I attended the screening of Afrikaner Afrikaan, a documentary film that dealt with Afrikaner identity at the Encounters Film Festival in Johannesburg. The audience at the Bioscope Theater in the centre of the city, a hip place with an ‘indie’ feel and which will hopefully one day develop into a real Cinémathèque, was dominantly white and Afrikaner which made me wonder whether black South Africans had already given up on their white compatriots and did not expect much from the film and the discussion with the author and two of its protagonists.
In the documentary, two opposing perspectives on Afrikaner identity square off against each other. There are those who want to turn away from Afrikaner exclusive ethnicity and nationalism, and try to find new ways ‘of being’ in a diverse country. They are quarreling with those who believe Afrikaners should be proud of themselves, their culture and history, and did not need anyone’s approval and sympathy. While the former see themselves as opening up to the ‘Other’, embracing Africa and black people, the latter call for the defense of Afrikaners, their language and culture.
The former are represented by Deon Maas, a media personality, and Johrné van Huyssteen, from the pop-rock band Ddisselblom. Both were in attendance. The ‘ethnicists’ or ‘culturalists’ are represented by Sean Else who rose to prominence as the producer behind singer Bork Van Blerk and his hit song De La Rey, a celebration of a South African War General, and the Blut und Boden musical Ons vir jou, a nostalgic tour the force of Afrikaner history and culture; in short, the stuff of which nationalism is made of.
In the film, Else denied that he wanted to indulgence in right-wing nostalgia but argued that Afrikaners should be proud of themselves - in the same way that Zulus were. He said that he was looking a black man in the eye with pride; in contrast, Johrné would try to avoid the black man’s eyes, and turn away in shame and guilt. So ja, it is then all about how Afrikaners are today relating to black people and this sought-after audience was absent.
Another question that came up was whether musicians who celebrated the Afrikaner past and Afrikaner heroes were doing it for the money or if they were truly indulging in historical revisionism and rightwing politics. I suspect that both go together – celebrating the Afrikaner past puts bums on seats and sells CDs. After all, over decades of Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid, Afrikaners indulged this kind of ‘cultural’ national chauvinism, and it surely meets a consumer demand.
For Maas, Van Huyssteen, and author Jooste, the ‘De La Rey’ song was an example of the resurgence of nationalist exclusion and even racism among Afrikaners. That was made clear in the ensuing discussion. The general mood in the audience seemed that Else’s productions were an expression of a rising ethnic mobilization, even racism among Afrikaners. Only one young member of the audience argued that a liking for nostalgic music was not necessarily an endorsement of a right-wing and racist agenda.
In my own research, I came across the same ambivalence: attempts to appreciate, even salvage the past, no matter how tainted it is, go together with feelings of shame, awkwardness over racism and abuse in the name of Afrikaners. So a celebration of Afrikaner culture and ethnicity is not necessarily a yearning for white supremacy and racist apartheid. Nostalgia is an attempt to relate the past to the present. Yet, the question remains. Will nostalgia help Afrikaners to find a new pride in their history to become part of the new South Africa, as Else would have it? Or is the danger real that nostalgia for an honorable, Afrikaner past, one that ignores the abyss of white supremacy and apartheid domination, leads to racism in the present?
The irony of the South African post-colony is that the position of the progressive ones, Maas and Van Huyssteen, had been strongly criticized by black South African intellectuals. In one of his songs, Van Huyssteen sings of the white colonial immigrant who falls in love with a black woman. By doing so, he is claiming black African ancestry for himself and Afrikaners. Such claim of black ancestry, and its socio-political usage in contemporary South Africa has been rejected as an attempt to bury history and unproblematically claim adherence and belonging to an Africa and Africans that until recently were denigrated.
The same irony was at play when Maas was responding to a question that addressed the work of artist Anton Kannemeyer and his recent publication Pappa in Afrika. Maas supported the work and said it was the best contemporary satire in South Africa, even better than what renowned cartoonist Zapiro, had done. In a recent feature article in the Mail and Guardian weekly newspaper, Khwezi Gule, curator at the Hector Peterson Museum in Soweto, had criticized Kannemeyer for perpetuating racism under the guise of art that was supposed to shock and challenge stereotypes and racism. While the celebration of folkloric pride and ethnic identity, if not chauvinism, amongst Afrikaners and Zulus appears to have been endorsed by President Jacob Zuma, debates among progressives how Afrikaners can belong to an African South Africa, are far from achieving a similar consensus.
Despite all the risks associated with it, more discussions on identity, the past, and inclusiveness are desirable - across the colourline.
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Writer-fired-after-Satanism-row-20071115
http://jv.news24.com/Rapport/Rubrieke/0,,752-801_2214403,00.html
http://beta.mnet.co.za/carteblanche/Article.aspx?Id=3251
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-08-23-just-cause-you-feel-it-doesnt-mean-its-there
Monday, September 6, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Life beyond race – seminar blog
I have not participated in the last seminar of the series, titled ‘Life beyond Race’ but I have read the three articles; David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race - Reflections on Neoliberalism, chapters three and eight; Sarah Nuttall, Entanglement - Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid, chapter one; and Paul Gilroy, On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture - Darker Than Blue, chapter one. What follows is a summary and a discussion.
All the three articles address the issue of race and its entanglements. In David Theo Goldberg’s case it is the entanglement of race, racisms, and the neo-liberal state; with Sarah Nuttall, it is about re-reading identities, spaces, and histories that had been thought of as separate in order to find “points of intersection”; for Gilroy finally, entanglement is about the complex relationship between capitalism and racial divisions.
David Theo Goldberg makes two major claims. The first is that the emergence of the modern nation-state, largely a western and European construct, went together with race and racisms. State-making went with racism-making. The second is that the current triumphant neo-liberalism, as the dominant political and economic ideology adapted by many nation-states, re-enforces race thinking and racisms. As a global development, Goldberg identities five global areas in which particular forms of racisms, channelled through the state, occur: American (United States of America), Latin American, European, South African, and Palestinian racism. Analysing the leading, American racism, Goldberg argues that the roll-back of state programs which benefited black people is undermining much of the achievement towards racial justice that originated in the Civil Rights era. While the official state prohibits racism, private racism is accepted as the norm. Against this domination of whiteness, of (white) homogeneity Goldberg upholds heterogeneity. While this sociological approach is illuminating in indicating the global forces of capitalism and racism and how they manifest themselves through the state, the juxtaposition of homogeneity and heterogeneity seems to leave out much of what is happening in between; the shifts, leaps and bounds. Also, processes of challenges to this system of separation seem to be neglected. Previous discussions during this seminar on the opening and closing frontier in 17th and 18th century South Africa, for instances, offer insights into the intricacies of racial and power relations. It is then not only a linear expansion of European racism across the globe that is the constituting and determinant factor in where a future beyond race may lie. Rather, frontiers across race and class were and are shifting during struggles and processes, with different actors seizing opportunities, making and breaking alliances in the quest for control, security and resources.
To read closer these spaces that are in-between is the project of Nuttall’s articulation of entanglements across the colour line in reading literary and cultural production in South Africa. She is doing so with the help of creolité and how this concept first introduced elsewhere can be applied to South Africa; its strength is that it originates in the historical experience of slavery and its aftermath, integrates resistance but also accounts for subjection. With the background of a history of apartheid that strove to enforce racial divisions, the neglected or hidden history of the permeability of racial boundaries moves center stage. According to Nuttall, the South African approach to race and class emphasized the working class and neglected peasant culture, middle-class migrant and city cultures. Pointers towards what has the potential of undoing racial formations and hierarchies may emerge in analysing what has been over looked. In contemporary South Africa, more choices are available in terms of racial identification. As we analyse the ‘now’, racial entanglements, past and present, emerge.
In his analysis of the entanglement of American capitalism with African Americans, as former slaves who were reified and sold as commodities, Gilroy points to an uncomfortable observation: contemporary manifestations of African American popular culture do not augur well for emancipatory politics. Rather, an obsession with material culture negates the elevation of the self beyond the status of a mere object, as Gilroy’s reading of recent rap lyrics indicate. In this analysis, he joins Frantz Fanon who had described earlier the “formation of racial ontologies as part of the sociogenesis of deeply alienated human subjects” in which black people appear as objects. Gilroy’s is an analysis of the moral economy of the black Atlantic, with a focus on black people as consumers, and their particular relationship with the automobile. The mobility of the automobile held the promise of freedom which in the absence of full citizenship remained elusive. Furthermore, the automobile as an object of consumption has a larger significance in a globalizing world, with energy and environmental crisis, and deep cleavages between the rich and the poor across the globe.
Where do these readings leave us in our quest to understand contemporary South Africa? While consumer cultures give us choice, even in terms of racial identification, their emancipatory content is far from evident. Gilroy’s piece seems to contain a warning for South Africans who believe consumption and black advancement to middle class status will guarantee racial harmony. Unfettered neo-liberal capitalism, combined with the state abdicating social responsibility, maintains the status quo of racial inequality. Much of what happens at the level of the state is subjected to the ebb and flow of global capitalism, and if South Africa is analysed as a frontier society, this will have to be taken into consideration. The frontier in history has also been a moment of indetermination and flux. To grasp the nature of the current frontier appears more difficult yet necessary to gain better insights into “points of intersection” and future racial formations.
All the three articles address the issue of race and its entanglements. In David Theo Goldberg’s case it is the entanglement of race, racisms, and the neo-liberal state; with Sarah Nuttall, it is about re-reading identities, spaces, and histories that had been thought of as separate in order to find “points of intersection”; for Gilroy finally, entanglement is about the complex relationship between capitalism and racial divisions.
David Theo Goldberg makes two major claims. The first is that the emergence of the modern nation-state, largely a western and European construct, went together with race and racisms. State-making went with racism-making. The second is that the current triumphant neo-liberalism, as the dominant political and economic ideology adapted by many nation-states, re-enforces race thinking and racisms. As a global development, Goldberg identities five global areas in which particular forms of racisms, channelled through the state, occur: American (United States of America), Latin American, European, South African, and Palestinian racism. Analysing the leading, American racism, Goldberg argues that the roll-back of state programs which benefited black people is undermining much of the achievement towards racial justice that originated in the Civil Rights era. While the official state prohibits racism, private racism is accepted as the norm. Against this domination of whiteness, of (white) homogeneity Goldberg upholds heterogeneity. While this sociological approach is illuminating in indicating the global forces of capitalism and racism and how they manifest themselves through the state, the juxtaposition of homogeneity and heterogeneity seems to leave out much of what is happening in between; the shifts, leaps and bounds. Also, processes of challenges to this system of separation seem to be neglected. Previous discussions during this seminar on the opening and closing frontier in 17th and 18th century South Africa, for instances, offer insights into the intricacies of racial and power relations. It is then not only a linear expansion of European racism across the globe that is the constituting and determinant factor in where a future beyond race may lie. Rather, frontiers across race and class were and are shifting during struggles and processes, with different actors seizing opportunities, making and breaking alliances in the quest for control, security and resources.
To read closer these spaces that are in-between is the project of Nuttall’s articulation of entanglements across the colour line in reading literary and cultural production in South Africa. She is doing so with the help of creolité and how this concept first introduced elsewhere can be applied to South Africa; its strength is that it originates in the historical experience of slavery and its aftermath, integrates resistance but also accounts for subjection. With the background of a history of apartheid that strove to enforce racial divisions, the neglected or hidden history of the permeability of racial boundaries moves center stage. According to Nuttall, the South African approach to race and class emphasized the working class and neglected peasant culture, middle-class migrant and city cultures. Pointers towards what has the potential of undoing racial formations and hierarchies may emerge in analysing what has been over looked. In contemporary South Africa, more choices are available in terms of racial identification. As we analyse the ‘now’, racial entanglements, past and present, emerge.
In his analysis of the entanglement of American capitalism with African Americans, as former slaves who were reified and sold as commodities, Gilroy points to an uncomfortable observation: contemporary manifestations of African American popular culture do not augur well for emancipatory politics. Rather, an obsession with material culture negates the elevation of the self beyond the status of a mere object, as Gilroy’s reading of recent rap lyrics indicate. In this analysis, he joins Frantz Fanon who had described earlier the “formation of racial ontologies as part of the sociogenesis of deeply alienated human subjects” in which black people appear as objects. Gilroy’s is an analysis of the moral economy of the black Atlantic, with a focus on black people as consumers, and their particular relationship with the automobile. The mobility of the automobile held the promise of freedom which in the absence of full citizenship remained elusive. Furthermore, the automobile as an object of consumption has a larger significance in a globalizing world, with energy and environmental crisis, and deep cleavages between the rich and the poor across the globe.
Where do these readings leave us in our quest to understand contemporary South Africa? While consumer cultures give us choice, even in terms of racial identification, their emancipatory content is far from evident. Gilroy’s piece seems to contain a warning for South Africans who believe consumption and black advancement to middle class status will guarantee racial harmony. Unfettered neo-liberal capitalism, combined with the state abdicating social responsibility, maintains the status quo of racial inequality. Much of what happens at the level of the state is subjected to the ebb and flow of global capitalism, and if South Africa is analysed as a frontier society, this will have to be taken into consideration. The frontier in history has also been a moment of indetermination and flux. To grasp the nature of the current frontier appears more difficult yet necessary to gain better insights into “points of intersection” and future racial formations.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Safeguarding democracy in Germany and South Africa
Like Germany, South Africa hosted a successful World Cup. Unfortunately, we will not turn overnight into a global powerhouse as Germany is. We are a middle-income, developing, African country. A former colony located in the southern hemisphere. Germany is the world’s fourth largest economy, a dominant European power that possessed African colonies until 1918. But we share a few things. We both receive immigrants. Previously, southern European migrants, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and others, went north in search of work and found a new home in Germany - now it is largely workers from Turkey and their families who do so. South Africa, ever since apartheid ended, has become a promised land for many Africans from across the continent in search of a better life.
We both lived through darkness, but regained respectability. Germany was ruled by a ruthless dictator from 1933 to 1945 who was responsible for the devastation of the whole of Europe in World War II during which Germans conceived and implemented the holocaust, the near annihilation of the European Jewry. In South Africa, the apartheid state held on to white supremacy, exploited black people, made them second class citizens in their own lands and laid waste to neighbouring countries. Both had committed crimes against humanity. After the war, from what Germans call die Stunde Null on, the hour zero, a new state and nation emerged, a democratic republic, with a liberal constitution and provisions to safeguard fundamental human rights. So did South Africa. Apartheid injustice gave way to democracy and liberal constitutionalism – all citizens, independent of their origins, beliefs, and gender, share equal rights and duties.
Despite these commonalities, how the issues of migration and fundamental freedoms are currently played out could not be more different. In Germany, Ms. Aygül Özkan became the first minister of Turkish origins in the region of Niedersachsen. This is unprecedented in a country that still struggles to live harmoniously with its sizable Turkish minority, of which most are Muslim. However, as often is the case with newcomers, the minister, with little experience in politics after a successful career in business, made a major mistake. In a letter to local media, she asked them to support the government’s efforts to integrate foreigners by signing a media charter that prescribed a common practice when reporting on integration. In a swift response, the media, the opposition and eventually her own ruling Christian Democratic Party condemned what was widely seen as an attempt to threaten media freedom. The president of Niedersachsen apologized to the public and reiterated his commitment to media freedom.
In South Africa, our government is at pains to acknowledge that we need to change the way we treat African immigrants. Continued disregard for their human rights is undermining our own social fabric and our standing across the continent and the world. Given the way our government chose to respond until now, it will be by chance, not design, if less xenophobic violence will take place. And the same apparent carelessness is now undermining access to information and media freedom. The information bill and the media tribunal are testimony to how little awareness about the fragility of democracy and the constitutional state there is among the ANC members of parliament. As the common history of Germany and South Africa shows, once democratic values and practices are lost, regaining them comes at a high cost.
We both lived through darkness, but regained respectability. Germany was ruled by a ruthless dictator from 1933 to 1945 who was responsible for the devastation of the whole of Europe in World War II during which Germans conceived and implemented the holocaust, the near annihilation of the European Jewry. In South Africa, the apartheid state held on to white supremacy, exploited black people, made them second class citizens in their own lands and laid waste to neighbouring countries. Both had committed crimes against humanity. After the war, from what Germans call die Stunde Null on, the hour zero, a new state and nation emerged, a democratic republic, with a liberal constitution and provisions to safeguard fundamental human rights. So did South Africa. Apartheid injustice gave way to democracy and liberal constitutionalism – all citizens, independent of their origins, beliefs, and gender, share equal rights and duties.
Despite these commonalities, how the issues of migration and fundamental freedoms are currently played out could not be more different. In Germany, Ms. Aygül Özkan became the first minister of Turkish origins in the region of Niedersachsen. This is unprecedented in a country that still struggles to live harmoniously with its sizable Turkish minority, of which most are Muslim. However, as often is the case with newcomers, the minister, with little experience in politics after a successful career in business, made a major mistake. In a letter to local media, she asked them to support the government’s efforts to integrate foreigners by signing a media charter that prescribed a common practice when reporting on integration. In a swift response, the media, the opposition and eventually her own ruling Christian Democratic Party condemned what was widely seen as an attempt to threaten media freedom. The president of Niedersachsen apologized to the public and reiterated his commitment to media freedom.
In South Africa, our government is at pains to acknowledge that we need to change the way we treat African immigrants. Continued disregard for their human rights is undermining our own social fabric and our standing across the continent and the world. Given the way our government chose to respond until now, it will be by chance, not design, if less xenophobic violence will take place. And the same apparent carelessness is now undermining access to information and media freedom. The information bill and the media tribunal are testimony to how little awareness about the fragility of democracy and the constitutional state there is among the ANC members of parliament. As the common history of Germany and South Africa shows, once democratic values and practices are lost, regaining them comes at a high cost.
Friday, June 18, 2010
The World Cup is on!
Rightfully does South Africa and the world celebrate this soccer fest. The mood in the country, despite Bafana's defeat against Uruguay, is exhilarating. I can't remember any time since 2002 that people were so friendly, even more than usual, and all the daily strain seems so distant.
This is perhaps what makes this African and South African World Cup: the excitement across the country. There may be glitches with ticket sales, rather a problem of FIFA's greed, and transport, but the happiness factor that comes with soccer is quite unique.
The question remains: is it worthwhile for a developing country to spend obsence sums of money on a soccer fest that benefits Western capitalists and the mafia that is FIFA? It is clearly a problem that we don't know the salaries of the FIFA head honchos and that an organisation with such global importance has not accountability and is a law unto themselves. See the Insititute for Security Studies report at http://www.iss.co.za/pgcontent.php?UID=29940
Can we tally up the expenses for the World Cup with what we could have built in houses, job creation, and other programmes? Or can we say that the gain in happiness for a few weeks across the country was worthwhile the money spent?
I think the answer is yes and no. Remember that South Africa's development problem is not lack of funds - it is the lack of coherence and organisation in delivery, in creating and executing policies that advance the country. Perhaps then, the expenditure is justified and the gain in goodwill and happiness will create a better country which will be able to do things better.
Yet, the FIFA money fest has contributed to more corruption and unjustifiable expenditures. As a mafia organisation, besides the soccer fun, we cannot expect good practice to come from such an organisation. Also, instead of getting light headed through games, should we not focus on what needs to be done to improve the country? Rolling-up the sleeves, not partying should be the order of the day. And then, the World Cup money could have been spent on improving governance and towards sustainable livelihoods.
Perhaps we can say that if we could be assured that the World Cup was a clean business, we would be more understandable of the expenses. Also, if more would go towards supporting poor communities than just celebrating the rich, the fiesta that world soccer is, would gain much.
This is perhaps what makes this African and South African World Cup: the excitement across the country. There may be glitches with ticket sales, rather a problem of FIFA's greed, and transport, but the happiness factor that comes with soccer is quite unique.
The question remains: is it worthwhile for a developing country to spend obsence sums of money on a soccer fest that benefits Western capitalists and the mafia that is FIFA? It is clearly a problem that we don't know the salaries of the FIFA head honchos and that an organisation with such global importance has not accountability and is a law unto themselves. See the Insititute for Security Studies report at http://www.iss.co.za/pgcontent.php?UID=29940
Can we tally up the expenses for the World Cup with what we could have built in houses, job creation, and other programmes? Or can we say that the gain in happiness for a few weeks across the country was worthwhile the money spent?
I think the answer is yes and no. Remember that South Africa's development problem is not lack of funds - it is the lack of coherence and organisation in delivery, in creating and executing policies that advance the country. Perhaps then, the expenditure is justified and the gain in goodwill and happiness will create a better country which will be able to do things better.
Yet, the FIFA money fest has contributed to more corruption and unjustifiable expenditures. As a mafia organisation, besides the soccer fun, we cannot expect good practice to come from such an organisation. Also, instead of getting light headed through games, should we not focus on what needs to be done to improve the country? Rolling-up the sleeves, not partying should be the order of the day. And then, the World Cup money could have been spent on improving governance and towards sustainable livelihoods.
Perhaps we can say that if we could be assured that the World Cup was a clean business, we would be more understandable of the expenses. Also, if more would go towards supporting poor communities than just celebrating the rich, the fiesta that world soccer is, would gain much.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tertiary Education - what will the Stakeholder Summit bring?
It is never good to announce bad news, especially when you are new in a place. Nobody likes a Cassandra - the harbinger of bad news. The best example I can think of, and an object lesson in electoral politics that speaking the truth even, and especially if, it is bad news, is never popular, was the contest, after the unification of East and West Germany, between the Social Democrat Oskar Lafontaine and Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl for the Chancellorship.
To punch drunken Germans, still celebrating the newly united country, Lafontaine warned that it will be a very expensive unification and Germany would better think clearly this one through and find ways to mitigate the problems that may emerge.
Not so Kohl. He celebrated the unification, and promised "flowering landscapes" to an eager electorate. And Kohl won, and Germany is still trying today to digest the unification.
I digress.
But as recent graduate students at the University of the Witwatersrand, we faced so many obstacles and so little support, it was indeed a miracle that students managed to finish their degrees. And when we warned that things were not rosy, we were just ignnored and silenced. I do not intend to pick unfairly on Wits, but this is where I got my degree from and where I made my tertiary experience.
Clearly, the university was under enormous strain and faced capacity problems. But what strikes me even today is that all the people, instiutions, and individuals who 'carry' the university were unable to acknowledge and act upon the problems that threaten the health and contintuation of the academic and intellectual endeavour.
In any forum within the university that issues were raised, a stony silence and passive resistance met the complainants. And of course, nothing changed. So it is with no surprise that we learn of the Declaration that the recent Stakeholders Summit of Higher Education had made, and particularly the focus on improving the conditions of studying and ensuring that universities produce new cohorts of graduates who are smart enough to take up teaching and research positions.
The writing is on the wall. University faculty is aging and we are not producing the graduates who can take up their positions.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-30-declaration-embracing-the-opportunity
Just to consider a few examples. Graduate students need support and facilities. At one Faculty Meeting, the library asked for more money. The good librarian was told that Faculty would not use the library as its holdings were poor and Faculty would not divert 'their' money to the library. Now, how are graduate students supposed to do cutting edge research which requires books when Faculty says the holdings were so poor that they were not using it?
Another issue is the low level of throughput. A high percentage of students fail. This reflects the poor education that especially undergraduate students, even at formerly white universities, receive. Too many students walk away with a three year BA degree but they can't read and write properly.
This is a dangerous situation for any developing country. When I studied about the causes of the war in the former Yugoslavia, one contribution to the war was the easy mobilization of young men ready for war and highly gullible, somewhat educated but not quite, yet easily seduced by the facile explanations of populist leaders. The authoritarian university system had produced graduates who had certain skills but were in fact only semi-educated.
Now, if South African universities continue to churn out half-baked graduates, we create cohorts of young men and women with high aspirations but little chances to make it into well-paying jobs and into a better life.
Pseudo-education and resentment create individuals who may easily fall for a populist leader, promising easy solutions to complex problems.
Yet universities, given their limited capacities, ignored the problem. But I still don't understand how come that all the issues that students had raised about 10 years ago, internally, are only now recognized at a high-level university forum as pressing?
If the stakeholder summit reflects a change in thinking, maybe university education can still live up to the needs of a modern and developing society.
To punch drunken Germans, still celebrating the newly united country, Lafontaine warned that it will be a very expensive unification and Germany would better think clearly this one through and find ways to mitigate the problems that may emerge.
Not so Kohl. He celebrated the unification, and promised "flowering landscapes" to an eager electorate. And Kohl won, and Germany is still trying today to digest the unification.
I digress.
But as recent graduate students at the University of the Witwatersrand, we faced so many obstacles and so little support, it was indeed a miracle that students managed to finish their degrees. And when we warned that things were not rosy, we were just ignnored and silenced. I do not intend to pick unfairly on Wits, but this is where I got my degree from and where I made my tertiary experience.
Clearly, the university was under enormous strain and faced capacity problems. But what strikes me even today is that all the people, instiutions, and individuals who 'carry' the university were unable to acknowledge and act upon the problems that threaten the health and contintuation of the academic and intellectual endeavour.
In any forum within the university that issues were raised, a stony silence and passive resistance met the complainants. And of course, nothing changed. So it is with no surprise that we learn of the Declaration that the recent Stakeholders Summit of Higher Education had made, and particularly the focus on improving the conditions of studying and ensuring that universities produce new cohorts of graduates who are smart enough to take up teaching and research positions.
The writing is on the wall. University faculty is aging and we are not producing the graduates who can take up their positions.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-30-declaration-embracing-the-opportunity
Just to consider a few examples. Graduate students need support and facilities. At one Faculty Meeting, the library asked for more money. The good librarian was told that Faculty would not use the library as its holdings were poor and Faculty would not divert 'their' money to the library. Now, how are graduate students supposed to do cutting edge research which requires books when Faculty says the holdings were so poor that they were not using it?
Another issue is the low level of throughput. A high percentage of students fail. This reflects the poor education that especially undergraduate students, even at formerly white universities, receive. Too many students walk away with a three year BA degree but they can't read and write properly.
This is a dangerous situation for any developing country. When I studied about the causes of the war in the former Yugoslavia, one contribution to the war was the easy mobilization of young men ready for war and highly gullible, somewhat educated but not quite, yet easily seduced by the facile explanations of populist leaders. The authoritarian university system had produced graduates who had certain skills but were in fact only semi-educated.
Now, if South African universities continue to churn out half-baked graduates, we create cohorts of young men and women with high aspirations but little chances to make it into well-paying jobs and into a better life.
Pseudo-education and resentment create individuals who may easily fall for a populist leader, promising easy solutions to complex problems.
Yet universities, given their limited capacities, ignored the problem. But I still don't understand how come that all the issues that students had raised about 10 years ago, internally, are only now recognized at a high-level university forum as pressing?
If the stakeholder summit reflects a change in thinking, maybe university education can still live up to the needs of a modern and developing society.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Walter Benjamin. The know-how of the author in thirteen theses
I was away for a week writing, out in the bundus, and Benjamin was helping.
I. Whoever intends to write a considerable work, should enjoy themselves and allow themselves, after having finished their daily work, whatever does not render its continuation impossible.
II. Talk about what you have achieved, if you want to, but do not read [to others] while you are still working on it. The satisfaction that you thereby acquire slows down your speed. If you follow this commandment, your growing wish to communicate will eventually become the engine of accomplishment.
III. In your work setting, try to avoid the mediocrity of your everyday life. Semi-quietness, surrounded by dim noises engenders disrespect. However, the accompaniment of an etude or murmuring voices may become as important for your work as the silence of the night. In case it will fine tune your inner ear, it will turn into a testing ground of a diction that is so thorough that even eccentric noises will be drown out.
IV. Avoid random tools of the trade. Pedantic insistence on certain paper, pens, and ink is useful. Not luxury, but the abundance of these utensils is absolutely required.
V. Do not let pass any thought unnoticed [incognito] and be as serious in keeping track of them as the immigration police is of foreigners.
VI. Guard your pen against a spontaneous idea and it will, with the strength of a magnet, attract even more ideas. The more circumspect you treat an idea, the more mature it will turn out to be. Speech conquers thought but writing is in charge [control] of it.
VII. Never stop writing because you lack inspiration. It is a commandment of literary honor to stop only for keeping an appointment (a lunch or dinner appointment or a meeting) or if your work has been finished.
VIII. The absence of inspiration shall be filled with copying what you have achieved. Through it, your intuition will awaken.
IX. Nulla dies sine linea (Not one day without [writing] a line) – but certainly weeks.
X. Never consider a work as accomplished if you have not even sat over it from evening to morning.
XI. The final lines of a work do not write in you usual work space. You would not find the courage to finish in it.
XII. The steps of writing: thought – style – written word. It is the meaning of the proper copy that that it focuses the attention on the calligraphy. Thought kills inspiration, style attaches thought, the written word remunerates style.
XIII. The opus is the death mask of the concept.
From: One Way Street. (Einbahnstrasse). Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1991, p. 46 – 49. Translated by Thomas M.Blaser
I. Whoever intends to write a considerable work, should enjoy themselves and allow themselves, after having finished their daily work, whatever does not render its continuation impossible.
II. Talk about what you have achieved, if you want to, but do not read [to others] while you are still working on it. The satisfaction that you thereby acquire slows down your speed. If you follow this commandment, your growing wish to communicate will eventually become the engine of accomplishment.
III. In your work setting, try to avoid the mediocrity of your everyday life. Semi-quietness, surrounded by dim noises engenders disrespect. However, the accompaniment of an etude or murmuring voices may become as important for your work as the silence of the night. In case it will fine tune your inner ear, it will turn into a testing ground of a diction that is so thorough that even eccentric noises will be drown out.
IV. Avoid random tools of the trade. Pedantic insistence on certain paper, pens, and ink is useful. Not luxury, but the abundance of these utensils is absolutely required.
V. Do not let pass any thought unnoticed [incognito] and be as serious in keeping track of them as the immigration police is of foreigners.
VI. Guard your pen against a spontaneous idea and it will, with the strength of a magnet, attract even more ideas. The more circumspect you treat an idea, the more mature it will turn out to be. Speech conquers thought but writing is in charge [control] of it.
VII. Never stop writing because you lack inspiration. It is a commandment of literary honor to stop only for keeping an appointment (a lunch or dinner appointment or a meeting) or if your work has been finished.
VIII. The absence of inspiration shall be filled with copying what you have achieved. Through it, your intuition will awaken.
IX. Nulla dies sine linea (Not one day without [writing] a line) – but certainly weeks.
X. Never consider a work as accomplished if you have not even sat over it from evening to morning.
XI. The final lines of a work do not write in you usual work space. You would not find the courage to finish in it.
XII. The steps of writing: thought – style – written word. It is the meaning of the proper copy that that it focuses the attention on the calligraphy. Thought kills inspiration, style attaches thought, the written word remunerates style.
XIII. The opus is the death mask of the concept.
From: One Way Street. (Einbahnstrasse). Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 1991, p. 46 – 49. Translated by Thomas M.Blaser
Friday, April 30, 2010
Running a marathon: experiencing race
This past weekend, I was running a marathon in the south of Johannesburg, in the Klipriver area, a suburb wedged between Soweto and Kathlegong. It was my first ever and it was my last chance to qualify for the coming Comrades Ultramarathon, from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.
The race went well and I qualified by running the intermediate to difficult parcours in 4 hours and 53 minutes.
One reason for my success was that from mid-way on, I joined the 'bus' led by Tebogo from Kathlegong whose flag that he carried on his back read he would drive his bus over the finishing line in under 5 hours.
The running bus was a piece of black culture in motion. There was about a core group of 10 runners who appeared to know each other well for they run in harmony, even synchronized, in breathing, gesture and rhythm. From time to time, a member of the group would start a chant into which the entire bus joined. "E-zy", "e-zy", one would go. Another went "hayi-bo", 'hayi-bo". There was also "So-ber", "so-ber" and a few others. Members would hurry in front from the back and fire the group on through exhortations. Given the last chant, I could picture the entire group during a church service. Indeed, it felt a bit like being in a black church. But foremost through the running in rhythm, I was taken back 18 years, when I was dancing to the rhythm of the congas at the Othella Dallas Dance School in Basel, Switzerland. It was the same feeling of unity, of captivating rhythm in phyisical exertion that made me feel good and in unity with humanity and the universe.
What struck me also was that this bus was running in formation and with much unity. For those who were a bit tired and struggled, including me, the group carried us forward and over the finishing line in time with ease. Perhaps not with ease, but rather so that the pain no longer mattered.
The race went well and I qualified by running the intermediate to difficult parcours in 4 hours and 53 minutes.
One reason for my success was that from mid-way on, I joined the 'bus' led by Tebogo from Kathlegong whose flag that he carried on his back read he would drive his bus over the finishing line in under 5 hours.
The running bus was a piece of black culture in motion. There was about a core group of 10 runners who appeared to know each other well for they run in harmony, even synchronized, in breathing, gesture and rhythm. From time to time, a member of the group would start a chant into which the entire bus joined. "E-zy", "e-zy", one would go. Another went "hayi-bo", 'hayi-bo". There was also "So-ber", "so-ber" and a few others. Members would hurry in front from the back and fire the group on through exhortations. Given the last chant, I could picture the entire group during a church service. Indeed, it felt a bit like being in a black church. But foremost through the running in rhythm, I was taken back 18 years, when I was dancing to the rhythm of the congas at the Othella Dallas Dance School in Basel, Switzerland. It was the same feeling of unity, of captivating rhythm in phyisical exertion that made me feel good and in unity with humanity and the universe.
What struck me also was that this bus was running in formation and with much unity. For those who were a bit tired and struggled, including me, the group carried us forward and over the finishing line in time with ease. Perhaps not with ease, but rather so that the pain no longer mattered.
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