Istanbul for the travel-shy

This is a travel piece I wrote for a magazine aimed specifically at coloured women that somehow fell apart (the magazine, not the piece!). It's written for those who may not be used to travel. I wouldn't travel to Istanbul right now, due to the recent bombings in Turkey, but it may be useful in the future. 

I sat in the taxi at the airport, pointing frantically to the collection of consonants and vowels that were the directions my AirBnB host had written in Turkish in his last email to show to the driver, hoping it made sense. The taxi driver kept speaking at me in long Turkish sentences, and I kept speaking at him in short English ones, neither understanding the other. Eventually, he nodded, and it seemed like he understood.

“How much will it be?” I asked.

More indecipherable Turkish.

Just as I was wondering how taxi drivers, who presumably picked up many, many tourists from the airport all the time, could do their job without at least some English, he whipped out his phone, and on the calculator function, typed “60”, meaning 60 Turkish Lira. I did a quick calculation in my head, and at R5,00 a Lira, figured that R300 was about what I would pay for an Uber from my flat in Joburg to the airport, and decided it was worth it, in order not to sit at night in a squashed bus with all my luggage.

Just as I was thanking God for airconditioned airport taxis, he turned around and babbled some more, pinching between his index and middle fingers an imaginary cigarette.

“No, it’s fine, go ahead,” I said, then realised his confusion. Clearly he understood only the word “No” in that sentence. “I mean, yes, it’s fine. You can smoke.” He seemed relieved.

With that short experience, I learnt my first two lessons about Istanbul: Nobody speaks English and everybody smokes.

Don’t let that put you off, though! There is so much to discover and see in beautiful and historic Istanbul. It is a city spanning two continents, separated in half by the Bosphorus, a strait of water separating Europe and Asia. With our tickets only costing around R6000 each for a return trip, and the Lira-Rand exchange rate being much better than the Euro-Rand one, Istanbul definitely wins in terms of value-for-money.

We booked our accommodation through the accommodation-sharing website AirBnB. For those unfamiliar with the site, it is where local people who have an extra room in their house that they’d like to offer for short-term rental can advertise the location, benefits included and photos of their flat online, for the price that they set. You can read reviews from those who have previously stayed there, and write your own after you’ve stayed. It’s safe and much cheaper than a hotel, much more comfortable than a backpackers, and has the added benefit of advice on arriving and seeing the sites from a local host. We paid about R500 a night for a spacious double room in a very pretty flat with unlimited wifi, centrally located near the shopping heaven of Taksim with its Istiklal Caddesi (Istiklal Street), and near the tram which takes you straight into the historic area of Sultanamet, in Old Istanbul. And if you get an Istanbul Card, for sale at any tram station, and load it with Lira, you can use the tram line for just 2.15 Lira per trip to go anywhere your heart desires.

But your heart should desire to go to Sultanamet. Any list of must-see site in Istanbul will include the Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazaar, all to be found within walking distance of each other in this ancient part of town.

Stepping into the harems of Topkapi Palace is like stepping into another age. You can imagine that you are the sultan, visiting your wives and children, sitting on your golden throne in the throne room, with its myriads of patterned turquoise tiles lining the walls, listening to your many concubines playing music for your pleasure. Yes, the Ottomans weren’t great on woman empowerment, or even basic rights, but they knew how to live in luxury. A trip to the treasury to see the jewelled pitchers and gold cups, diamond encrusted swords and boxes made of pure emerald is enough to convince one of the excess of this previously glorious empire.

You can see this even in their places of worship. The Hagia Sofia, an ancient church built by Constantine I (after whom Constantinople, the old name for Istanbul, was named), and later converted into a mosque by the Ottomans, then a museum in the early part of last century, has a vast domed ceiling in golden mosaic, where images of Madonna and Child sit comfortably next to Arabic calligraphy proclaiming the glory of Allah. Just a 5 minute walk away is the famed Blue Mosque, where visitors can come between prayer times, provided women cover their heads with a scarf and men don’t wear shorts, to see the interior of the majestic dome covered in little blue tiles that has covered the faithful in their prayers for hundreds of years.

No trip to Istanbul would be complete without some shopping, and the Grand Bazaar, a 10 minute walk away from Blue Mosque, is the place to do it. You can find all the things Istanbul is famous for – carpets, leather, jewellery, perfume, Turkish Delight, linen, souvenirs and much more – all under one roof. The Grand Bazaar, which has housed its shopkeeper tenants since its construction in 1455, is a maze of over 3,000 little shops, generally organised in 61 “streets” according what they are selling, but not always so. Negotiation is standard here, so not everything will have a price on it. Don’t be shy – the sellers expect it.

Don’t expect the people to be as friendly as South Africans, however. (I doubt any people in the world are as friendly as South Africans!) A friend who has lived in Istanbul before said yes, Turkish people are friendly…if you speak Turkish. But don’t let the occasional lack of please and thank you put you off. The experiences to be had – a 2 hour cruise in a ferry on the Bosphorus, indulging in delicious fresh seafood, witnessing the captivating spinning prayer ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes or scavenging for something unique in the antiques quarter -- are worth it.

Travel can seem intimidating and expensive, although it’s hardly ever as intimidating or expensive as it first seems. Using the website skyscanner.net, you can scan the skies for the cheapest flights to wherever you’re going, and cut out the travel agent (and their commission) entirely. Many cities, like Istanbul, offer Museum Cards which allow you to skip the long queues and pay far less for entrance fees to most of the touristic sites. And yes, arriving at a new place, trying to figure out where to go and how to get there, is a little daunting at first. But most places in Europe and elsewhere have excellent, relatively inexpensive public transport systems that you only have to figure out once initially in order to enjoy the benefit of going wherever you want in the city. With technology making travelling abroad easier and cheaper, there is less and less of an excuse not to have an experience of a lifetime – and you can be sure to have exactly that if your destination is Istanbul.

An encounter on a British bus

I wrote this piece a while ago as part of a project for a Reflective Practice course I was doing in the UK. Georgina was a classmate of mine, originally from Sierra Leone but who has lived in the UK for much of her life, who graciously told me her story and allowed me to put it into narrative. Hope you enjoy!

I twirl my new braids around my finger as I waited to climb aboard. I always feel good after getting my hair done, more human, more worthy, somehow. I remove my sunglasses and walk to the back of the bus, which is largely empty on a Saturday morning. Three older ladies sit in the second-to-last row, white hair neat and tidy, scarves around their shoulders and handbags on their laps, real prim and proper, chatting away, probably on their way to do their weekly shop.

They spot me as I walk towards them, and I can sense something change. Something intangible, like a breeze changing direction. I've always been overly sensitive to these things, these subtle changes in behaviour, and so I tell myself it's nothing, just shrug it off. I take a seat in the row behind them, and they continue chatting pleasantly about everything and nothing.

“...and so I told him that the irises needed splitting and that he needs to do it because I can't do it any more because of my back, you see,” says the one with the slightly purple hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

“I know what you mean. My garden's really suffering because my knees just can't take the bending any more,” says the one in the pink fluffy cardigan, and she surreptitiously glances my way.

“I feel so guilty when I think of my hydrangeas,” says the one wearing a pearl necklace over her peppermint blouse with the lace collar.

I play it cool, look out the window at the Lewes Road shops, while watching them out of the corner of my eye. I get the sense that they're very aware that a black woman has just sat behind them, not in a hold-onto-your-handbags kind of way, but more in an our-space-has-been-compromised kind of way. It's the subtle change in the air, you see. Something about how they hold themselves, how they become self-conscious and try not to look at you too obviously.

These kinds of situations amuse me, actually. I'm curious about these women. Having lived in Brighton for the last 20 years, I tend not to see colour anymore. I don't mean to sound pretentious or overly PC, but it just doesn't occur to me when I'm the only black person on the beach. I don't look for racial discrimination, and only really notice it when it's overt. I smile as I remember last week when a chavvy young man hurled a racist insult my way that I don't care to repeat. An old gentleman waiting at the bus stop whipped his head around, and suddenly started beating the boy with his umbrella for having such bad manners. I couldn't stop laughing! It's good to know the world is mostly made up of decent human beings.

The bus is on North Street now, and we're passing the Clocktower on our way to Churchill Square. It's been wrapped in layers of clothing, mostly shirts and tops, ranging from pastels to deep hues. It's magnificent, and reminds me of the lines upon lines of washed clothes drying in the wind back home in Sierra Leone. My heart pangs, a reflex reaction when I think of home.

“What on earth is that?!” exclaims Pink Fluffy Cardigan.

“I don't know,” replies Pearls. “It must be vandalism of somekind. You know these youngsters these days.”

“It can't all be some kind of prank? Who would go to such effort? And surely the City Council wouldn't allow it!” says Horn-rimmed Spectacles.

I hesitate for a second before I decide to explain. “Actually, it's an art installation.”

They slowly, self-conscious-casually turn their heads around.

“It's for the Brighton Festival. The City Council actually helped construct it. They had cranes and men in hardhats helping out last week.”

I could almost see the relief wash over their faces. They visibly relaxed almost as soon as I spoke and they heard my accent, which is clearly British. Their discomfort is like a heavy cloak they've shaken off. I could read their minds: It's ok. She's one of us. Nothing different or threatening or scary, it's just that her skin's a different colour, that's all.

“In my day, washing lines weren't mistaken for art!” ventures Pearls, and smiles at me tentatively.

“Speak for yourself! I was a regular Vincent van Gogh with the clothes pegs!” says Pink Cardigan, and the ladies and I break into laughter which shatters the last layers of ice.

We regale ourselves with various puns on the theme of clothes (“Bet the artist thinks she's tops!”, “Well no need to get shirty about it!, “Oh, button up!”) until we reach Palmeira Square which is my stop. I say goodbye to the ladies, and they seem almost sad to see me go. How strange, I think, to find acceptance in such an unlikely place. I wonder if I'll miss this marvellous city when I move back home to Freetown next year, and whether I'll belong there as I've come to belong here. A small part of me fears I have more in common with the octogenarian English ladies than Sierra Leonean women my age, and I sincerely hope that isn't true.

A letter to a friend in defense of "Assumptions, intentions, purple aliens and Michael Jackson"

Hi Koketso!

Trust me, I have defended my argument so often at this point against mindless accusations that your well-argued email was really pleasant to read. :)

You touch on a broad variety of topics in your email, and I'm going to speak about the ones I think bears directly to the piece I wrote.

Every person of colour has a story of injustice to tell. My grandfather was forcefully removed from a white area and made to live in the Cape Flats. That same grandfather's birth was the product of an arrogant government minister who thought it was ok to take advantage of a friend's servant (on a regular basis) and impregnated her, never recognising his son beyond occasional cheques towards maintenance. There is a mansion in Tamboerskloof that by today's rights should be ours, as said minister had no other kids. I could go on and on, about how my parents are teachers because in those days if you were coloured and wanted to be a professional you had to go into teaching or nursing, about the time my father spent in prison when I was a toddler for handing out pamphlets...yes, point made. Apartheid was unjust, and we are where we are today because of that inequality.

I understand perhaps more than most the inequalities inherent in land and capital possession in this country, and especially the injustice of our labour force. I am not ignorant, I am not a colourblind, "rainbow nation" junkie, as everyone seems to assume I am (and quite frankly I take offence that everyone automatically assumes that of me). However, I do contest the following statement you made very strongly:

"My most sincere concerns however, are that, ‘White South Africa’ will eventually learn to let go when ‘Black South Africa’ starts killing them, literally. White South Africa will consider leaving the country only when ‘Black South Africans’ start loving themselves. At the moment, the vision is far from transpiring."

I don't understand why black self-love equates to killing white people. The piece I wrote stemmed from a frustration with the current tendency of people of colour to somehow think that our pain is a license to say and do anything to others. I don't understand that reasoning of wanting to punish white people, to make them suffer the way we suffered. Not because I care especially much about white people, but because I care about what we say about ourselves as black people. Our black humanity is formed every day, and is our black humanity one that degrades us by treating others worse than we treat ourselves? Is that who we are as a people? The kind of people who would behave EXACTLY as our oppressors did, by judging people by the pigmentation of their skin and then KILLING them? I would like to think I am a better person than my oppressor.

I don't understand the end result of such an attitude, and perhaps you can explain this "vision" to me? Are we, ordinary people of colour to take up arms (provided by whom?) and storm the white suburbs, killing men, women and children as we take their houses, take their land, take their businesses by force? Is that the intention? Are we to call them "cockroaches", "devils", "foreigners", as we physically make them walk into the sea? How would we avoid a charge of crimes against humanity? How is that not genocide? How are we not as heartless ourselves as the Hutus in Rwanda in 1994? How is that not "ethnic cleansing"?

This is all not to say that I'm against justice. Justice must come. The land must be redistributed, capital must be redistributed. White people won't like it, of course, but equality hurts if you have been unfairly privileged for generations. That's ok. What is not ok is to lose our own dignity by treating white people abhorrently. Justice does not mean maliciousness. Justice does not mean revenge. And I mean that in order to protect the spirit, the soul, the wholeness of our being as people of colour. Because this is exactly how it starts - the way the oppressed become the oppressors throughout history, time and time again. If we go down that road, we become Animal Farm.

As I said at the end of the piece (which a lot of people seem not even to have reached) I am not for going easy on white people. White people have a crapload of work to do if they want to be a part of this new new South Africa we have created. And they need to come out of their self-imposed isolation and engage with the rest of South Africa and do a lot of introspection and yes, feel some pain. But it will not be because we as black people have been unnecessarily cruel to them. It will be because they will realise what white people and whiteness has done to this nation, and that they are actively complicit in that, and that they will have to materially lose in order for us to progress as a country.

So your implied assumption that I am protecting white privilege is incorrect. I am in fact protecting our black humanity from being fractured and broken even more that it already is, by our own words and actions. The very least we can do is to recognise our common humanity, and treat white people the same way we treat ourselves, with dignity. Maybe they don't deserve it, but we do.

I have seen this play out myself very recently, to the very same friend I wrote about. She was treated with extreme condescension and disrespect for merely asking a question in a forum, I believe, because she is a white person asking the question, and not on the basis of the question itself. The people who replied, both black and white, were abhorrently mean, cruel, in fact, and intentionally so, in a way that I would never treat another human being. Their intention was to hurt. But what kind of human being does that to another human being? I understand that you are angry, I understand that you carry hurt inside you, but the instinct to hurt others does not contribute to anything, it doesn't build anything, it does not bring justice. And it does not heal you. You lose some part of yourself in doing so. Yes, white people do such things all the time, but do we really want to be just like the backward, racist, closed-minded fossils of our past? This is what I am fearful of. This is why I call for treating others as you would like to be treated.

Anyway, I hope I have addressed some of the points you raised. Thanks for your thoughtful and considered email. I'm always happy to engage when I get well-written critique.

Keep well,

Mel.

Assumptions, intentions, purple aliens and Michael Jackson

Recently there has been a story in the news of what initially appeared to be yet another case of blackface at a traditionally white institution. “Blackface at Stellenbosch University”, headlines said, above a picture of two young women clearly sporting paint all over their faces, necks and arms, smiling broadly into the camera. “Disgusting!” roared some, and others started petitions to Stellenbosch University to get these girls excluded, all racists herded up and stoned, and other extraordinary measures of redress for the crime. I was one of them, insomuch as I took a screenshot of the headline and photo and forwarded it to a friend of mine with the caption, “Again!”

The thing is, if you clicked on the article and actually read it, it says somewhere near the bottom that the girls may have been at a res party where the theme was “Aliens”, and they may have in fact been painted purple to resemble the theme. I confessed this news to the friend I had sent the screenshot to, and upon further inspection of the photo, we found that the students were wearing strips of tinfoil in their hair, as one would do if you were trying to look like an alien. Whoops!

And yet the tar and feathering continued, by those who had clearly not read the article, and had assumed the worst. Even after another photo emerged of one of the girls, this time in better lighting, where one can clearly see that she is painted purple and not black or brown, and that she has tinfoil in her hair, and that her fellow students are similarly bizarrely painted, it continued. This was clearly not a case of blackface, yet people had already sprung onto the nearest high horse, latched it to the nearest bandwagon and rode it into the setting sun. The students were suspended pending further investigation.

My friend seemed concerned, yet cautious. As an Afrikaans woman with a liberated mind, she noted that it must be easier just to be racist. “I mean, as a racist, you can say what you want, without fear of offending anyone, because you are racist, and you don’t care if anyone is hurt by your words. Your intention is to hurt. But as a liberal, liberated white person, everything you say and do you have to be so cautious, examine your words, your actions and the context, to make sure it couldn’t possibly offend anyone.” I know this particular friend triple checks every Facebook status to make sure it wouldn’t unintentionally hurt her conservative white friends nor her radical black friends.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh shame! Poor white people! They have to think twice about everything they say! That more than makes up for the fact that they have historically oppressed people and have all the land!” Yes, it’s easy to be blasé and dismiss this minefield some people have to cross, especially if the colour of your skin is a clear indication of your intentions.

Wait, what does that mean? It means that if you, as a person of colour, make a joke, it is understood not to be hurtful to other people of colour. If you try to pantsula on the dancefloor, or even try to twerk, it is considered natural and not offensive. People might laugh at your efforts, but no one will criticise you, or whisper the words “cultural appropriation”. You can say words like “nigga” or “gam” or even make sweeping generalisations of white people, coloured people, Indians, whoever, and it won’t be assumed that you’re making a racist slur.

Obviously, this is because white people speak from a position of power. If a person with no power says a bad thing about a person with no power or even a person with power, what difference does it make? Conversely, if a person with power says a bad thing about a person with no power, that’s oppression. Intention doesn’t matter, all that matters is that someone is offended. Right?

In 1995, the New York Times reported that the song “They Don’t Really Care About Us” by Michael Jackson contained racist lyrics, just a day before the release of the album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1. If you were a child of the 90s like I was, I’m sure you know the song, and probably can sing along to the album. The line in contention was “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don’t you black and white me.” “Kike” is a derogatory word for Jewish people, and the very use of the word is offensive, the New York Times argued.

Michael himself was horrified that anyone would think that his intention was to demean anyone. He responded in a statement saying, “The idea that these lyrics could be deemed objectionable is extremely hurtful to me. The song is in fact about the pain of prejudice and hate and is a way to draw attention to social and political problems. I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone…I am not the one doing the attacking. It is about the injustices to young people and how the system can wrongfully accuse them. I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted.” So ironically, in a song about how marginalised groups are oppressed by those in power, he was accused of being racist. His outrage stems from the fact that that was not his intention, if seen in the context of his heart. Anyone who is a Michael Jackson fan would know that he was all about world peace, anti-discrimination, anti-global poverty and taking care of our planet. Yet his song critical of discrimination had backfired. After some consideration, Michael changed the words of the song.

My friend is often saddened by the fact that people can’t see into her heart. I have rarely met a person, particularly a white Afrikaans person, who is so totally committed to the project of reconciliation and justice in South Africa. She is passionate about trying to get white people to see their ingrained racism, the everyday ways in which they isolate themselves and oppress everyone else. She is fully aware of her privilege, completely understands both the white fear of loss and the black need for real, tangible, redistributive justice, and is actively thinking and working towards bringing understanding between the two poles of society. She marched with #FeesMustFall, she wants to know what she as a white person who owns no land can do to contribute towards socio-economic justice. She has dedicated her life towards empowering young people to change South Africa. And yet people can so quickly call her a racist, for the most innocuous deeds or words. It could easily have been her suspended from university for painting her skin an alien purple.

It is currently very unfashionable to be asking for consideration on behalf of white people, whether allies in the cause for justice or not. The current trend is to punish all white people. “Fuck white people,” as one Wits student recently wrote on his t-shirt, and not without good cause. This article is not about asking for leniency, it is not a call to go easy on white people. I am not stupid enough to say that liberal white pain is in any way equivalent to black pain, or even vaguely comparable. It is merely a plea to people of all races to observe the Golden Rule, the central tenet of most world religions, and a very good idea if you want to be a decent human being: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. As much as we would each like to be seen as an individual with individual interests, beliefs and intentions, why are we so quick to make assumptions about others, based on a few visual markers of skin colour and body shape, or the sound of their name? Let’s pause a moment before flinging ourselves onto our high horses, to see if we cannot discover someone’s intentions behind the action, word, look, smile that has offended us. Context matters, after all. If we could ask Michael Jackson, he’d agree.

This blog was reposted in the Mail & Guardian's Thought Leader Reader blog under the title 'Blackface' but not really: http://thoughtleader.co.za/readerblog/2016/02/09/blackface-but-not-really/

Bookshop

I stepped into the bookshop that I had been to many times before, in a trendy part of town. Although it wasn’t the cheapest second-hand bookshop around, it was the only with an entire shelf of African literature (with ‘African’ loosely defined as anyone who was born in, ever spent time in or ever wrote about Africa). 

An elderly lady with white hair greeted me, asked me if I required assistance. ‘No, I’m fine, thanks!” I said as I made a beeline to the back of the shop, and started scanning my favourite shelf for any names that sounded even vaguely African among the supposed African literature.

“You didn’t cash up properly yesterday,” I hear her elderly raised voice, with a hint of tension.

“No, I did. I just subtracted the amount from the total for a book I bought before I cashed up.” It was a man this time, also white, by the sound of his voice.

Intrigued, I popped my head around the corner of the Travel shelf. A young-ish, tall and mildly unkept white guy was standing in the doorway, a woman of similar age and personal hygiene habits beside him.

“No, you read the p-code incorrectly. It should be 399,” says white hair.

“Actually, I rounded it up to 400. There’s no mistake.”

The conversation went on like this, with cash-up jargon that must have come out of the 70’s along with the ancient till, making the meaning of the conversation incomprehensible to me. What I did understand was the rising tone of the conflict, hidden behind a thin veneer of civility, and the stubborn refusal to back down by both parties. Old lady saw no problem in interrupting unkept guy, even just to say that he wasn’t understanding her.

“Cashing up can be such a mission,” says the young unkept woman during a moment of awkward silence. “I remember when I worked at [name any retail store here] I used to make cash up mistakes all the time!” I feel almost embarrassed at her desperate attempt to bring levity into the conversation. She seems desperate to leave, her spirit tugging at the arm of her partner, if not her body.

“I’ll bring the slip tomorrow. I think it’s still in the pocket of my other jeans,” says unkept man, finally relenting.

“I’m glad you didn’t throw it in the bin,” giggled white hair. “It’s so full and I didn’t feel like rifling through the rubbish!” Old lady got jokes.

The couple hasten out the door. Their retreat sounds some kind of horn of personal horror and sheepish surrender, as two other patrons of the store leave without buying a single book. But I’m made of firmer stuff. I stick around, unsatisfied with my empty hands that should have been filled with books.

Deep into scanning titles and authors for anything vaguely interesting on the Business shelf (yes, I was that desperate), I half-hear a young man ask for a book he had reserved. Casually glancing in the direction of the till, I’m surprised that he’s black, and immediately check my prejudice. Of course a young black man can be looking for a book, especially when he is the kind of nerdy, lanky guy I like with impressive dreadlocks.

“Aren’t you lucky! It’s right on top of the pile!” Old lady seems to think she’s being funny or something when she’s really not. Either that or she’s really bad at small-talk. “Ummm…hehe…could you pronounce your name for me? It’s very unusual.”

“It’s Tlo-tlo,” says dreadlocks, with a smile that doesn’t seem to quite reach his eyes. He’s been through this before, it seems.

“It looks almost Chinese! Hehe! Say it again?”

“Tlo-tlo. You can also pronounce it as if the T’s are C’s.” He’s definitely been through this before.

“Cloe-cloe,” she says, trying it out. “Funny spelling.”

“Actually, it’s a device I came up with.”

“What, you mean it’s made up?”

“Err…no. I mean the hyphens.” Presumably he had one in his surname too.

“Oh.”

Queue awkward silence.

Old lady rallies. “Just this book then? Do you have a loyalty card?”

“No.”

“Oh, well. It wouldn’t matter anyway. You have to spend more than R50 to get a stamp.”

“Oh.”

Throughout this exchange, both parties have a plastered smile that does nothing to convince anyone that everything’s ok right now.

I am trying not to cringe by the time I hand her the two books I found among all the J.M. Coetzee’s.

“Just these two?”

“Yes please.”

“That’ll be R103.”

I give her the exact amount of money, and she rings it up. “I have a loyalty card somewhere!” I say, as I spill several near-identical cards out of my wallet in search of the One True Card.

“Ok,” she says with a total and obvious lack of enthusiasm. Her face seems to drop when she sees I’m four stamps shy of my R100’s worth of free books. She stamps it and hands it back to me, with an almost hesitantly outstretched arm.

“Have a good day!” she says with that same plastic smile that seems to stretch from ear to ear and yet holds no warmth. Her smile seems to warn people, like a subliminal message that says ‘Please don’t impose. Please don’t ask for any kindness that you do not deserve. Please only respect what is fair, correct and just and don’t ask for overdue consideration. I am tolerant, of course, but empathy is too much to ask of me. I belong to a different time.’

Indeed. 

#RhodesSoWhite: At an untransformed Rhodes University, discomfort is a good thing

A version of this post appeared on the ACTIVATE! Change Drivers blog.

I have been moved to write by this comment, posted on the Rhodes SRC Facebook page, by Alicia De Sousa:

“…It very clear that the name isnt gonna change. students came to rhodes knowing its name so why did people chose to come here if there was such an issue. if students have an issue with the name, move. I think this so called Rhodessowhite is huge generalizations to alot of people on campus and to be open beginning to piss alot of people off…How can one say the benefits go to the whites. We are all at university together, therefore WE HAVE BOTH BEEN GIVEN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO SUCCEED.. so why not do what we came to do and focus on our academics.. This has quite frankly been taken too far, creating an uncomfortable 'feel' around campus.”

This post, of course, although expressed with sincerity, is highly ironic. It is precisely because of attitudes such as this that the “uncomfortable” conversation has to be had about the whiteness of institutions. Alicia de Sousa is bothered because people are challenging her comfort at an institution specifically designed to cater to her needs and desires, and this is unpleasant to her. According to her, if you don’t like the institution built with public funds that caters to her and the 9% of the population that is like her, then you can go to any of the other institutions built exclusively to educate the (black) 80% of the population, none of which are ranked in the top 5 institutions in the country. Duh! Of course, the comments below the post (too many to count) shouting down poor Alicia and calling her names is not going to change her opinion on the matter.

I shook my head at her comment, and despaired a little for all the well-intentioned Alicias of the world. Her words, in caps, “We have both been given equal opportunity to succeed,” reminded me of an argument I had with a good friend of mine, back in my first year at Rhodes University in 2005. She was white, and had said something all the lines of, “I don’t see why everyone makes such a big deal of apartheid. Here you are, and here I am, and that fact that we’re both here means we’re equal.” My jaw dropped in disbelief. I couldn’t believe someone could say something like that. Having been raised by struggle activist parents, I took it for granted that every South African was aware of the glaring inequality between white lives and black lives in our country.

I could explain to her and others how my grandparents were forcefully removed to a township under Group Areas, or how, as coloureds, teaching was the only option for my parents to have a professional career, or how the odds were so stacked against the generations before me who lived through apartheid that my attending university at all is a testament to their hard work and determination that the next generation will be better off than the last. But that wouldn’t really be illustrative of my point. Because as hard as it was for my forebears, I am still much more “equal” to Alicia de Sousa and my first-year friend than many, and by “many” I mean upwards of half, of the student population at Rhodes University.

Coming from a middle-class home where I was raised to speak English, despite the fact that my parents’ mother tongue is Afrikaans, meant that the academic lingo required to write my essays was hardly a stretch for me. The fact that I came from a largely Western-cultured home meant that the food on the “Normal” menu option (as opposed to “African”, “Halaal”, “Fast food”, etc) wasn’t that far from what was considered “normal” food at home, nor did I struggle with a knife and fork. In addition, I am coloured, but I look mostly white, so my appearance was never an issue when I asked for customer service from the administrators, librarians, or academic staff. I never had to worry about owing the university money, as I knew my parents had all that sorted. Any money I made in my part-time jobs was for my own consumption, and I never had to send any back to family at home. My parents brought the first computer into our house when I was about 8 years old. I could operate Windows and MS Word, navigate the internet, and touch type by the time I was 15, thus researching and typing my university assignments was never an issue. I was raised to love reading, love libraries and books, and so knew how to use an index, knew the Dewey decimal system of book shelving, knew how to operate the software system that located where books are shelved. In addition, having been at a private girls high school on scholarship, I was used to navigating white spaces, used to changing my accent from the one I used at home in order to be accepted, used to being surrounded by people far more materially advantaged than I was and not feeling intimidated.

Working for Activate! Change Drivers, with participants from all walks of life, my heart often breaks for Lehlohonolo, who dreams of studying at UCT, Wits or Rhodes, but whose spoken English is heavily accented by his native tongue, whose written English is riddled with grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, and who struggles to find his way around a computer. Lehlohonolo is not stupid, indeed, he is innovative in his concepts, original in his contributions, and astute in his observations, and is eager to learn. But he will be graded as a failure by lecturers who won’t even bother to learn to pronounce his name. Without the advantages I had, and without supportive parents who understand the tertiary education system, the odds of him succeeding, regardless of how hard he works, are stacked so heavily against him in this, our free South Africa.

So yes, there is a need for the #RhodesSoWhite campaign. Whether the name is changed or not, to me, is not the point. The point is to make people uncomfortable by starting to question the way the institution operates, the multiple ways it excludes those who do not come from an extremely narrow set of conditions, the way we have normalised whiteness as the standard and hold everyone else to be judged by it.

The greatest form of inequality is to treat unequal things equally, so why do we continue to provide the exact same (lack of) academic support to those from advantages households and disadvantaged households and expect them to perform the same? It has been noted elsewhere that Rhodes offers pitifully few academic support programmes, and that the four-year extended programme hardly makes up for almost two decades of support middle-class students have received at home . It has been noted that seven out of 57 full-time professors are black at Rhodes , and so who is to be the academic role model to Lehlohonolo, to tell him that he, too, can achieve great heights in academia? Who is challenging whiteness at an academic level, objecting when a Politics course on The Politics of Africa is replaced by one on American Imperialism, as happened in my third year?

The conversation around meaningful transformation in our academic institutions is long overdue, and it goes so much further than a statue or a name.

Lesson from a lion

In the back of an open jeep, surrounded by long yellow grass and blue sky, The Doctor and I watched a lion lazily yawn and flick his tail not 20 metres away from us. We were at Dinokeng Game Reserve, on a well-deserved mid-week break 200km from the city of Johannesburg, where we now stay. Just 20 minutes earlier, as we were eating our oats on the front porch of our chalet in the bush, still in our pajamas, the owner of the bush camp asked us if we wanted to go on a little drive into the bush, as a lion had been spotted not too far away. We threw on clothes and jumped on the jeep, and now here we were, face to face with the king of the jungle.

"What if he attacks?" The Doctor asked me in hushed tones. "What do you mean?" I asked, noticing panic in his eyes. "What if the lion decides we look like lunch?" he asked, as the driver of the jeep inched closer to allow us to take better pictures. His fear was palpable, radiating off him like pheromones. "Then you die," I answered with mock cheerfulness, and grinned.

Later on, our game drive continued, with plenty of far less threatening prey for my ever-clicking camera. All the while, I thought about fear. Why was I not scared in that moment, when we faced the lion, a ferocious beast of the wild? Why did I just trust that this was not a dangerous moment, that being eaten by a lion was not how The Doctor and I would meet our end?

I thought back, and realised I've never really been scared of those traditionally scary things - heights, flying, pain, needles, ostrich-riding, relocating to foreign places I know very little about - and instead really strange things fill me with dread, such as having to make a phonecall, for one thing. Having to deal with unpleasant and unavoidable conflict is another. But most frequently I have felt that anxious feeling, a leady heaviness in my tummy as if I'd swallowed a billiard ball, while sitting in front of a laptop, staring at a cursor blinking at me tauntingly. I get paralysed with fear at the thought that what I will write will be...bad. (Gasp and pause for effect.)

I grew up hating to make mistakes. My grandma dedicated the Fairground Attraction song (It's Got to Be) Perfect to me when I was still in the early grades of school. I was a klutz, as my mom called me, and every time I dropped a glass or knocked over a potplant I would quite literally beat myself over the head with my little fists, apologising and close to tears with shame. I was really, really hard on myself.

I read an article once that said that it's quite common in little girls who are smart to want to do things perfectly the first time, and if not, give up. You see, the article explained that when little girls achieve in school, they get told, "You're so smart! You're so clever!" as if intelligence is an innate thing, a natural talent. Little boys, by contrast, develop later cognitively. It's often a difficult task just to get the little hyperactive buggers to sit still and pay attention in the early grades of school. They get told things such as, "If you just made an effort and tried a little harder, I'm sure you can get this right." Little boys are given the message that if you work hard and keep trying, you can achieve success. In other words, little girls grow up believing you either have it or you don't, whereas little boys believe that it's through hard work, repetition and perseverance that you can get good. This accounts for why, in the research described in the article, young girls would give up after failure, whereas young boys would try and try till they got it right.

Believe this theory or not, it's neither here nor there. The point it, I, like many other smart girls, didn't want to work hard. School was easy, and when it wasn't anymore, I gave up. I quit science in my Matric year, because I was getting Cs. I did not want to fail, under any circumstance. I wanted to be nothing short of excellent, at all times, in all fields, even something I had just learnt. Anything short of brilliance would bring upon (imagined?) disapprobation from my parents, teachers, lecturers, other authority figures I respected, and intense and crippling shame in me. Conversely, nothing gave me a better feeling than getting 90% for a paper I just wrote last night. Emphatic praise from my superiors gave me a high. I lived for external approval. I still live for gold stars. Two or three please, if possible.

So what does this longwinded personal history have to do with fear? Well, dear reader, as any true procrastinator knows, there comes a point where you start to be intimidated by your own success. The fear of not being able to replicate your previous genius, seeing as it was based almost entirely on natural ability and not repetitive effort and determination, is probably the main source of writer's block. You start thinking, "Everyone thinks I'm really good and talented. What happens if what I write next is total and utter crap? What will people think?" The process of putting pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard, and simply starting thus becomes an obstacle equivalent to starting a bushfire in Antarctica.

So this was the epiphany I had in the back seat of an open jeep in the middle of the African wilderness: To fear failure is to fear success. You'll never get anywhere if you don't have the courage, the wherewithal to just write, to just try, to just produce, no matter the consequences. This moment of clarity was echoed a few days later at a workshop run by this guy called Simon on our innate potential and areas of natural ability. I asked him about how I could overcome my bizarrely deep resistance to doing something I love. He told me that human beings will rationalise just about anything. "Because you hate failure, you'd rather not write," he told me. "No one can reject you, no one can give you negative feedback if you simply don't produce anything. You're protecting yourself from bad feelings by just not doing anything at all!" The key, he said, was to train my brain to associate writing with creation, rather than with the search for approval. "Don't do it for other people. Other people be damned! Do it because you are creating something that didn't exist before, no matter the quality." You can't succeed if you're not willing to fail.

If you haven't twigged by now, this entire post is a very long apology for being absent since leaving India to return to South Africa over 4 months ago, and a rumination on what has been keeping me away so long. Fear, dear reader, is the short answer. Fear of being good, fear of being bad. Being good comes with a responsibility to keep doing what you're doing, being bad means carrying guilt and shame like a baby elephant sitting on your chest. But I've made the decision to set the baby elephant down, to release myself from the burden of caring what others think. So as much as I love you, dear reader, I'm going to stop listening to the little voice in my head that cares too much about what you think, that craves your gold stars. I write to create. And hopefully I will continue to do so for a very long time.