Zukiswa Wanner

During Women’s Month in 2006, a friend of mine and fellow scribe, Siphiwo Mahala wrote an article prior to Women’s Month lamenting the lack of women writers in prose. Mahala, who did not know me at that time, was not to know that I was at that time putting the final touches to my first book, The Madams, which would emerge on the South African market in November 2006. In the piece Mahala observed and lamented, and I quote

‘As South Africa is witnessing the bourgeoning of new writings, women voices are a critical component of this development. Casting a view on gender representation in our literature of English expression today, one realises that there is paucity of black women’s voices with regard to novel writing. Women’s voices are a fundamental factor in the renewal of a society, and more so in the reconfiguration of a nation’s literary contours.’

It is now two years since Mahala wrote that piece and he has just re-posted that piece on his Blog SA – highlighting that the literary world has changed speedily since then. Absolutely true too. Since Mahala wrote that piece, I am not the only black woman writer on the market. Names like Caine Prize winner Mary Watson come to mind. There are also others like author of Holy Hills, Angelina Sithebe; Angela Makholwa of Red Ink fame; EU Literary award winner and the youngest literary voice we have in South Africa today among women of all races – Kopano Matlwa; Futhi Ntshingila and Commonwealth Africa Prize Region winner for Best First Book, Maxine Case.

A certain Michelle – who I suspect to be my former publisher Michelle Matthews – comments on Mahala’s blog that there are still not enough black women writing. In my opinion, I do not think the list I have compiled above is shabby for a space of two years though. There are those who will question the inclusion of Case and Watson on the list but then Mahala did say black women writers and NOT African women writers and using this as a gauging point, I think the only group of black women not included in this list are the recently black-ised Chinese but I am sure we will be seeing them on our lists soon.

I think that part of the reason people may not be aware of the existence of black women writers (or even many South African writers at that of whatever race) is because marketing of writers and their books tends to be bad and this is something that publishers, booksellers and writers need to sit down and see how they can improve on. I know I am often met with surprised looks when I show people in a restaurant a book written by a South African writer. I personally only got to know of the existence of Angelina Sithebe’s Holy Hills when I bumped into her at a function and someone introduced her to me as a fellow writer. I have since bought and greatly enjoyed her book but I would never have known of its existence if it was not for that incidental meeting.

Michelle further states in her response,

‘Every year we had to SEARCH for black writers for our anthologies, while requests from white women to be included flooded my in-box. Why is it that every white suburban housewife who can string a few sentences together thinks she has a story the world wants to hear, but black women can barely bring themselves to put pen to paper?’ 

And there is the rub and may be a little explanation is in order. There are very few black suburban housewives…it’s all a matter of having time really. The black woman in South Africa is generally working be it as a domestic, an office cleaner or even an executive. The amount of time the white suburban housewife has on her hands can never be equated with that of the black woman (except of course with a few rare BEE housewives who are just now emerging but their numbers are so small they do not warrant a mention). When a black woman is at home she probably does not have a computer in the house to dream and be a potential writer – I know this because I wrote my first novel at the office where I used to work and would put a work-related screen every time the boss came around – while a white woman has one. If the black woman decides for instance that she was going to literally put pen to paper, she will be discouraged if she calls a publisher unsolicited and is told that she has to send three chapters of double-spaced typewritten work to them and she knows she does not have access to a computer. These may look like minor problems but they are very major to a black woman who is probably a single mother and wants to know where she will get funds to feed her children.

Given all this then, I do not think that black women are doing too shabbily in the world of literature in South Africa. There is definitely room for improvement but a little under ten writers in two years should be nothing to scoff at.

‘I am not staying here much longer. If the election results were different, there might have been some point. But with the  present government of noble niggers, all sorts of racialist laws might be passed; and life for minority communities could  become tricky….I would prefer a hundred times to be ruled from London, as in the old days, than to be ruled by the present people.’

The above quotation is from a letter that V.S. Naipaul wrote to his late wife Pat upon a home visit to Trinidad as that country was in the throes of decolonizing.  It is quoted in his AUTHORIZED biography, The World is What it Is that  I am currently reading.  What, you wonder, does the quotation above have to do with Cape Town and why the hell did I refer to that South African city as a republic?

To be blatantly honest because I think V.S.Naipaul, ingenious writer that he is, is also very much a sad human being. He is a clear indication that art and the artist can be truly separated. So too with Cape Town . A beautiful town full of many ingenious people who, fourteen years later, still need to find a way to become part of South Africa . In fact, I know many paler people who have moved to Cape Town because they feel about the rest of the country the way that Naipaul felt about Trinidad although they will not be as candid as that but will use indicators such as crime rate is high (while moving to the murder capital of South Africa).When I talk of Cape Town’s people, I of course am referring to the white people.

Don’t get me wrong, Cape Town also has those other people referred to confusingly on official papers as Coloureds and Africans (are white South Africans not Africans? And the Coloureds?) but one rarely sees the two groups unless one visits their ghettoes in the Cape Flats , Langa, Gugs, or Nyanga. In fact, I think if the country were to do a survey they would find, just as many whites move to cape Town from elsewhere, similarly many non-whites move out as fast too because Cape Town is still afraid to deal with colour. Every time I am in a restaurant in Camps Bay in Cape Town and I spot a black face (not a waiter), I am pretty certain that the person is probably a business tourist from my country ( South Africa ) or somewhere else in the world. Rarely is that person a Cape Tonian – so many years after the rest of the country agreed on reconciliation and integration.

And then of course the cost of living is so high that even if the ‘African and the Coloured’ wanted to rise above being working class by scraping and saving they still could not. One cannot buy a house in the ‘burbs of Cape Town unless they have a trust fund, a salary of at least five figures a month or, they are British or German expatriates coming with their pounds and euros. One of my friends who just surrendered out of Cape Town for Johannesburg told me an interesting anecdote. On asking for a raise from his last employer because, ‘I am barely making it. Rent in Rondebosch, school fees for my two children, and petrol for my car plus the rising cost of living, please, can you consider giving me a raise?’, was met with a resounding ‘no’. And not a polite, ‘the company is not doing well but when things looks up we’ll revisit your problem’ type of no but a rather funny if sad no. His lady boss apparently said ‘no’, but then proceeded, ‘if it’s really tough Stephen, why don’t you consider moving to Langa?’

Tragic, No?

I am not saying this rant out of the blues. I know many of my colleagues who feel the same way but it hit me how the separation of Cape Town from the rest of the country is problematic when I was having a conversation with one of South Africa’s elder statesmen of literature and he highlighted how he goes to Cape Town only when he is absolutely required to do so with work. It was disturbing.

Now, there are many a wonderful people in Cape Town who may not be consciously separating themselves from their darker fellow citizens but – if you are running a company and are paying your employee an amount that cannot get them out of the ghetto (there are those who decide to stay in Langa by choice but most people are not given that choice) then you too are complicit in Cape Town’s apartheid.

I am part a group of writers who is taking part in MobFest’s a Novel Idea…the cellphone short story competition. I am  of course honoured to be part of the inaugural group taking part in something this innovative but I was amused to note that the Cape Town editor sent through an email to all participants stating, ‘in order to be more representative and to appeal to a wider audience, we have invited an Afrikaans writer.’ I wondered whether any Zulu, Xhosa, sePedi or Shangaan writers had been invited. But then again, she is in the Republic of Cape Town and in that country, I suppose Afrikaans constitutes a multiplicity of voices.

I am not totally pessimistic about Cape Town . May be we can find a way, under the next government, to colonise them so that the rest of the country can finally say, ‘Welcome to South Africa , Cape Town ’.

I am at the inaugural Pan African Literary Forum in Accra, Ghana, a forum that attempts to bring together established and emergent literary voices from Africa and the Diaspora to learn from each other. It’s been enlightening. It has been an interesting experience and more on that on another day because this piece is not about that. This piece is about the hotel I am about to check out from tomorrow as I make my way to a retreat with the rest of the delegates (hate that word. It sounds so bloody politician-like but couldn’t find a better one, this being a lazy Sunday and all!).

When the South African delegation (ouch!) arrived in Accra, we were checked in, like the good patriots that we are who like the familiar, into the 3-Star Protea Hotel. Alas, the Protea only had space for us for three days although some of us would be in Accra for at least ten days. So we sent feelers out to the hotel staff the night before the day we were supposed to be out and many of these helpful folk came up with addresses with one, Raul, even calling around to make tentative reservations for us. Sunday morning we all emerge bright and early and after checking out, we are forced to call our assigned driver, Noah (more on this colourful character later. May be even as a character in a future short story or novel) to come and pick us up and take us hotel-hunting if you will. Unbeknown to us, Noah had already made a deal with a friend of his that we would be checking into their hotel so this is where he first takes us. Lovely place. Spacious rooms. Ghanaian-owned, and they were willing to give us all rooms at a set single rate in spite of the sizes (executive, standard, whatever). Sounds great yeah? But we did not like to be dictated to so we told the manager we would come back after an hour. Besides, Raul was meeting us elsewhere to show us the hotel he had tentatively booked for us. So Noah drives us to this other hotel in a sulk – and the man can sulk- all the while refusing to take part in small talk. I felt sorry for fellow scribe and poet Kitso then.

Fortunately for Noah and the commission he had been promised at the Ellking Hotel, we found the second hotel not as great as the one he had taken us to earlier so he drove us back, this time in a happier mood but not forgetting to remind us that ‘I told you’, so we could do our booking. Kitso, Prof and I were given an executive suite – I even have my own balcony and such. But this alone would never have made me feel as highly sentimental about checking out of this hotel tomorrow as I do now. Hotels are after all hotels with their standard fare, and the enforced politeness of the employees and the patronizing one of the hotel manager to people paying standard fare right?

Wrong.

For the first time in my life, I am actually going to miss being a hotel. The owners, Madam Ellen and her husband Mr King, are gracious and are characteristic of the Ghanaian hospitality that I have experienced all the time I have been here but without the falseness that one would get in a hotel chain. I have talked to the employees and strangely, they are not related to the owners of the hotel yet it feels very much like everyone here has a stake in the hotel and the employees all make one feel as though you are part of a family. The hospitality includes having the chap at the gate run to get you a cab when traveling elsewhere (something everyone probably has encountered in Accra), but what others have not experienced is how the management of the hotel offers their guests courtesy car with driver when making short runs for something. I have never been made to feel pampered while feeling a part of a family – a hotel family as I do now while sitting here in Ellking Hotel typing this from their complimentary computers.

I do not know when next I will come to Accra but what I do know is that, when I do, I will be returning to this hotel again and if anyone is coming this side, I am not recommending any other hotel to them.

To Madam Ellen, Mr. King and the wonderful staff of Ellking Hotel: yours may be a two star hotel but you have afforded a bunch of South African writers who may not be always as polite as they should be (being from an aggressive Joburg and all) five star hospitality. Thank you for showing us true Ghanaian hospitality!

Having received a lot of emails pertaining to my Affirmative Action Crooks piece, I always knew that I was going to have to say something else on this subject – no. Not on affirmative action crooks in particular but on crime in general. Last week gave me the perfect opportunity, what with the highly unoriginal – if noble- Million Man March against Crime organized by comedian Desmond Dube. The idea was for as many people as possible to gather in Pretoria, march to the Union Buildings and present a paper to the Presidency on how tired South Africa is with crime.

So on the day in question, Tuesday June 10, the cameras were ready (SABC 2 had planned to show the whole thing live from 11 to 1300hrs), the banners and t-shirts were made, Desmond did many an interview on radio and television but alas, it wasn’t a million, or even a hundred thousand people that turned up for the march but a mere seven thousand five hundred.

Many South Africans, myself inclusive, are gatvol with crime and while there are those who may have supported the march but couldn’t go because they were working, I personally didn’t go because I thought the march a practice in futility. This is yet another situation of South Africans thinking that toyi-toying will make the government act differently on anything (if you thought it could then ask the people in Khutsong who have been toyi-toying for over a year and are yet to be returned to Gauteng Province). What was the purpose of the march really? Send a delegation to the Presidency and a request for more police presence and more jails to be built?

Or may be the march was done so that the criminals could see that we are gatvol. I can see it now…a bank robber taking a moment out when planning  a robbery in his house while watching someone speechifying on television and many more holding placards that read ‘say no to crime’. Conscience strikes and he says to his cronies, ‘No. This is bad. Gents, we shouldn’t do this.’ Yeah right.

Now while I have been known to criticize often without offering a solution, in this case I am actually going to offer a solution. Crime is not just a government problem but largely a community problem. When we have a society that toasts someone who’s just emerged from Sun City with booze while looking disparagingly on someone who has just received their degree because ‘ibhujwa’; when we are a society that buys perfumes, televisions, heaters and clothes via the back door, stuff that we clearly know are proceeds of criminal activity, we cannot cry and ask the government to do something when our turn tobe robbed comes.

But back to the march and my suggested solution to crime. To start with, may be we should stop harbouring criminals and call the necessary hotlines when we know who the criminals are. Additionally. May be those seven thousand people who were in Pretoria and everyone who supports them  should become proactive instead of reactive. Now is the time for them to join (or form) a community policing forum in the communities. I write this a little late but suggest that in future when someone thinks of funding a march, they should in fact divert the funding to the CPFs – in my opinion at least this shows that we would be doing something to protect ourselves.

And to Desmond Dube  and all those who were in Pretoria last week – it was a noble effort, it really was. But sadly I think it’s just me and other non-criminals who listened to your call against crime (well unless two or three politicians were also awake then you could have also captured the attention of two or three criminals).

I was certain that when I wrote my blog this week, I would be reporting about the Franschhoek Literary Festival where I have been for the last few days. Alas, current affairs in my home province of Gauteng prevent me from writing of something that seems so frivolous (no offence meant to the organizers of that great festival). I would loathe for my silence on the madness that has gripped my country to be seen as approval for the xenophobic attacks that are destroying people’s lives - my fellow Africans, who came to my country in the hope of a better life for themselves because of political, economic, ad social upheavals in their own countries.

I am particularly pained because I too have been a refugee in other African countries. In 1976, while South African townships were burning because of African students’ refusal to use Afrikaans as a language of instruction, I was born in a Zambian hospital to a South African father and a Zimbabwean mother, both of them political exiles. The nurses who attended to me were Zambian and the doctor who delivered me was Zimbabwean. My mother tells me they nicknamed me ‘Soweto’ because I was one of the few South African children born during that tumultuous time in our nation’s history in that hospital. Lately I have been wondering whether I would have been alive if the Zambians had been as unwelcoming to my parents as my fellow nationals have been to our fellow Africans?

I wonder whether I would be able to write this if it weren’t for the education I received in Zimbabwe at Zimbabwean taxpayers’ expense?

I wonder too whether South Africa would be the free country it is today if the rest of other African countries had been as unwelcoming?

Would Mama Miriam Makeba, Jonas Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela have been as celebrated on the continent?

Would Lewis Nkosi and Eskia Mphahlele have attained their intellectual status if it were not for teaching at some of the African universities they taught at?

Would South Africa be the country it is without the thousands of exiles who were welcomed, educated and attained their professional experience in Nigeria, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and various other African countries?

Every South African I know has at least one relative who was in exile and yet today, we claim to be good men and women but sit and do nothing while evil prospers in the form of xenophobic attacks as those same self Africans (or their relatives) who helped our people are being bludgeoned to death?

PhD types have come up with reasons why this is happening, why even when we cannot condone the behaviour we should understand the anger of the working class. BULLSHIT!

An analysis of some of the excuses that have been used:

 Service delivery

There are those who claim that poor South Africans are perpetrating these atrocious crimes because of lack of service delivery from the government and that South Africans are frustrated. Uh, hello? How idiotic is that? The non-South Africans are probably tortured by the same lack of service-delivery from government and are therefore in your shoes. I know tons of refuges who have been here for as long as 14 years and are yet to get their refugee papers completely processed by Home Affais. Besides, I don’t get it. How does killing your Mozambican neighbour going to speed up service delivery? May be if the South African working class feels so strongly about lack of service delivery, instead of killing the wretched of the earth who are trying to make it like themselves, they should be intelligent enough to, as my friend Ndumiso was saying yesterday, to go and ‘storm the Bastille’. You know where the Union Buildings are, you know where Parliament is, you know where the municipality offices are – those are the people you should be holding accountable and questioning instead of looting from a person whose corner store holds all the resources he/she has. That’s not an incitement against government by the way. It’s just a statement to highlight how misplaced the anger seems to be when clearly there are people on power who are supposed to be accountable for the service delivery.

 They are taking our jobs

Plain dumb. Most of the people perpetrating the crime on fellow Africans are idiots who have never bothered to get matric certificates and would still be unemployed if these so-called foreigners were not here (you have to question the very idea of calling a fellow African a foreigner on African soil when the David Bullards are living it large and getting applause for spewing their racist diatribe).

This morning as I was writing this, a friend of mine called me and told me of a doctor from another country who was abducted from a hospital because of course he is ‘taking our job’. How stupid is that? In a country where we are bemoaning the lack of doctors, should we not be celebrating this brother and thanking him for wanting to work in our public hospitals for pays that most South African doctors will become expatriates for?

 They are taking our women

Here is the thing folks, from one South African woman to South African mankind – women are not taken, they go. There is no guarantee that we would be with you if the so-called foreigners were not here. Here is the thing. May be if you started spending less time blaming the government for you lack of development and actively tried to do something (go to uMsobomvu and see what innovative project of yours they can fund, actively go to industries and seek work as a cleaner, salesperson, go back to school ad better your qualifications etc). May be if you  stopped standing at street corners at 7 in the morning on Monday mornings drinking beer and asking those who are going to work for one rand for skyf. May be if you stopped beating up your women when they ask you for money to buy your child diapers or food. May be if you treat South African women the way you want your sisters, mothers and daughters to be treated – may be they would not be interested in these ‘foreigners’.

 Crime

No nation is bereft of crime and by the same token, no nationality is bereft of criminals. It is true that some bad seeds who have emigrated into South Africa have criminal elements but while publications like Daily Sun do much to fuel xenophobic feeling among South Africans with headlines such as ‘Mozambicans kill Lucky Dube’, ‘Zimbabweans in shoot out with Police’ the majority of criminals, as the South African jail population will attest, are South Africans.

It is South Africans who are raping 3month old babies and 80 year old grannies.

It is South Africans who are killing fellow South Africans for cell phones late at night.

It is South Africans who are creating front companies for their criminal business activities.

 It is South Africans who are taking bribes before awarding tenders.

It is South Africans who are arresting fellow South Africans and sending them to Lindela because ‘you are too black to be a South African (hello? Did someone forget that we are in Africa and people on this continent are by and large supposed to be dark?).

And yes…it is South Africans who are killing fellow Africans because of ignorance and a lack of understanding of the debt we owe those same Africans for our freedom.

I write this to purge myself of some of the anger that I feel over everything that is happening to my fellow Africans in my country. And yet, I feel it’s a useless exercise. The people who are perpetrating these crimes are probably not people who would visit my blog but rather read the despicable Daily Sun that tends to fuel some of their sentiments.

I write because if there is a non South African fellow African out thee in cyberspace reading this on South African soil, I would like to say on behalf of many other South Africans who feel the way I do – a heartfelt and profound sorry.

I have never been more ashamed of being South African as I have been for the last few days. I am a nobody whose sentiments will probably make little different to what’s happening but to my fellow Africans in South Africa, is there anything I can do to help?

Let me know.

My email is hintsaec@yahoo.co.uk.

Dear Uncle Sam,

You don’t know me. I am an insignificant someone from the designated Third World but I thought I would touch base, say howzit, and tell you about my friend Dana.

When I was a kid, I had a friend called Dana. I have not seen Dana since I was thirteen but I know I will never forget her. There were three reasons to love Dana.

She was the first white person I had met who spoke worse English than me (and therefore she made me feel good about myself).

Dana once also saved my life when I almost drowned (but that’s for another day – feel free to insert your favourite ‘black people and swimming’ joke right here).

Finally I loved Dana because we were simpatico. Dana was a Palestinian girl in Zimbabwe by way of Jordan and her dad was press attaché for the then banned PLO. I was a South African girl in Zimbabwe born in Zambia. We used to have these lengthy talks about our people – her in her halting English but usually with graphics such as photographs and me, in my better English with proof from the news to back up how unjust the overlords in our countries were. She gave me bumper stickers saying ‘Say No to Zionism’ before I knew what Zionism was. My mother was a civil servant and Zimbabwe was non-aligned. She refused to stick them on her bumper.

I thought about Dana last night as I read the current issue of Time magazine. In it there is an excerpt of a book called Rutka’s Notebook. Rutka was a Jewish girl in Poland and she wrote a diary akin to Anne Frank’s which has just recently been released. The excerpt that is in Time magazine is largely a coming of age diary – what getting a first kiss would be like, the boy she has a crush on etc – but she also adds a haunting look at the politics of the day.

An excerpt from her entry on February 6, 1943 reads

‘Something has broken in me. When I pass by a German, everything shrinks in me. I don’t know whether it is out of fear or hatred. I would like to torture them, their women and children, who set their doggies on us, to beat and strangle them vigorously, more and more.’

This was written by a Jewish girl and it made me remember a Palestinian girl I once knew. I wondered whether Dana’s young compatriots felt the same type of anger towards the Jews as this poor Jewish girl felt towards the Nazis. I remembered how, at the age of 11, I felt so helpless and yet wished all Afrikaners dead every time there was another news clip on ZBC showing white South African police beating up black youths in the townships.

The Boers were humiliated and killed by the English during the now PC-termed South African War (formerly known as the Anglo-Boer War). Their wives and children were interned in camps and yet – less than a quarter of a century later, they were visiting the very same atrocities on the black people of South Africa.

The Jews suffered under the Nazi atrocities and yet, less than fifteen years later they were doing and continue doing the same things to the Palestinians.

Do you sometimes wonder like I do, dear Uncle Sam what it will take for human beings to learn from history? Will we forever keep repeating our mistakes?

I do not know where Dana is now. Whether she is alive, married, and living in Ramallah (I am sure they would have gone back when sanctions were lifted and Arafat unbanned); whether she or one of her brothers decided to cut off their fathers mild political ties, joined Hamas and may be died in what they would have perceived to be a just cause for their country; or even whether she may just have become a victim of stray bullets. Wherever she is though, I know she still carries some of the anger we used to talk about when we were young, some of the helplessness we used to feel when we heard more stories about our people being obliterated and that I have been trying to get rid of since the advent of a South African democracy.  I know Dana, and many other young Palestinians, feel exactly the same way that Rutka, a young Jewish girl, felt in 1943 when the Nazis were humiliating her people so may be, dear Uncle Sam, instead of you and Israel vilifying  your former president Jimmy Carter for his talks with Hamas, you both  need to understand why Hamas exists – and create damage control…FAST.

Not by putting sanctions on Palestine. Not by refusing to negotiate with the democratically elected party in Palestine (alas. Whether you agree with the Palestinians or not, Hamas are their chosen government and you know a lot about democracy don’t you, Uncle Sam?). But by coming to the table with Hamas and asking Jimmy Carter whom Hamas may already have faith in to lead the negotiations. I know policing the world is tough but you can do it.

Do not create any more Rutkas (or Danas) than are necessary.

And oh before you say it (I can see it’s on the tip of your tongue, you love saying it). I am not anti-Semitic. I just hate injustices of any kind, be they to Jews by Nazis or to Palestinians by Jews.

Regards,

Anti-Nazi, Palestinian symnpathiser

After last year’s Cape Town Book Fair, author of Six fangs and a tetanus Shot, Richard de Nooy wrote a review of my last book, The Madams, and in it he mentioned how ‘unrealistic’ the book is (forget the irony of the need to write realism in fiction for a moment). Now I can take criticism as well as the next person but I quickly rushed to look for Richard’s email and got in touch with him. I explained to Richard that though I may not be the best wordsmith and he could be allowed to criticize the prose, the reality was, the popularity of the book was largely because a lot of women residing in South Africa could relate to it – in some way we are all affected by HIV/AIDS; we have been/or know someone in a physically abusive relationship; we know women who have been cheated on by their partners and yet returned to them; we are all stuck in our apartheid-era racial labellings etc etc During our discourse, Richard suggested that I post my explanation on a website but I refused to do this preferring rather to explain to him, one writer to another and not wanting to seem like a writer incapable of taking criticism. Yesterday I started rethinking my position, not so much because of similar criticism received from expats in UK and Oz, but because I was editing the proofs of my next book, Behind Every Successful Man, with my editor, Nicola Menne.

In the book, there is a part where the male protagonist is sitting in his study drinking cognac. He starts thinking about his late friend and his wife’s cousin and in memory pours the cognac on the ground as he muses, ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ before shrugging his shoulders and remembering that he has two maids and a wife to supervise them.

Clear enough, I thought.

But then Nicola had a suggestion. ‘Zooks, I think this would sound better if we say accidentally spilt cognac on the expensive rug because when you say pours you make it sound like it’s deliberate.’

Now those who know Nicola will tell you that she is one of the coolest people ever – of whatever race. She genuinely tries to cross the boundaries and understand what is happening on the other side. That Nicola, who truly has black friends – excuse the cliché – did not know of this cultural habit where black people will pour alcohol on the ground in memory of the deceased, came as a surprise to me. And then I started thinking of Richard. If Nicola, who stays in South Africa (assuming that y’all still insist that Cape Town is part of South Africa) did not know this information that I thought obvious, it would explain how Richard can think that some of my realities are surreal – likewise me and the tens of other South African cultures and sub-cultures that I do not belong to.

Thus the importance of literature.  It makes us travel worlds we may never have traveled, cross borders we did not know existed, and emphathise with those we may never have thought of.

Now more than ever, I do not regret being a writer as I know that in my own little way, I am being a cultural ambassador of my contemporary South African world (though I never set out to be). So, dear reader, cross the border and get Behind Every Successful Man at a good bookstore near you after June 1 (come on. You knew that was coming!)

And Nicola, I am taking you to a funeral next time you are in Joburg!

So I wake up this morning to hear one of my more open-minded (or so I thought) neighbours and countrymen yelling to someone on the phone, ‘I don’t give a s*&^ about that. Just bring my stuff otherwise I will kick your a@# you bloody Cameroonian. That’s what’s wrong with you fu%$# people!’ Now I have absolutely no beef with my neighbour wanting to kick someone’s behind for whatever transgressions they may have committed against him but a rant and rave by an otherwise logical person based on someone’s nationality and moreover, ‘You f&*^% people?!’ come on now, how different is this guy from the boy who murdered black people in Skielik because they were ‘kaffirs kaffirs’ or the American rednecks post 9/11 who shot some Sikh 7/11 workers because they were ‘towel heads’?

There were tons of insults my neighbour could have used – ‘you idiot, imbecile etc’ but methinks its just plain ass stupid -there is another phrase he could have used- to insult someone for their nationality. May be many of us so-called rationale people have done it in our moments of anger but that is no excuse. To me, this is the very height of intolerance. How can one rant and rave at someone for their nationality, race, gender or anything else when these are not something that we select? Ditto the whole Proudly South African shit. Sure it sounds great and it is a great marketing tool for local companies to locals but being South African is not an achievement. I am as patriotic as the next person, may be even more so but, proud? Isn’t that misusing words? I thought I was supposed to be proud of something that I have achieved and since being South African is an accident of birth, should I not perhaps just talk of a privilege of belonging?

And of course we all know what he meant by ‘you people’. And yet we deny being xenophobic?

Due to the rather unfortunate recent firing of David Bullard (yes unfortunate. Bullard has written more annoying satire than the piece that got him fired and it was Mr. Makhanya’s job as editor of Sunday Times to read copy before it went to print rather than to ask David for a retraction!), and the occurrences at UFS, race has been on the national discourse in the last couple of months but may be it is time we consider placing xenophobia on that national platform as well while we are at it.

Within the last year alone, we have had refugees from an unstable Somalia begging the government to repatriate them back to Somalia because they are being killed for their entrepreneurial skills. We know of, though the mainstream press in Cape Town never reported it, the abduction of a UCT professor seen driving with Zimbabwean number plates and his two week disappearance while the police held him illegally; and finally, we know from the news of the evictions of Mozambicans and Zimbabweans in Soshanguve. Where is our much spoken of spirit of ubuntu?

The Nigerian actor, the Kenyan lecturer, the Zimbabwean actuary, the Ugandan doctor, the South African everything– we all form part of what makes this country work so may be it is time we embrace, rather than denigrate the differences. It is true that not all the people from all over the world in South Africa (South Africans inclusive) have noble intentions but rather let us insult each other based on the evil that humans do and not based on something as arbitrary as nationality. And to my neighbour Bheki, I hope you read this and reconsider how hurtful your statement could be to another Cameroonian who may have been within hearing.

For lack of inspiration, it’s been ages since I posted on these pages. Yesterday something worth writing about finally occurred. No, I am not talking about having the satirical writer of a collection entitled Some of my Best Friends are White as guest lecturer for my students (although fellow writers do sometimes serve as inspiration); nor the great conversation I had with him and another fellow scribe Niq Mhlongo afterwards – and yes mom, it was just lunch. No. What inspired me was the affirmative action attempted robbery afterwards.

Did I hear you say affirmative action what?!?! Yeah, you read right. And no, I am not about to talk of some former politicians who are now in business and have fraudulently won a thousand and one tenders. Nope. I am instead talking about what happened to me on the streets of Jozi yesterday evening.

After the rather late lunch as Niq, another friend Wonderboy (yes, it’s his real name!), and myself were driving down towards my house around rush hour on Simmonds Street, a young man came by Wonder’s expensive BEE car and offered to liberate us of our goods. Now, although many may be shocked at this, in my five year stay in Johannesburg I have had friends who’ve been victims of crime but I personally have never experienced it – which may or may not explain my actions when this chap asked for our cellphones and wallets.

The criminal was one of a pair and when he arrived leaving his partner behind, I was talking to my uncle on the phone directly behind Wonderboy who was in the driver’s seat. Wonderboy, who had been smoking, had his window rolled down so there was no way he could escape the menace who put his face in his face yelling, ‘Sifun’amacellphones namawallets. Khawuleza.’

Wonderboy duly handed him the cellphone while from the passenger seat Niq took out an empty wallet and said, ‘There’s no money in here my friend, look.’

I meanwhile, told my uncle Andrew that I had to go because the guy persistently told us he wanted all our phones because he had a gun. Stupidly yet confidently I asked, ‘so where’s the gun, ha, where’s the gun?’

I am not going to sermonize about how I thought that no-one had a right to take anything from me or some such stuff and this therefore gave me courage to question the crook. I just did not think when I responded the way I did. Full stop.

I wouldn’t have lost anything by giving him my phone – in fact I am not sure he would have taken it as it’s an old Nokia 1100 that taxi drivers have even reversed to return to me when I have left it in their vehicles. In retrospect if the guy had a gun he really could have shot me for being a smartass but what happened when his partner came is what makes this story a gem – and therefore worth posting on this blog. His partner arrives, looks at all three of us, grabs Wonderboy’s phone and hands it back to Wonderboy while saying, ‘Asibayekele. These are black people!’

I am yet to pick my jaw from the ground because of this bit of affirmative action from the criminals as I think that if all criminals are like this may be there is something to be said of the migration of my fellow citizens of the paler hue Down Under.

But before y’all consider packing your bags and leaving, I must let my fellow pale-hued South Africans know that they could be in danger of another type of criminal Down Under. The white criminal from South Africa who may also have emigrated. And no I am not talking white collar crime here but straight up petty crime similar to what Wonder, Niq and I experienced yesterday.

Many weeks ago, a day after those horrendous University of Free State were aired to the world, one of my neighbours was the victim of a bag snatcher while waiting for her husband to come and open the door for her. Her loud screams got a lot of the young men out to give chase. Meanwhile another neighbour had had the presence of mind to call the police.

Close to my flat down the street is a hockey club (Go figure, although the black kids in my neighbourhood have now colonised it for soccer). Well our criminal decided to hide somewhere within the precinct of the hockey club and the young men who had followed him could not figure out where he had gone to – that is, until the cops’ sirens were heard (Yep. Contrary to popular belief, there are gems of efficiency in Booysens Police Station). The young man ran out and the mob, baying for blood, fell on him. By the time the cops arrived, the poor guy was all bloodied and nobody was arrested for stepping on the rights of the poor criminal, if anything, the cops just said, ‘o.k. guys, I think he’s had enough’ then arrested the guy.

  The reason I recounted this story for any people who may be considering migrating is that in this instance, the victim of crime was black and the criminal was a white guy. Because of the mob justice that the poor guy received from the bunch of young black men from all over the continent who were letting out their frustrations, I am pretty certain that as soon as this guy can collect enough money, he will leave the country – to be a criminal elsewhere.

Given that you might end up being neighbours with this guy in Australia, isn’t it better to stay home and be a victim of crime from the black man that you already suspect? Food for thought.

Anyone who follows South Africa’s politics would have heard that with the advent of the new National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ruling party post-Polokwane, the major decision they have made thus far is the disbanding of the National Prosecution Authority (NPA), or Scorpions as they are commonly known. The highly efficient Scorpions, South Africa’s answer to the FBI, are supposed to be integrated to the highly inefficient South African Police Services by June allegedly because they have too much power (NB – I am not one for gross generalizations. There are some hard-working members of SAPS. Unfortunately most of South African crime victims are yet to encounter them). It must be highlighted that the Scorpions are also the body that is currently investigating suspended Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi; investigated and got a conviction for NEC member Tony Yengeni; are investigating and pushing for the prosecution of ANC president Jacob Zuma – but, I am not one for conspiracy theories. I am certain the ANC NEC decided as they did for the good of the country. Yeah right.

Then – how is this for irony – yesterday while addressing a group of South Africans of the paler hue, the populist ANC president states that he is considering having a national referendum to bring back the death penalty because crime is out of control.

Y’see, South Africa is a many-coloured nation and you have to know what to say to which audience. Everyone knows that although the highest number of crime victims are black, the people who fear crime the most are whites (at this time blacks are probably worrying about unemployment, evictions from informal settlements, or what they will have for dinner that night – flimsy issues really). So Mr. Zuma struck the right code with his audience.

This would be absolutely funny if it were not so painful. You want to disband the investigating body with the highest conviction rate in the country yet you will make a referendum to bring back the death penalty? Eish, Joe. I wonder why he did not think of having a national referendum to see how people feel about the disbanding of the Scorpions.

I have not committed a crime worth the death penalty so I should not care about a referendum that might bring it back either way but I do care. I care because in the past in countries with death penalties, people have been falsely convicted and with a death penalty, it has often been too late to do anything and I would never feel good about one dead person wrongly murdered at the hands of the state when there might have been twenty rightly killed.

I care because bringing back the death penalty will entail changing the best Constitution in the world and adding a constitutional amendment and how do I know that Mr. Zuma and his comrades will not choose to have referendums on other issues that may directly affect my life or those of people I care about – think women not to wear pants/skirts of a certain length, reversing gay rights etc?

May be one of the NEC members will read my blog and whisper a word in Mr. Zuma’s ear to leave the Constitution alone and concentrate instead on getting his day in court for corruption charges. Or may be not.

I am young.

I am black.

I am a woman.

And lately, it looks like what the three demographics I belong to have to say does not matter. Just ask the young girl whose skirt was ripped off at the Noord taxi rank two weeks ago. Or the black workers who were made to drink urine-laced soup by white University of Free State students at that. No-one has been arrested yet because the victims are not important enough. Would the Scorpions have been set to investigate these issues, I am sure someone would be in the docks. And yet – hang the Scorpions and bring back the death penalty. Yay Mr. ANC President!