take on "Lover Man" from the same 'rediscovered' album recorded in 1963, showcases her affinity for Billie Holiday as well as a unique use of space with occasional stops of breaths that permeate the "Solitude" and "Lover Man."

That these South African jazz artists, from Cape Town, were exposed to jazz and other American (particularly, African-American) musical and cultural influences is noteworthy, too. As a cosmopolitan port city with exposure to American minstrelsy, African-American gospel hymns through the influence of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Abdullah Ibrahim was exposed to this Christian church, which appealed to many Black South Africans and some Coloureds, and, according to lectures at UCT, Black South Africans generally looked up to or valued African-American intellectuals and culture, to a certain extent), the presence of West Indian and African-American sailors in the docks  (apparently, that's the origin of the nickname, "Dollar," for Ibrahim, and Ibrahim's grandmother was a founding member of the AME church in South Africa, according to this interview ). In addition, radio, marabi and local evolutions of jazz in South Africa's townships, derived from ragtime, blues, as well as 'traditional' forms of music of the Xhosa, Zulu, and other ethnic groups carried over to create a plethora of local jazz scenes and styles in South Africa, as well as the influence of American swing and bop. And, as Sathima herself describes in Sathima's Windsongs, the parallels between American Jim Crow and racism with South African apartheid, from the similar language (Coloured and Colored) to racial segregation, provided another link between Cape Town and South Africa's urban Black population (Black meaning Black South Africans as well as Coloureds), illustrated evidence of trans-oceanic links within a broader sphere of the "Black Atlantic" with similar struggles and identity formulations. The 1970s "Afro" movement in some Coloured Cape Town townships during the rise of youth anti-apartheid resistance, though never completely bridging the divide between Xhosas and Coloureds in the Cape Flats, is another instance of African-American culture, music, and aesthetics appealing to a broader "Black" world across the Atlantic, as John Edwin Mason so convincingly argues in his "Mannenberg: Notes on the Making of an Icon and Anthem."

Thus, Sathima's relationship with Duke, not only represents their musical affinities for one another, but part of a broader process and dynamic set of relations that transcend national divisions, linking Cape Town to 'colored' people of the US in terms of music and, to a certain degree, religion and resistance to apartheid, both American and South African. And last but not least, the beautiful heterogeneous music of American jazz, itself a fusion of African, European and Latin American influences, was never decidedly "American" due to its diverse origins, spread, and codevelopment of local styles all over the world, from South Africa to Ethiopia, France to Russia. We, the listener, are treated in the process with compelling music, that shows the intersections of humanity along cultural lines, through oceans, mountains, deserts, and tundra. Jazz, simply, is universal music.

Too Close for Comfort: Master and Slave Relations in the Colonial Cape

Too Close for Comfort: Master and Slave Relations in the Colonial Cape

            The effects of propinquity on the nature and development of slavery in colonial Cape society were profound. Unlike the large plantations that evolved in parts of the Americas, where enslaved Africans could develop slave cultures without the incessant supervision of whites, close contact between white masters and slaves in the Cape led to constant supervision that created intimately oppressive conditions. Therefore, slavery developed into an institution of extreme regulation and monitoring of slaves for social control with the appearances of benign paternalism, which was weaker in Cape Town than in the countryside.  These aforementioned intimately oppressive conditions entailed a form of slavery mixing physical and psychological forms of domination, domestic affection and the threat of violence, and paternalism and overseers to ensure slave subordination while also creating conditions for more cultural and racial mixing.

            Conditions of white supervision varied for slaves in both Cape Town and rural areas, depending on various factors. The similarities persist, however, for all of the above in several key ways. First, in both the countryside and Cape Town, the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, never enforced its laws against concubinage, so white males and ‘black’ female slaves produced mixed-race children throughout the colonial period, partly because of the uneven sex ratios for whites.[1] But despite the prevalence of miscegenation, there was no “mulatto escape hatch” for Cape slaves and slave children of white fathers, meaning few slave women gained freedom from relationships with white males. Few of their children with white males were manumitted or given burghership.[2] Nevertheless, the frequency of interracial sex between white men and slaves exemplifies another use of white males controlling the bodies and sexual freedom of female slaves, adding another layer of force for social control, which can be seen in Willem Menssink’s penchant for sex with his slave women.[3] Like many other male settlers, it was not unusual to have sex with slave women, although the church never condoned it.[4]

In addition to sex, white males often controlled their slaves across the Cape because the household slept under the same roof. A shortage of living space led to higher amount of intimacy between slaves and masters, rural and urban.[5] Indeed, even in Cape Gentry homes, slaves often lived inside the house.[6] Thus, slaves were not only vulnerable to slaveholders’ sexual power, but also within reach of them and their families, decreasing chances for autonomy and, especially in rural areas, limiting socialization with other enslaved peoples on neighboring small farms.[7] Moreover, slaves in both rural areas and Cape Town were vulnerable to physical violence and the threat of it, although slaveholders who took the law into their own hands with cruel punishments of their slaves instead of relying on the VOC to chastise them could be shunned by Cape society and penalized by the Company.[8]

            Despite the shared characteristics of slavery in Cape Town and rural areas, the peculiar institution developed differently from slavery in Cape Town in multiple ways. For instance, slaves on Cape farmsteads outside of the arable southwest, on the frontier or small estates, were often very few in numbers on their plantations.[9] These Cape slaves on small estates would then mostly socialize with their white masters who oversaw them personally or had a knecht or mandoor. Regardless, slaves on these small farms outside of the arable Cape were very close with their masters, and, in some cases, with Khoikhoi laborers and women, often the only available sexual partners for the mostly male enslaved workforce.[10] As mentioned previously, the mixed-race offspring of slaves and their masters were usually not freed, but a Creole culture based on the Indische culture of VOC holdings in the Indian Ocean world and European culture developed on larger estates. This was aided by the larger estates featuring more slaves from common origins, facilitating communication and socialization among slaves and developing a unique slave culture influenced by European culture, too.[11] Larger estates also featured more skilled slave craftsmen, likely better treated.[12]

While being spread out in small numbers with their white masters and some Khoikhoi workers, rural slaves also lacked privacy needed to maintain their own family units, being seen as part of the patriarchal family unit as perpetual children in need of white paternalism.[13] Despite cases intense domestic affection that could arise from paternalism between master and slave, their membership in the family included the master’s children having the right of beating slaves, indicating the unequal and hierarchical structure of master-slave relations embedded within the family.[14] Rural slave resistance, and slave resistance generally throughout the Cape, was likely undermined by slave diversity, since the population came from all over the Indian Ocean and linguistic hurdles and ethnic rivalry may have caused slave resistance to take on a more individualized form.[15] However, some forms of group resistance appear in slaves running away beyond the frontier to join Khoikhoi groups or to inaccessible areas to form small maroon bands, which are just some of the options available to rural slaves. Drosters, or gangs of fugitive slaves, such as the one Pieter of Madagascar was part of in early 18^th century Land van Waveren, were also common forms of slave resistance on the frontier.[16]

Overall, slaves in the countryside, unfortunately, were mostly concentrated in smaller farms, slept in the same home with the master, and because central authority weakened the further away from Cape Town one was, slaveholders could use more violence or brutality as they saw fit without much control from VOC authority. Unlike their urban counterparts or those in bondage on large estates, their options for socialization were primarily with European masters and Khoikhoi, so slaves and trekboers both adopted elements of Khoi culture, such as a pastoralist economy, or their Khoi-styled shelters.[17] The overly close quarters between slave and free ultimately developed into the perfect conditions for the use of paternalism as well as brute force to discipline and subordinate slaves in the Cape.

Similar to conditions of slavery in the rural Cape, urban slaves, who comprised a significant portion of all slaves in the Cape, were also under close regulation by colonial society.[18] Brutality, public beatings, and widespread abuse of slaves were common, particularly for Company slaves housed in the Slave Lodge, which also functioned as a brothel.[19] Company slaves, however, were not representative of all slaves in the Cape, particularly because of the draconian measures taken by the Company to control them with overseers since they were organized into large work gangs for various forms of labor in Cape Town.[20] Company slaves gradually became a very tiny proportion of the total slave population, hitting rock-bottom by 1795, the year of the first British occupation, with almost all reported slaves being privately owned.[21] Before the Company’s decline, the VOC managed their slaves through overseers, often slaves themselves.[22] The Company also relied on Kaffers, Eastern convicts from their Asian possessions, imported as slaves to monitor, police, and apprehend Cape Town’s slave population.[23] Like rural areas and privately-owned slaves, miscegenation at the Lodge was also frequent. In fact, an estimate for mixed-race children born there in 1671 was ¾ having mixed ancestry.[24] The case of slaves at the Lodge, however, were slightly different in that sex ratios approached a balance, so these additional women were targets for European bachelors and sailors employed by the VOC.[25] Despite the increased surveillance of the Company’s slaves, they were still able to interact with each other and socialize with other urban populations, such as males seeking prostitution, or with other slaves and residents of Cape Town, so their enslavement differed in some key respects from the rural slaves’ on small estates living inside the homes of their masters.

Besides the Company’s slaves in Cape Town, the rest of the urban slave population enjoyed comparatively much more freedom. Though attempts to limit and monitor their movement and keep them under the paternalistic slave-master relationship were utilized, urban slaves were often rented by their masters, giving them a degree of mobility and autonomy from their masters.[26] Slaves in Cape Town hired out were also more likely to pay for their own accommodation, providing additional distance between themselves and the paternalism of domestic slavery associated with living in the same home as slaveholders.[27] Predictably, these urban slaves had far more opportunities to mingle with others in Cape Town’s markets and their various types of work led to increased chances of socialization and occasions for horizontal acculturation with other subordinate peoples in Cape society.[28] These relatively mobile, unfettered Capetonian slaves also did not have to deal with an efficient or strong police force in Cape Town, allowing another degree of relative freedom.[29] Furthermore, slaves’ relative autonomy surfaced in the frequency of slave theft of white property and forming their own sub-cultures and spaces within the city visiting taverns.[30]  Urban slaves also resisted attempts under British rule for Christian conversion and moral education, preferring Islam, which spread rapidly because the port received Muslim slaves, exiles and convicts from India and Southeast Asia, exemplifying the cosmopolitan culture of Cape Town and slave society.[31]

Naturally, there were multiple measures taken by Cape Town’s slaveholders and the government to curtail the freedom of movement enjoyed by urban slaves. For instance, Cape Town’s curfew laws attempted to reduce slave autonomy and retain control of the streets for European authority.[32] The aforementioned Kaffers served as auxiliary police as well, assisting in the maintenance of the social order and symbolizing slave disunity and internal stratification.[33] The threat of sale and the public military rituals and presence in Cape Town also served as deterrents to slave autonomy and resistance in the city, showing the powers of colonial authority authority in urban space.[34] The threat of violent punishment and public beatings strengthened white authority by adding spectacle to what in the countryside would have been largely private affairs of disciplining slaves.[35] Although the authority of slaveholders was augmented in some ways in the city, slaveholders of Cape Town lacked direct political power because of elite divisions and British colonialism introduced ameliorative legislation to limit the extent of cruel punishment, thereby improving the lot of slaves in the 19^th century.[36]

In summation, slavery in both rural and urban Cape society clearly depended on the degree of propinquity to imbue it with alternative forms of social control. The high degree of paternalism, evident in the smallholdings of rural Cape society, was one form of social control that also continued to rely on physical coercion and intimidation. The Company slaves in Cape Town received less paternalism and more of the direct, constant physical, sexual, and supervision that characterized slavery on the large plantations of the Caribbean or the American South, partly because of the large numbers of slaves organized into specific work crews. Other urban slaves, exemplified by those whose labor slaveholders rented out, were more likely to live outside of their master’s accommodations and socialize with other slaves and urbanites across the city, further developing slave sub-cultures influenced by the diversity of slave origins as well as European culture. However, in all areas of slave distribution in the Cape, cultural and racial miscegenation occurred, extending to the creation of a new language, Afrikaans, a development that could only arise from oppressively close relations and contact between the masters and the slaves. Thus, the close relations of master and slave imbued slavery in the Cape with a façade of benevolence and ensured widespread miscegenation and cultural mixing through paternalism and factors such as location in the Cape.

Bibliography

Armstrong, J. and Worden, N. “The Slaves, 1652-1834,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society ( 2^nd ed., Cape Town, 1989).

Bank, Andrew. The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806-1843 (Cape Town, 1991).

Elphick, R. and Shell, R. “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society (Cape Town, 1989).

Penn, Nigel. “The Fatal Passion of Brewer Menssink: Sex, beer and politics in a Cape family, 1694-1722,” in Rogues, Rebels and Runaways (Cape Town, 1999).

“The wife, the farmer and the farmer’s slaves: adultery and murder on a frontier farm in the early eighteenth century Cape,” Kronos: Journal of Cape History, 28, Nov. 2002.

Ross, Robert. Cape of Torments: Slaves and Resistance in South Africa (London, 1983).

Shell, Robert. “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” in W. James and M. Simons (eds), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town, 1989).

“The Tower of Babel: The Slave Trade and Creolization at the Cape, 1652-1834,” in E. Eldredge and F. Morton, (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Boulder, Colorado, 1994), pp.11-39.

Worden, Nigel. Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985).

---

[1] R. Elphick and R. Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society (2^nd ed., Cape Town, 1989), 194.

[2] Ibid, 203.

[3] Nigel Penn, “The Fatal Passion of Brewer Menssink: Sex, beer and politics in a Cape family, 1694-1722,” in Rogues, Rebels and Runaways (Cape Town, 1999), 18.

[4] Ibid, 19.

[5] Robert Shell, “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” in W. James and M. Simons (eds), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town, 1989), 26.

[6] Ibid, 25.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, 20-21

[9] Ibid, 22.

[10] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,”  200.

[11] Ibid, 225.

[12] Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985), 87.

[13] Ibid, 95.

[14] Shell, “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” 26.

[15] Robert Shell, “The Tower of Babel: The Slave Trade and Creolization at the Cape, 1652-1834,” in E. Eldredge and F. Morton, (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Boulder, Colorado, 1994), 21.

[16] Nigel Penn, “The wife, the farmer and the farmer’s slaves: adultery and murder on a frontier farm in the early eighteenth century Cape,” Kronos: Journal of Cape History, 28, Nov. 2002, 14.

[17] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,”  227-228.

[18] Robert Ross, Cape of Torments: Slaves and Resistance in South Africa (London, 1983), 25.

[19] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,”195.

[20] Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa, 90.

[21] J. Armstrong and N. Worden, “The Slaves, 1652-1834,” in Elphick and Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society (2^nd ed., Cape Town, 1989), 129.

[22] Ibid, 127.

[23] Ibid, 128.

[24] ^[24] Elphick and Shell, “Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652-1795,” 195.

[25] Ibid, 198.

[26] Andrew Bank, The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806-1843 (Cape Town, 1991), 127.

[27] Ibid, 62.

[28] Ibid, 61, 77.

[29] Ibid, 84.

[30] Ibid, 81.

[31] Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa , 98.

[32] Shell, “The Family and Slavery at the Cape, 1680-1808,” 26.

[33] Armstrong and Worden, “The Slaves, 1652-1834,” 129.

[34] Bank, The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806-1843, 69, 76.

[35] Ibid, 65.

[36] Ibid, 80, 83.