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. 

The difference between India and South Africa, or, Why autorickshaws would never work in SA

There are many similarities between India and South Africa. Both are economic and cultural hegemons in their respective regions. They share a history of British colonialism, and of struggle against oppression by a minority over the masses. Both suffer from acute and widespread poverty, counterbalanced by the excesses of the ruling and owning classes, creating ridiculous levels of inequality. They both experience unacceptable levels of corruption, unacceptable levels of rape and domestic abuse, and unacceptable levels of child homelessness and poverty. On the plus side, both can boast a level of diversity unseen in many other nations in the world, a resource that should not be ignored. 

There are also many differences between the two countries. Size, for one thing. India isn't known as the subcontinent for nothing. Made up of 1.2 billion people, 3,166,414 km², 29 states, seven Union Territories, and one National Capital Region, India is, in a word, huge. South Africa is tiny by comparison, with 51 million people, 1,220,813 km², and nine provinces. And although Indians will complain about their abysmal education system, once children are in school, there is an expectation that they achieve. I have never heard of the kind of competitive spirit in South Africa as I have heard of in India. The competition to be the class "topper", to get into the best colleges and universities, to get the plum jobs thereafter, is so intense that suicides due to failure to achieve are not a particularly surprising phenomenon in Indian urban society. Over and above all that, in all three urban metropolises I have visited, there have been street vendors selling books on pavements, displaying their wares in Connaught Place or College Street or Colaba Causeway. Clearly, if there is a market, then ordinary Indians are reading for pleasure. Comparatively, South Africa's major distributor of books is a chain of stores in high-end malls called Exclusive Books. I don't think I need to say any more on that. 

But the most interesting difference to me is displayed by the humble autorickshaw. What is an autorickshaw, exactly? Well, this:

Next left, bhaiya!

It is a three-wheeled vehicle, the illicit lovechild of a scooter and a Smart Car. It is a main mode of public transportation in Indian urban areas, and a main source of traffic-related frustration for urban drivers. However, as a pedestrian, it provides a very convenient and relatively inexpensive way to get from A to B. Autowallahs drive in a style that could be described as "controlled, calculated risk." Yes, they will squeeze through gaps you never imagined possible. Yes, they will run the light just before or even just after it turns red. But I've never felt unsafe in an auto, unlike in a minibus taxi in South Africa, those hell-sent sardine cans of death.

But I digress. What struck me the first time I rode in one, was this: This mode of transportation would never work in South Africa. Firstly, as you may have noticed from the picture, autos have no doors, one consequence of which I have already written about. In a country where South Africans lock their doors immediately and automatically upon entering their cars, a car with no doors is inconceivable. The first few times I sat in the back of an auto I clung to my bag like a crazy person. What was stopping someone from reaching in and grabbing it, besides my arthritic death-grip? Nothing! No doors! Open both sides! And yet it wasn't long before I would just let my backpack sit at my feet, unconcerned. I knew nothing would happen to it, even when the street vendors came up to my side to sell me magazines, oversized balloons, bangles and bindis. 

But my mind still boggled. What stopped someone from getting into an auto, commanding the driver to take them someplace far away, and then once sufficiently close, just jumping out and running away at a red light without paying? Nothing! Clearly the autodriver wouldn't be able to abandon his vehicle at a red light and give chase! And similarly, why doesn't it seem to happen that, once the passenger has stepped out of the auto and hands over a large note to the driver expecting change, the autowallah just drives off, big note in hand? Inexplicable!

These are things a South African thinks about. I like to tell foreigners, and I'm sure many of my fellow South Africans say the same, "The state of crime in South Africa is largely exaggerated. Of course you and your possessions will be safe! You just have to be alert." What lies beneath that statement is that, to the speaker, precautions to avoid crime have become routine, habit, something we don't even think about because it's just part of the way we are, the way we live our lives. Of course you need to lock your doors. Of course you never walk around after dark. Of course you never leave bags in parked cars, or drive with them on the passenger seat. Of course you should never wave your camera or your cellphone around in high density places. Of course you need an alarm system, or at the very least a big dog to guard your property. 

I'm not saying that India does not experience crime. My flatmate Anna had her bag slit and valuables stolen from it while visiting a temple not long ago. I'm sure others can share similar stories. But it's not nearly as pervasive as in South Africa, despite similar levels of poverty and inequality. 

So why is that, I wonder? It's clear to me that Indian society functions on trust. When I select and pay for my heavy bag of vegetables at the market, and the shopkeeper offers to have it delivered to my door, I trust that it will be, and I don't fear that now a random stranger knows where I live, as I would in South Africa. When I don't have sufficient change to pay the security guard and I have to give him 50 rupees extra and he promises to pay me back later, I trust that he will. Trust is taken for granted in India. 

There are of course multiple explanations for this disparity. On a black-and-white level, we can say South Africans don't trust because of crime. End of story. But let's scratch beneath the surface a little. Does South Africa experience such high levels of crime because of our recent brutally violent history? Or perhaps there has always been a lack of trust between the haves (mostly white) and the have-nots (mostly black) and that that distrust is so ingrained it might never change. Is it a kind of feedback loop wherein if you don't trust someone, you give them no reason to honour your trust? 

Or does the answer lie with what India is doing right and not what South Africa is doing wrong? There is a sense of personal honour and familial pride that exists here, the kind of honour that makes students strive for the top positions and commit suicide when they fail. Perhaps the culture of trust relies on this honour. The autowallah has his pride, as do the street vendors, shopkeepers, and security guards. Perhaps the worst crime of the apartheid regime was to twist our pride and our sense of honour to a state in which criminals take pride in getting away with crime, and ordinary citizens feel no shame in suspecting every taxi driver, every passer-by to be a potential criminal.

I was once sitting on a bench in Deer Park near Hauz Khas in Delhi, when a girl of about eighteen or nineteen came up to me. Shy and nervous, she hesitated as she told me in stilted English she was a tourism student. Drawing nearer, she placed her hand on my bag, and instinctively and automatically my hand shot out to draw it closer to me. She wanted a picture with a foreigner, she said, showing me her camera, and I felt ashamed for ever suspecting that this young girl would ever run away with my backpack. 

South African society is not based on honour or trust, but on suspicion, an ever-present divisive othering and a growing frustration with the way things are, whether you have or you don't. 

My dream for my country is that the humble autorickshaw can one day become a viable option in addressing our public transport problem. I hope that someday South Africans can learn to trust, and give each other no reasons to distrust one another. Crime will never disappear entirely, but clearly there has to be reasons beyond mere poverty and inequality for its extreme levels in SA, and those reasons are more nuanced than mere black-and-white explanations, pun intended. I hope that someday the rage that simmers beneath the surface of South African society will mellow, and that through development and dialogue we can achieve true reconciliation. No, I'm not stupid, I'm just an idealist. 

15 unexpected side-effects to living in the hottest heatwave Delhi's seen in 5 years

In case I haven't complained enough, it is indeed true that Delhi has turned into the 7th ring of hell, and that coincidentally, is also seeing some fairly regular and highly irritating power cuts. Which means that not only are we plunged into darkness with nothing to do in the evenings, but also that the ceiling fans don't turn to at least give a little respite from the sea of sweat that springs up from my body whenever they stop.

1) I've become a night owl. Since night is the coolest time (a cool 32 degrees, thank you very much!) and since I'm pretty much constantly fog-headed and mildly nauseated during the day, I've taken to intermittently reading stuff on the internet and napping while the sun is out and working at night. This means that I regularly go to bed at around 3-4am. For pretty much my entire life, 10:30-11pm has been my bedtime. I like sleep. A lot. I usually need a good 8 hours of it. But these days I'm surviving on 3-4 hours a night, seeing as it's impossible to continue sleeping once the sun is out. Yay.

2) I got sunburnt from spending a grand total of 10 mins in the sun.

3) I got prickly heat. No, it's not a fashionable STD. It's when your sweat glands go all WTF?! and refuse to work and your skin gets all inflamed and itchy. Apparently Indian children get it because their sweat glands are underdeveloped. Indian children, and stupid foreigners. I'm sitting here typing this while wearing a wet t-shirt to trick my skin into thinking it's sweating.

4) I get irrationally annoyed and angry every time I open Facebook, seeing as most of my friends are in South Africa and complain bitterly of the cold. I can guarantee you, your cold weather is better than my hot. You can always put on more layers, but you can only strip so far before you are liable for public indecency. And it doesn't help anyway.

5) Today I found myself sitting in the lounge, wearing the prettiest dress I own, the one I wore to graduation and have not worn once since coming to Delhi. Pants just don't seem like a viable option anymore.

6) There is no cold water. All showers are hot, even if you're only opening the cold tap. And even if you take a bottle of cold water out the freezer, within a few hours it will be lukewarm, like when a cup of boiled water cools. Tasty.

7) I sleep on the floor. Somehow, it seems cooler. Who wants cushy comfort that's just going to cling to your skin and make you hotter? And yes, the floor itself is hot too. And just a note on sleep in general -- it is not easy. I have to sleep with an alternate pillow within reach so that when both sides of the one I'm sleeping on are drenched in sweat, I can grab a dry one and start the whole process again while the wet one dries.

8) Bouts of irrational hatred towards my boyfriend, henceforth known as The Doctor, who is at home in the foothills of the Himalayas and regularly tells me it's so cool he doesn't even need a fan. Motherf*cker.

9) I've stopped exercising. So I'm getting fat. Fatter. Whatever.

10) My Vaseline is pure liquid. My wax strips have melted all over the place. Lipsticks have turned to mush. I'm pretty sure my salmon oil capsules are just going disintegrate and I'll have to use their contents for cooking.

11) I'm sick of the taste of water. Also, I drink gallons of it and my pee is still amber. My kidneys must hate me and my lifestyle decisions right round about now. This may be worse for them than the 3 years I spent at Rhodes.

12) I am homesick for the first time in my life. Since the very first time I left my parents' house for a week-long Scripture Union camp when I was 10, I've never felt homesick. I think it's less homesickness and more longing for more reasonable weather.

13) I'm simultaneously intensely bored and unable to do anything about it. Because going outside would be equivalent to self-immolation and should only be attempted in the most dire of circumstances. Like running out of food. Or, if you're my flatmates, going to work.

14) On a plus side, cutting off all my hair before coming here may have been the wisest decision I've ever made. Balanced out by the idiocy of not investing in AC at the first signs of summer, which may very well be the most arrogant and ignorant decision I've ever made.

15) As you've clearly gathered, I've turned into a self-pitying, whiny brat. I was going to use another word that rhymes with brat, but I feel like this post is already sufficiently swearword-heavy. I've probably already offended someone. To you, I say, I'm sorry. Blame it on the heat.