Race thinking!

Posted by Mikkel

I’m back again…and this time it will probably end up quite serious. Don't take it as me trying to educate you, but just as an attempt to make you understand what I'm working with. At the end there will be photos!

You will find that in 3 weeks time I have already learned the South African language of race and colour. For those of you who are not familiar with this, here is a bit of background information: During Apartheid the people of South Africa where divided into 3 major racial groups - whites, coloureds (mixed race) and blacks. A hierarchy was established with whites on top living in the nice areas of town, going to the best schools and having the best jobs. Take the allocation of school money pr. pupil as an example: a black pupil being allocated 10 times less than a white; and a coloured pupil 4 times less than a white).

Since last time I wrote you I have been installed at the City of Cape Town’s Employment Equity Department, where I have my own desk and computer. We are around 9-10 people in the department which is about half of what there should be, but unfortunately this country seems to be notorious about not following policies up with adequate funding. The department is, among other duties, supposed to bring all municipality staff (23.000 employees) through a two day Diversity Management Workshop. They have been busy for around a year and have so far managed a bit less than 2000! So far I have attended one workshop (and had two cancelled the very same morning they were about to take place). The plan is to attend more workshops, conduct follow up interviews with the participants as well as the facilitators and basically participate in what else the department is involved with from recruitment interviews to "Employment Equity Awareness Sessions".

I can tell you that it is heavy stuff they are tackling at the workshops. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most of you that a storytelling session about racial relations and prejudices brought about some rather sad stories. There were stories of inferiority and discrimination; of special toilets for white, coloured and black people; of you Grandmother threatening you with the “black men who will come and take you”; of being put to prison for being out in the street after nine in the evening or for not having brought your “Pass”; and most of all: stories of lost opportunities when the school was too far away from home or you had to work instead of going to school in order to get food on the family’s table when Dad died or disappeared.

These lost opportunities of education are to me some of the most important issues here. Many whites and coloureds tell me that they do understand the need for affirmative action (positive discrimination) as a way of addressing past discrimination, but that it has gone on long enough and it’s now the time “to wipe the slate clean” Addressing past injustices seems to be acceptable as long as it does not affect your own opportunities or those of your children! But blacks are still the people with the poorest education and therefore lowest in the job hierarchy. The majority of blacks still live in the worst areas, in the worst houses and often attending the worst schools. A collective feeling of guilt which for instance still marks a country like Germany does not seem to be very present. And many people do not acknowledge that their superior position in the competition for jobs is a product of many years of oppression, which does not change when the discriminatory laws are uplifted.

Race matters in South Africa! That is a fact I was prepared for, but after 3 weeks I notice how I have already begun adopting the South African way of speaking about race as the most natural way to categorize people. It is both telling and deeply ironical that a Diversity Management Workshop begins with all the participants filling in their name, phone number, department, gender and race. And in the last rubric you sign!

I know this was a lot of serious stuff, but that is the realities here. On the more funny side I can assure you that we had some good parties, that we have encountered wild penguins, that we have been to church with a lot more singing and clapping than at home and that I can now say for sure that Table Mountain is truly flat as a table on top. Parties, penguins and mountains are mostly reserved for weekends, which can become a bit of a puzzle because everyone is so nice to invite us out for this and that. During the week I’m at work more or less every day. Tuesdays I have now started coaching a group off teenagers in football and I’m also maneuvering myself into position for a team to play with a couple of days a week. Tonight will be my first match.Take care all of you.

PS: I’m posting a couple of photos from a Global Action Day demonstration we attended organized by TAC in order to get the Health Minister fired. All the comrades were singing and dancing for hours (so I was told by Janine, because this activist had to get back to the office!) Take a look at the photos and I’m sure Janine will tell you some more later.

More importantly

Posted by Mikkel
Don't know what it is about women, but they always forget the most important stuff! Check this out!

In and out of the townships

Posted by Janine
After a week here, we finally got to see the “real South-Africa”: we went to the townships where most of the people of Cape Town are living -about three million. On Tuesday I was training football in a township to a bunch of primary school boys (yes it’s true) and on Friday I was dragged onto a stage to dance to ‘African house’… in front of 800 high school kids!

The girls at this high school were definitely much better at shaking their asses than I am, so I wasn’t particularly glad for this honour, but hey what can you do. It was a ‘rape-awareness day’ (sexual violence is a big problem here) and I came along with two American girls from my work. It was great to see the energy coming from the event: songs, poems, DJ’s, theatre and even a good old fashioned magician with a hat and strings. The whole thing was in Xhosa though (the language spoken most by the black people around Cape Town) so I have no clue what messages about rape were coming across, but I’m sure it was better than nothing.

The football training is something I’ll be doing every week from now on. Through a student association at the Uni, students can sign up for all kinds of development projects in the poor townships. I was going to teach hockey (guessed I would be more capable of that) but there were only three boys when we arrived. We decided to only do football (soccer), not knowing that within 20 minutes, there were suddenly about fifty boys running around! Quite a challenge to keep them away from the ball ALL at the same time.

This weekend we also spent a large part of our time in townships. Friday night some people of my work took us to Mzoli’s, a famous ‘braai’ (=bbq) place where we got seriously tasty meat. On Saturday a friend of Mette wanted to show us the best place he knew: it was Mzoli’s again! You do feel quite overdosed though, when you hardly get other than meat. To flush it down, we tasted a home-brewed beer at someone’s house. This was a sour yeasty substance served in a small bucket…I think I’ll keep it by this one try! (voor de nederlanders: denk aan ‘t mengsel van “ Brood Herman”)

I started my work at TAC (Treatment Action Campaign, the biggest Aids fighting NGO of South Africa) on Monday and basically have just been reading a bit and chatted with the other volunteers, who are mostly American. I’m glad that I’m going to do something with Aids-prevention -in a country where 5 million people are HIV positive- but haven’t really got a clue yet what it is I’ll be doing.
On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I’m following a course at the Uni. The teacher was ill this week but I am allowed to follow the course, which gives me a chance to get into the Masters Int. Development in Amsterdam (in Feb.), juhu!

It’s getting too long, sorry. But my biggest impression here up to now is similar to what Mikkel wrote: the incredible friendliness of the people. Everyone we met so far, whether white, black or coloured (and yes, speaking in terms of these races is what everyone still does here) have been so welcoming, open, easy-going and nice, that it keeps surprising me. Especially when thinking about the hard life that some of these people are living and the huge contrast between the townships and the rich villa-neighbourhoods on the seaside. But then again, the townships may be poor and look like slums at times (not everywhere though), people there are very aware of style. Many guys may live in a shack in their mom’s back yard, they’ll still drive a cool car and wear the latest fashion. In fact the townships are so much more lively and happening than Cape Town city, that I sometimes think it’s a shame that we are stuck here and can’t be part of their ‘vibe’ a bit more often.

Well… really enough for now. Hope you’re doing good and having it warmer than me in my double fleece and woollen socks (no heating in these houses…). Take care!

First five days in Cape Town

Posted by Mikkel
We have been 5 days in Cape Town. 5 days where I became a car owner and a house dweller, had whiskey shots with the girl driving me home, and compliments about my “African lips.” All in all very interesting days.

To begin with the materialistic account: We were picked up in the airport by Mette and our landlord Keith who immediately took us to our residence in the so-called District Six. District Six is a neighborhood just next to the centre of town which was claimed a “White Group Area” back in 1966. Most of the 60.000 coloured and black inhabitants were forced to move out in the townships on the Cape Flats – approximately half of them in houses provided by the government. The other 30.000 simply had to find out for themselves. There are hundreds of stories of people running out of their house just in time before the bulldozers leveled it with all their belongings.

Our house was one of the few to survive. It is a (for our standards) huge detached house with a garage, a beautiful view over the bay and a compulsory weekly cleaning lady (we had to take her because otherwise she would be out of work!). Today the area is becoming rather “multi-culti”, which is white slang for “not as good as only-whites areas”. Sunday we went to the car market and bought the second cheapest car for sale. It took me three test drives with three different vehicles, but third time it was instant love! A white South African produced Volkswagen Fox back from the Apartheid days. The owner had to fix a few things, but Wednesday I hope to drive it into our garage.

Cape Town is fantastic. Which other city can boost ocean and a 1000 meter close to vertical mountain side smack in your face. The beauty and the dangers are probably the most told stories about this place. So far we have only experienced the beauty, but safety issues take up quite a lot of attention – ours as well as most other inhabitants it seems. Many people talk about the places you cannot go, trains you should not take and stuff you should not wear. American Elina whom we met Saturday is constantly walking around with a pepper spray. I showed my disapproval with this practice by naming her Pepperlina…behind her back of course – I’m not risking anything with an armed American!

We are taking our precautions by not walking after dark, sticking to busy roads and places and using good old common sense. And so far we have only experienced really great people. One of them, Andrea, brought us home after a few beers and some shots in a bar. Normally something we would have objected against, but what do you do when it is too dangerous to walk home and maybe not safe to jump on a random taxi in the street. The toughest part of all this is actually the restrains you are put under compared to at home where you just jump on your bike and go in to town. But as I said earlier: we have only met great people here.

Another one of the great people, Mlamni, a guy our age from one of the townships who has been to Denmark, summed up the difference between the two countries for me. “Denmark and South Africa are completely the opposite,” he said, “I like how everything is so well organized in Denmark, but you go in to a bar and groups of people just sit by themselves for the whole evening.” People here are indeed quite opposite of us Danes: very open and very direct. Something I happily encountered first hand when a beautiful black woman (one out of many) next to me in the bar told me that I had good African lips! We chatted for a bit, shortly interrupted by Janine asking me to get her a drink (she might have sensed the competition!) I told my new acquaintance about my stand with Janine whereupon she responded: “You are crazy, man! Why do you bring a white woman with you to Africa!”

Today I started at my “work” at the City of Cape Town and Janine also started both at the university and the aids-organisation TAC. so probably there's some news on this front within a short time. We are also hoping to visit the Cape Flats and to go surfing this coming weekend. Take care all of you.