Lifting the middle finger to a terrible application of law

I’ve never been arrested before – I’ve been verbally abused, physically manhandled, warned, mocked, and endured a short-lived detention by the former security branch.

A camera around the neck or a notebook in hand usually meant you were a target for the men in uniforms – at roadblocks, on patrols, in taverns. Most times, taken aside by the men in plain clothes who never arrested you, always just the "we want to ask you some questions".

So, no arrests, but I have been a proud breaker of illegal and unjust “laws”. There were the many times we crossed the border illegally into the “independent republic of the Transkei”, the overnight stays in townships without applying for permits, the fraternising across the Immorality Act, the swims on off-limits beaches (occasionally with swimsuits off too!), the co-conspiracies with Indian friends during sorties into the then Orange Free State when they were not allowed to go there, the reading and viewing of material deemed a threat to the state, the defiance of orders not to gather or march or sit.

And, at all times, lifting – metaphorically – the middle finger to the nationalists who thought they could cow us into conforming to their ridiculous policies.

Since we raised the flag on the democratic republic in 1994, I have not once wilfully broken the law. And, my aversion to ending up in a claustrophobic cell anywhere on the planet has tempered my behaviour in every respect over time.

So, last Monday’s experience was a huge jolt.

But I was caught fairly and squarely – coming off East London’s North-east Expressway at 92 km an hour into a 60 km an hour zone.

The mental distraction which caused my eye to ignore both the speedometer and the road sign is an interesting talking point for another time – but does nothing to mitigate the criminal offence in any way.

Things got weird at the side of the NEX when the traffic officer placed his hand on my shoulder and said he was arresting me for exceeding the speed limit by more than 30km/hour. This is a new provision of national traffic regulations.

Because I was a “respectable” person, said the officer, he would not handcuff me. Instead, he sat next to me as we drove to the Fleet Street police station where I was charged.

Fleet Street – presumably like most other stations in the country – is a physical disgrace. The charge office at the front of the building no longer operates and its functions are spread across various locations in the rear of the precinct, with the holding cell offering a urine-soaked vibe and rats the size of cats.

The cops present a bizarre mix of sadist, bureaucrat and old world charmer. They’re all especially uptight that they have to deal with these “petty” traffic offences, presumably when they have better things to do. Since, there’s no one else to berate, the detainees bear the brunt of their frustrations.

The senior officer whose name I never obtained – I confess my objective on the day was not to write down all the facts for a good story – tells me gloatingly about how, in the old days, “we used to confiscate your cameras” before checking himself and saying he was just joking. Yeah, right. I suspect he would have been stationed in the former Ciskei “in the old days”.

The trick to surviving after finding yourself behind bars – especially when you believe your incarceration is both unfair and potentially illegal - is to lose the “hardegat” attitude, “see but don’t see”, speak only when spoken to and resist anything perceived as a challenge to either the formal or informal authorities. I’ve learnt that from 10 years of watching the Shawshank Redemption as part of my festive season ritual.

There were a couple of other arrested drivers ahead of me. Andre* was caught doing 94 while Sipho* was going at over a hundred.

Hours passed as we stood around, checking available cash for bail money, communicating via cellphone with loved ones and bosses and watching the local version of the Keystone Cops going about their “duties” (including searching high-and-low for receipt books to record valuables and accept bail money).

Finally, bail was agreed and we were allowed to leave.

Later, I am extremely angry – at myself primarily for getting into this situation to start off with. But also at a system that makes criminals out of ordinary, fundamentally law-abiding citizens who have had a lapse of judgment or concentration or even consciously decided to push the envelope.

A doting and responsible father, Sipho, should not have to hang back in the rear of a rat-infested holding cell, so that his 5-year-old son, also brought to the police station during the arrest, does not have an enduring image of his hero behind bars.

An unemployed builder, Andre, who gets a job a week before Christmas, should not  have to risk the opportunity to bring cheer into his home because he's in the lock-up.
But appearance in court the next day leaves even more of a bitter taste.

If we ran our spaza shops like the East London magistrate’s court, we would all be impoverished and sitting at the side of the road. There is no apparent system in operation, there is no effective communication with anybody except the barking of orders by a court orderly, there is no respect for people – who may eventually be convicted of an offence but who, until then, have not given up all their rights, including their right to human dignity and their right to know what is happening.

I get into a fight with the magistrate of Court A because I insist on knowing why he is not finalising my case instead of sending me down the passage to Court C. This is not the done thing, apparently. Court C’s magistrate allays my frustration somewhat by treating us, convicts all, with a huge measure of empathy – but much firmness. The R800 fine is firm, very firm.

Driving in the province days later, I reflected on the sobering effect of being locked up. It took me almost 4 hours of non-stop commuting to get from East London to Port Elizabeth – partly because of holiday traffic but mainly because I never once went over the designated speed limit for any stretch of the road.

From a psychological and sociological perspective, fear of consequence is part of the mix of factors that propel ordinary people to live lives of bodily and emotional integrity, and to conform to societal norms. It’s certainly an important consideration when people make rational decisions about whether or not to break the law.

But the gung-ho transport minister’s effort to enforce the speed limits on our country’s roads takes me right back to a former era when our response was to pick holes in the laws thrown at us. And smirk as we lifted our middle fingers.

That’s not in anybody’s interests today and the way to avoid it is a sensible review of the current approach which will see very many obedient and patriotic citizens behind bars.

Until a review happens, those arrested should not resist arrest but immediately thereafter approach their attorneys about bringing an action for wrongful arrest against whichever State agency participated in the action.

Buffalo City Metro would be top of my list.

* Not their real names

Hit the bloody ball!

It’s a rebuke that I wear as a badge of honour, even today:

It’s early September in about 1974. It’s that amazing turn in the weather when spring activities like kite-flying come into their own in Gelvandale.

But I’m not contemplating the afternoon’s action of trying to hang some other poor bugger’s contraption.

I’m kitted out in new white pads and have taken my mark with the bat at the end of the concrete nets in Roan Crescent, nervously watching who will take the first run-up to bowl at me.

I was never a good batsman. Nobody showed me how to move my legs. So when the fast balls come thundering in – all my mates trying their best to impress the visitor that they can bounce the ball like Jeff Thomson – I certainly am not keeping my eye on the release from the bowler’s hands, reading the pitch and moving into position to play. Instead, I am all over the place, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at trying to keep the ball from my wicket.

I'm useless at the crease.

So, it's a pretty exasperated visiting coach who shouts out: “Hit the bloody ball!”

The coach is Basil D’Oliveira. “Dolly” to us when he is out of earshot - perhaps because we feel a kinship with him; but “Sir” in his presence – because hasn’t he been to Buckingham Palace and isn’t he now a proper Englishman?

Certainly, we're familiar with this South African hero who has achieved such greatness, breaking through apartheid restrictions to show the world his skill. We've been warned not to tell too many people that Dolly is going to coach us for fear that the security branch will arrive to pick him up. And maybe pick us up too? If there is any fear in our bellies, we never betrayed it, stoically walking from school to meet D’Oliveira, getting a brief talking-to before being told to pad up.

Instead, number 9 batsman that I was, I put my head down and my guard up. And wait for the rebuke to ring in my ears as I am flummoxed by yet another delivery.

Dolly was not a particularly friendly chap, he was stern, short-tempered even. And he did not pad up for a stint in the nets so we never got to experience the elegance he displayed with the bat. I would have loved to toss my left-arm spin at him. I fancied my chances of getting him out.

But he knew how to hit the bloody ball and make us all proud!

Grahamstown is a jamboree of festivals

My first real experience of the Grahamstown festival was as a struggling student working for a group of missionary sisters from Lesotho who had arrived with half-a-pantechnicon of mohair and wool jerseys to set up a stall on Somerset street.

They didn’t need much marketing in the middle of a typical festival winter to get most of their goods sold. My job was to haul huge boxes of stock in and out of the sales area, keep an eye out for leakages and watch the festival unfold from the outer fringes, as it were.

The next year I was promoted to house manager of the city hall, the venue for “serious” music events at the time. It allowed me to see a couple of shows a day, brush up on my music knowledge and tear the ticket stubs of lah-dee-dah music patrons. I would have preferred to be working down the road at the Grand Hotel at the then-fledgling and rather down-market jazz component of the festival.

Today, I am almost overwhelmed by how big and busy and vibrant the spectacle that is the National Arts Festival has become. It’s even more daunting if you’re a novice festival-goer or festino.

The festival takes over the relatively small Grahamstown on a mammoth scale – happening in school, church, and community halls, in business galleries, across the university campus, on the streets, in fields and, of course, in the 1820 Settlers Monument on the hill overlooking the town.

Most day-trippers arrive in Grahamstown and head for the Village Green or another of the sites of stall-holders dotted around town. I think this is a mistake; not that I think the missionary sisters and brothers from across the country and the continent are not worthy of your support, it’s just that you run the risk of being swallowed up in the volume of things to browse or buy. But, if you insist, allocate a couple of hours for shopping – with a definite cut-off time and buy what appeals to you immediately rather than committing to come back later - either you’ll run out of time or it will be sold before you get back!

The festival these days consists of many festivals rolled into one jamboree, There’s a main festival which is a bit of the misnomer, as many mainstream drama pieces, musical productions and other artistic events happen on what is known as the fringe, in scores of venues across the city. And while a few major venues are reserved for main festival events, there is no difference in the quality of the productions or the facilities from one venue to another.

Straddling this divide between main and fringe are the jazz festival, student theatre which showcases productions from the performing arts departments of most universities, WordFest and ThinkFest which draw together some light-hearted but mainly serious discussions on issues of the day and SpiritFest which is a theme used by faith communities in the City of Saints.

With such an array of productions, it’s easy to get psyched out. Don’t be. The first thing to do is to decide if you want to go with a festival experience that’s more familiar, if you want something to soothe your soul, or if you’re willing to dive into something so radically different and niched that you’ll never see it in your part of the province.

I try to do all three. So, this year - going with what I know - I’m seeing a Cape Town Ballet production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a show by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a perennial festival winner Raiders with Nicholas Ellenbogen and other total nutters from Kwazulu-Natal, and talks by futurist Clem Sunter and the cartoonist South African politicos love to hate, Zapiro.

Even if you just choose one show - scan for names you’re familiar with, either a writer, director or performer. Most of the household names from TV or live shows will show up at the festival in one way or another. Although sometimes, you may expect something understandable from a performer with whom you’re familiar only to find that their Grahamstown offering this year is an esoteric piece, rather than their usual stand-up comedy

You’ll be constantly coming up against the recommendations of the hordes standing in queues outside venues about they have seen, half-seen (up to the point they walked out because of the edginess, foul language or whatever) or intend to see.

The reason I give for hanging out at the jazz festival at Diocesan School for Girls is that it’s unlikely that I’ll hear any of the foreign musicians, especially the Dutch and Skandinavian muzos who really seem to like Grahamstown, at any other time in the Eastern Cape. Truth is, this is about having something – okay, lots of things then – to soothe my soul. This is that part of the festival which is not about rushing around frenetically talking to people in queues about what you’re just seen. It’s about chilling.

I dress up warmly, go early to get a proper place in the house which allows me to enjoy good sound but also see some nifty finger work (I imagine that I have some basic technical musical ability which enhances my enjoyment). So, decide what stirs your soul and look out for entries on the programme – whether a performance or an exhibition - that meet that need.

After going with what you know and soothing your soul, don’t leave out the challenge of trying something radically different, whether it’s stepping out of a genre, cultural or style box you may carry around with you. I’m opting this year to see as many entries on the film festival schedule, given that we don’t often get to see any of the top foreign or niche movies – and even a number of great South African productions – in the Eastern Cape.

Given the diversity of productions at this year’s Grahamstown festival, there’s a great chance that you can be exposed to something of artistic value you’ve never experienced before. Go find it.
• First published in the Daily Dispatch, June 24, 2011.

Haron, Wrankmore's deeds continue to empower

It’s sometime before Easter 1972. The weather’s beautiful, this is no time for jackets, although last week’s rain reminded us all of the floods a couple of years ago, so we tend to make sure we’re dressed for being marooned somewhere.

I’m enjoying being “grown up” which is what everybody calls me since I had a double figure birthday recently, although they add that it’s tough being an adult.

There’s a slight trepidation about entering church this morning. For weeks, we’ve been reminded of the visit by this priest from Cape Town; some political fellow who’s coming to talk about some campaign he’s been running.

There’s a car with two men in it parked outside the church. Strange that they’re just sitting there and don’t come into church. But not strange when we reach the door and somebody whispers: Did you see the branch outside? They’re here to watch the visiting priest.

“The branch” – dreaded, dreadful words that send a chill through your body. It doesn’t ease the tension that we think one of the plain-clothed security branch policemen sitting outside is an Anglican himself, who has apparently forsaken attending his own parish to keep watch this morning, although nobody’s sure because there’s no way someone will go up to the car to check.

Keeping watch, but not as Jesus admonished his disciples to keep watch in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The visiting priest is white; I wonder what he’s done to have brought the branch to Christ the King. White people are safe from the branch, aren’t they? Maybe he should have got a permit from the police station to be in Gelvandale. But, he’s a priest, they don’t need permits, do they? What will he preach about?

Bernard Wrankmore appears older than he actually is. Even in the vestments of a priest, he has a wiry frame, and moves slowly, carefully.

As he talks to us that Sunday morning, his physical demeanour takes on a special significance, adding meaning to his sermon.

He tells us, he is slowly recovering from an almost complete shutdown of his body, after a hunger strike of 67 days to protest at the death in detention of a Cape Town moslem cleric, Imam Abdullah Haron.

Haron had been the youngest Imam appointed in South Africa at the age of 32 to the Claremont Mosque. He was, by all accounts, a charismatic leader, selfless, engaged in assisting individuals and communities ravaged by apartheid. He was arrested by “the branch” in May 1969 under the Terrorism Act and kept in detention without trial for 123 days until his death on September 27 at the hands of his security branch torturers who claimed that he had fallen down the stairs.

Despite blood clots from trauma, 24 bruises and a broken rib, the inquest magistrate accepted the police version of his death.

Wrankmore, a reasonably unassuming priest who ran the Missions to Seamen in downtown Cape Town, was appalled by what had happened to the imam and believed that a commission of enquiry should have been held into the circumstances of his death.

On the second anniversary of the imam’s death, Wrankmore endeavoured to fast until the government of then prime minister John Vorster agreed to initiate a commission. Secluded in the Muslim kramat on Signal Hill, a burial place used for prayer, he fasted beyond a deadline of 40 days he had set himself. It seemed that he, or God, or a recalcitrant government, had decided that only a fast to the death would be enough.

He ended his protest at the very last, after 67 days, despite the government’s refusal to initiate the probe or even to meet with him when Wrankmore, by now a sack of bones, travelled to Pretoria to see Vorster.

The inhumanity of what was happening in our country, and fear for our future, were starkly reflected in the story of the Imam as we listened to Wrankmore while “the branch” sat outside our church in Gelvandale.

While the primary objective of his fast was not achieved, Wrankmore succeeded in bringing international attention to detention without trial and, especially, the deaths of detainees at the hands of South African police. It focused squarely on the brutality which the National Party autocrats brought to running the country.

Wrankmore had nothing to invest in the struggle against apartheid except his sense of justice and his faith that the God who had called him to take this stand on behalf of a murdered muslim cleric whom he had never met, would also sustain him.

For young boys, food intake is all about volume. To some of us listening to him, Wrankmore’s account of his self-deprivation was an act of madness. But his action, in pursuit of principle and against abominable behaviour by the then-Government’s police, had a profound influence on my life.

This was a moment of growing up, being empowered by the courage of Haron, Wrankmore and others prepared to take a stand against iniquity despite the personal consequences, willing to forsake sect and creed, race, class and gender, for the sake of our common humanity.

It’s what continues to empower me 40 years later.

• Bernie Wrankmore died in Cape Town at the age of 86 on June 10, 2011.

Smiling Valley points to stuttering land reform

The department of rural development and land reform describes itself as being in the "vanguard" of improving the lives of local communities by making land available.

The claim is made in court papers in respect of the Smiling Valley informal community close to the national road between East London and King William's Town. The department accuses members of the community of engaging in an illegal land grab, which effectively disadvantages those who have been patiently waiting for land redistribution to happen.

While the department takes exception to Buffalo City Muncipality's un-cooperative (read slapgat) attitude which has meant a 10-year and ongoing wait for progress towards a properly planned and marked out township in the area, it couches its own achievements in less critical language. It states it is "in the vanguard of impacting the lives of various communities by assisting them within available resources to have access to land and to own it".

To be sure, the department's rural development programme is at the heart - actually it is the only part - of government's programme to address poverty, hunger, unemployment and lack of development in the rural areas.

So, land distribution is a significant endeavour and, as part of this plan, government has committed to distributing 4,5 million hectares of land to disadvantaged black South Africans, largely dispossessed under apartheid. This figure includes redistribution of about 30% of the country's commercial farms. Land is earmarked for agricultural purposes and natural resource harvesting, for residential settlement, and for re-establishing cultural linkages or rights to ancestral land.

However, to date the department has re-distributed less than one million hectares to poor people.

A major difficulty with South Africa's post-democracy land policy has been the cost of accessing land on behalf of poor communities. The willing buyer willing seller model has seen government budget up to one billion rand per year to acquire land - a total of R21 billion up to 2020 - but a figure which has proved to be hopelessly inadequate given excessive market prices.

White landowners are not about to engage in massive philanthropic initiatives to give away land to their black countrymen and why would they? Of course, it's also not unfair to state that the vast majority of white South Africans do not in the least appreciate the extent of devastation wrought in their name by the respective apartheid land laws.

Under apartheid, up to 3.5 million people were forcibly removed from land to which they had a historical attachment, if not legal title.

Land reform, especially in rural areas, is critical to South Africa's ability to address issues of poverty and unemployment, through both a subsistence and commercial farming programme, given that the vast majority of poor South Africans - some 70% of people, almost exclusively black - live in rural areas.

The paucity of jobs in urban settings means that much more must be done to attract people to remain in rural areas, rather than join the underclass of unemployed and economically unprotected communities in big cities.

South Africa is a big country, but only a fraction of our country is available for agricultural production, around 14 million hectares, just up to 13.5% of the land mass. An even smaller fraction - about three million hectares - is regarded as naturally highly arable land, with a further 1.3 million hectares under irrigation. These figures translate into 87% of our farmland being owned by 60 000 white farmers, of whom about 20 000 produce the vast bulk of our gross agricultural product. There are some 500 000 peasant farmers in the former bantustans who produce around 5% of our agricultural output, for own consumption.

The challenges of changing this agricultural template are huge.

The democratic government has an almost inherent predisposition to over-stating its development goals beyond what a constrained budget and a recalcitrant bureaucracy can achieve in a 24-hour day. And the department of rural development and land reform is not averse to this tendency, hence the lofty claims in the Smiling Valley case around its mandated role.

The reality is that the department is hamstrung between a number of difficulties, a limited budget, perpetual overstatement of goals and market-based land transfers among them. It must also determine whether its strategy should look to restoring the past or be future-focused on land re-distribution which aids food security and economic development.Then there is also the lack of extension services, especially in respect of marketing. And after all these challenges, water remains the biggest impediment to our ability to provide access to agricultural land.

What the Smiling Valley issue does highlight is that the department - and government in various other departmental or agency guises - sits on vast land holdings. Of course, very little of this is productive farmland. But much more effort must go into creative ways of extracting and using this resource for the benefit of poor communities.

It also points to the need for strong community-based structures which can manage land re-distribution processes in partnership with government.

The land challenge is a huge one for our country. Stuttering efforts at land reform are not helped by the failure of institutions like Buffalo City Municipality to play anything approaching a meaningful role to address historical injustice.

Barred from cathedral now he gets the key

At the height of apartheid in 1982, first-year seminarian Michael Weeder and fellow activists were barred from praying and fasting in Cape Town’s Anglican cathedral, to register their protest at South Africa’s military raid on Lesotho.

Now, the 53-year-old cleric will be handed the keys to St George’s Cathedral when he is installed as dean by Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on Sunday.

It is an irony which does not escape Weeder, who says that perhaps “our God of perfect timing and humour is suggesting ‘here’s the cathedral and its doors are open to you. You wanted to pray here, so here it is’”.

While he has accepted the job “with a huge dollop of humility”, he is clearly looking forward to leading the church at the top of Adderley Street, which has become known as the “people’s cathedral”.

Among the hymns he has chosen for his installation service on Sunday is a contemporary Christian song by Chris Tomlin “God of the city” which includes the line: “greater things have yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city”.

It reflects the vision he hopes to implement for the cathedral which, he says, has critical roles to play in ministry to diverse communities, including political and business leaders, diplomats, tourists, African immigrants and residents of the inner-city. The cathedral must also be “the mother church” for Anglicans of diverse backgrounds, worship styles and sexual orientation from throughout the peninsula.

Weeder was born in District One and among his earliest recollections is travelling to church in the city centre with his mother, a garment worker and staunch Anglican, on Sunday mornings.

At the age of five, he says, watching the priests processing into the church shrouded in the high mass incense, he already felt the calling to the priesthood.
He studied at St Paul’s Seminary (now the College of the Transfiguration) in Grahamstown and holds honours and masters degrees from the University of the Western Cape.

Weeder worked as an organiser for the ANC and served as chaplain to an ANC underground cell in the 1980s.

Given its proximity to parliament, he says the cathedral must give government a “faith-based understanding” of the needs of South Africans, although he cautions that the Anglican church can never be smug about its role in the struggle against injustice.

“As a church we have benefitted from our colonial past and with that privilege comes a special responsibility to correct the compounded, accumulated, systemic injustices that bedevil our country.”

Of mixed heritage, he sees his appointment in part, as representing a homecoming of sorts for communities that were previously alienated from the cathedral.

In a written response during his selection process to a question from cathedral leaders on the thorny issue of homosexuality, Weeder said he hoped to listen “to God but also to the faith community and to the needs and blessings of society at large”.

Weeder takes over from retired priest Rowan Smith and moves to the cathedral from St Phillip’s parish in District Six, where he has ministered for 10 years.

He is married to Bonita, director of the District Six Museum and they have three children, Chiara, 23, Andile, 20, and Khanyisa, 19.

If I called you a kaffir or a honkie, a hotnot or a coolie

If I called you a kaffir or a honkie, a hotnot or a coolie or any one of scores of racist names, would you hold it against me?

You should. At least that's what the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act is intended to censure.

What would you think if I called myself that? Probably that my parents never taught me respect for self or that the chips on my shoulders are really messing with my social posture.

Given our legislation, and some degree of social constraint, only the most bolshie of un-reconstructed racists among us would go around spouting racist epithets.

But, we make a mistake to think that the un-reconstructed racists among us are in a minority and that you and I stand outside of their purview. On the contrary, racism cuts vast swathes across every aspect of our communities, whether born out of ignorance, myth, victimhood, ethnocentrism, economic imperative, nationalism, historical precedent, xenophobia or prejudice towards "the other" (people who are different to us).

It takes very little for any one of us in this country - and especially for those of our countrymen who choose to sit thousands of kilometres away and engage in the issues via internet news and social networking sites - to get hot under the collar and begin to call each other the worst racist names imaginable.

The ANC has become a spectacular and embarrassing failure on a host of fronts since it became the governing party. But that does not excuse the fact that much of the criticism of government in some forums drips with unadulterated racist venom.

Nor does it mean that an alternative government by its nature must be non-African, as supporters of the DA-led Western Cape imply, even when senior DA leaders try their darndest to shoot them down.

Many of those who have climbed on the bandwagon of the current debate around race defend a position from inside a racial or cultural laager. And, post Manyi, coloured leaders - or should I say, leaders who define themselves as coloured - have failed miserably in providing the necessary leadership out of this laager mentality.

It also doesn't help when Africans try to occupy a moral high ground by suggesting - as Africanist academic Kwandi Kondlo did in the Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture at Fort Hare last week - that it is impossible for "blacks" to be racist because they are not the dominant economic group in our society.

Notwithstanding some hectic exchanges recently, we are only just scratching the surface of our racialised make-up. Race is anything but a touchy-feely issue and the resolution of racialised problems in our society will require difficult engagement.

But, until you and I begin to honestly declare where we stand on this issue of race and how we feel about our very material, very racialised existence in relation to each other, we cannot move forward even when we pretend that we have moved on.

As irritating as this hoo-hah on race may be, it will be repeated whenever our baser instincts trump our good intentions - unless we talk honestly - and civilly - about the fact that:
- You think that my cultural practices are disgusting and offensive to your sense of what is normal or modern or "cultured";

- I am hurting because I lost my investment because I didn't get the tender because I have the wrong racial classification in terms of empowerment legislation;

- You are angry because 17 years after winning the right to vote, you stay in a site-and-service pondokkie with access to few if any municipal services; none of your three kids has regular, sustained work; and your five grandchildren all subsist from your State pension;

- You have never been allowed to talk about the intense hatred you feel towards "them" because their government forcibly removed your family from what they called a slum (your family called it home for almost 50 years); a few weeks later your father died of the stress caused by the move to the middle of nowhere and a short while later your mother died of a broken heart;

- You wonder how it can be that you gave up the country to "them" yet 17 years later you are still being blamed for "their" incompetence;

- I can never conceive of my little girl or boy dating, let alone marrying, one of "them" because "they" really don't measure up to the standards of my family.

- You really think that you are much better than any of us, God's gift really to this society.

If race is a social construct - as natural scientists have proven and as social scientists keep reminding us - then we need to be working damn hard to overcome the social forces that demonise our society.

Recently, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was asked for his comment on the race spat between Jimmy Manyi and Trevor Manuel.

I am coloured, said Tutu. And he referred to his gnome, the formal scientific link in his genetic makeup to the San people.

But there was an existential component to what Tutu was saying. He was staking himself to the underclass (in this particular debate). It reflected Steve Biko, among others, who wrote on blackness and being black. Biko called it a state of mind. Tutu, I suggest, would call it a "state of heart".

It mimics John F Kennedy who, as Cold War animosity peaked, declared on his trip to the wall that divided East and West Berlin in 1963: "I am a Berliner"?

And it is echoed in the Egyptian youths who stated at the height of opposition to Hosni Mubarak's despotic rule: "We are all Khaled Said" in memory of the martyr savaged by Mubarak's security police.

It debunks the "single stereotypical lens" that Harvard theologian Peter Gomes, who died last month, referred to when he chose to declare his homosexuality in 1996 during a period of sustained gay-bashing on the New England campus.

It's about saying, whether we are black or white: I am you. I want to put myself in your shoes, in your footsteps. I want to understand and experience and know what it is to be you, so that when you hurt, I hurt, when you are overjoyed, I am full of joy.

Was Manuel right that Manyi was on a racist rant?

I hold no truck with Jimmy Manyi. Since he appeared on the national scene a couple of years ago to spout his inflammatory nonsense, I felt that it would be a matter of time before he was hoisted by his own petard. And so there may be some justice in the latest outcry about his comments on issues of race.

But, Trevor Manuel, on the other hand, is an opportunist. He chooses his battles carefully, with an eye on his own strengths, the relative weakness of his opponent, and the extent to which he can garner votes on behalf of the ruling party. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but it does mean that the outpouring of praise for Manuel for his “principled” outburst at Manyi’s perceived racism must be tempered.

Check back on the sledgehammer that Manuel took to Mo Shaik when the latter dared to suggest that Manuel was an “okay Joe” to have in President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet. It was political “thanks but no thanks” at its best, replete with mock respect, calling to mind Brutus’ shafting of Marc Anthony which masqueraded as a eulogy to Caesar.

Manuel clearly has taken a calculated view on Manyi's strength within the upper reaches of the ANC. He figures that such strength will dissipate when the party weighs the significance of votes in the May local government elections.

Because, despite his vehemence that he is a non-racialist, Manuel cannot deny that the coloured constituency in the Western Cape is critical to the ANC’s election campaign here and that he – apartheid-carrying epithet or not - is among a handful of party leaders regarded as capable of connecting with this constituency following years of dis-organisation. And it won’t do the ANC any harm that he will pull a few white votes too. In this scenario, Manyi is hopelessly dispensable to Luthuli House.

A low point in Manuel’s principled stand on issues was his pithy sound bite two years ago that criticising the Dalai Lama was akin to “trying to shoot Bambi”. It wasn’t so much that Manuel was questioning the democratic credentials of an overlord of a fierce theocracy-in-exile but that he was defending Pretoria’s anti-democratic action in declining a visa to the Tibetan leader apparently at the behest of the Chinese government.

There was also Manuel’s sarcastic retort when he was fingered for splashing out on a fancy government car.

There is no doubt that the minister was seriously needled by aspects of Jimmy Manyi's utterances – including that Manyi did not really apologise for having said or done something wrong but apologised that some people “may have been” offended.

But why should Manyi apologise? I did not hear Manyi refer to coloured people in a derogatory manner as “things” or anything else. And it is pure opportunism to suggest this.

I heard him talk to government policy on affirmative action as it stands and currently proposed amendments. As the most senior government bureaucrat tasked with implementing labour policy, he was acting perfectly within his mandate to talk about local, provincial and national demographics as they relate to affirmative action.

That we are commodities – every one of us who attempts to sell our labour on a national and international market – is an unfortunate outcome of an industrialised, and globalising economy, even in a South Africa desperately struggling to overcome its racialised past.

Historical fiat – the Western Cape was a “coloured preference area” under the apartheid government – and a perceived unwelcoming environment contribute to a labour market that is skewed in favour of coloured employees at certain levels, at the expense of Africans. Employers argue that there simply are not enough African people in the province or willing to relocate from elsewhere, to fill jobs which should go to African candidates in terms of employment equity legislation.

If companies and government in the Western Cape are forced to apply a “national demographic” where the labour force must mimic the race make-up of the country’s population, it will mean that only African candidates for jobs will be employed for years to come. And those coloureds who seek work here will have to look elsewhere – especially in areas where they can maximise their competitive (for purposes of employment equity provisions) racial advantage.

If the Western Cape accepts “local or provincial demographics”, then far more coloureds could be accommodated in the active labour market although my impression is that the percentage of African employees in this province’s economy will still be much too low.

Manuel is right when he refers to the attempts to push back the line on what constitutes “black” or ‘African” in a South African context. The law defines black as including African, coloured and Indian. That is the only definition which is relevant under the constitution, regardless of what anyone, including racists, anti-race classification proponents and even many employers may say.

But if Manuel disagreed with the general policy on employment equity or the shifts which the current amendments envisage, he should have declared them ages ago, certainly at the time that, as a senior ANC leader, he was first briefed on them. Manyi has not said anything which is out of sync with current law.

The issue of whether or not Manyi was speaking as DG or as Black Management Forum head is a matter of governance which, again, Manuel - as a senior Cabinet minister and ANC official - should have been alert to and expressed a view on at the time.

The debate around affirmative action remains a critical one in which all South Africans must participate. At times it will cover sensitive terrain – like how we deal with an “over-concentration” of a particular race group in one part of the country - which will make many of us, including Manuel, uncomfortable.

Indeed, a debate on issues of race must be an ongoing project in our country. But while that debate might not eschew the ideal of a rainbow nation, it must happen on the basis of intellectual honesty, mutual respect and the recognition of each other’s right not only to be part of the debate but integrally part of this country.

It will require that we push aside political opportunism, our intuition to take sledgehammers to each other, and our predilection to engage emotively on substantive issues.

Brenda should have dumped her rubbish

I’ve had lots of rubbish on my mind this week.

I’ve returned to a former stomping ground, East London, which has become home in this season of our life.

Twenty-five years ago I started working as a junior reporter on Herald sister publication, the Daily Dispatch. On my first day, I was pushed out of the door with a photographer to get the obligatory stories about holidaymakers enjoying themselves on the city’s beaches in a sweltering heat wave.

On my second day or so, I was sent out with a photographer to cover a police search of the bushes around the golf course for a missing Johannesburg holidaymaker.

Brenda Thornley had left the family’s holiday bungalow in Sterling one afternoon and walked into the veld, apparently carrying her husband’s firearm. She was never seen alive again. A few years later, her skeletal remains were found very close to where the search had kicked off.

Although the Thornley story held the front page of the Dispatch for a couple of days that holiday season, it was not a particularly gripping one.

But, unlike the victims of other human tragedies that I wrote about over the years, her name and memory were seared into my consciousness as a young reporter. As I’ve gone about settling in this week, I’ve been wondering much about the kind of rubbish that prompted her to end her life in my new home city.

With hindsight, I lament that not nearly enough journalistic effort went into understanding or unravelling the final moments of this young mother’s life.

Despite having flitted here regularly on business over 20 years, I confess I’d never liked this place, until we came here two months ago to check the lay of the land again, and I fell in love.

I’m trying my darndest to avoid referring to the city as Slumtown or Slummies – as cute and endearing as users, usually mid-life and mid-level professionals, think this self-deprecation is, it connotes and feeds into the negative impressions which are created around East London.

And there are many negatives to overcome when you tell friends and colleagues across the country that you’re relocating here. I think places that you fall in love with warrant much more than a Slummies epithet. So, I’m opting for El, eMonti, even BF or Buff.

I’m enjoying getting to know the city again. There are no old haunts, though; too much has changed, in the physical landscape as well as the psycho-social milieu.

East London has cleaned up it’s act since last I spent any meaningful time here, which probably explains my fixation with dumping my rubbish, or at least having it collected by the municipality.

Do you know there is no reference to refuse removals on the Buffalo City Municipal web site?

I’m told I can enjoy the beach although the promise of amusement facilities doesn’t materialise. Is this an oblique reference to the antics of the city mothers and fathers?

There’s enough information if I want to put a billboard up, or build a shack, or call someone to fix the burst pipe running into my yard, get interred (presumably this is for new departures and not new arrivals), book a hall, visit a clinic, ask about rates or roads, or if I dispute that EL still has a zoo (as I did with my wife as we drove into town last week behind a removal truck.)

It’s a good web site so I don’t want to trash it unnecessarily. But it has nothing about refuse collections, removals or dump sites. And I think people need to know how to deal with their rubbish.

My own telephone efforts lead me to an official in “waste” who tells me they collect refuse in my area on Fridays. (It’s a blessing that I oversleep on Friday morning and don’t put the rubbish out, as I discover they actually collect refuse in my area on Thursdays.)

Same official tells me the nearest site for dumping rubbish is Berlin, on the road to King, adding in response to my incredulity: There’s an old tip in Parkside, it’s only for garden refuse and builders’ rubble.

I’ve never before been caught in the no worker’s land between garden refuse and builder’s rubble. So I ask: Can I take my household refuse to Parkside? No, she says emphatically, it’s only Berlin.
So Berlin it is for me then.

There’s a melancholic metaphor in there somewhere: I like that I can drive to Berlin to dump my rubbish, removal packaging and perhaps other bits and pieces of junk before settling into this new life season.

Someone should have told Brenda.

Ghosts of past lives make for miserable Christmas

Tommy and Freddie were class acts. You looked forward to the annual visits to the family home.

Uncle Freddie entertained generations of kids in the family with his mimicking of a ferocious – and occasionally sweet – alley cat. A great – and frustrating ¬- part of your visit was spent on fruitlessly searching high and low to find Tiger – or whatever name Fred had decided to bestow on his little kitty that year.

It was only when you were well into your teens that you realized you’d been had all those years. There was no cat, and the meowing was the result of a subtle ventriloquist’s craft and the vivid imaginations of young and old members of the audience gathered in the lounge.

Still, as an adult, you totally bought into the ritual the kids went through every December of searching for Fred’s kitty, while he sat there with the most serious expression on his face and you knew he was simply bursting with laughter on the inside.

Together with his brother Tommy, Fred also had a tap dancing routine which was open to all although it was generally lost on the kids, who preferred to continue to hunt down that cat.

The visits were made the more pleasant by the mounds of sweets – éclairs, nougat and chocolate nuts - you were allowed to stuff into your mouth – in fact, you were generally encouraged to “take more” by well-meaning relatives who thought your skinny frame was the result of serious food deprivation on the part of your parents.

Not all visits home have the same joie de vie of uncles entertaining kids and aunts filling them to the brim with good things.

They may not quite be holidays from hell, but the encounters with the ghosts of your past lives may make for a very miserable Christmas.

There’s the great-aunt who has yet to come to terms with the fact she ended up on the wrong side of the colour bar when apartheid was introduced. She never says so, but you know your brown skin is a huge letdown, a too painful reminder that the world changed for her in 1956.

At least she lets you into her home. The step-mother who passed on a decade ago always ensured that she was only available to receive Christmas presents after dark so that her neighbours in the white group area didn’t see her black relatives.

Your mother-in-law will find something in your behaviour to whinge about this year – it may even be the same thing she whinged about last year.

Then there’s the distant uncle who flirts with you on the sly in the kitchen. He’s been trying this stunt for 30 years, since you first came home from ’varsity for the holiday get-together, having ditched your denim dungarees for that cute polka dot mini-skirt.

Cousin Clive, who arrives with wife number three and yet another promotion up the corporate ladder, proceeds to do a detailed analysis of why your choice of wheels this year, a second-hand station wagon, is the worst car ever made. And are you still in that dead-end job?

Of course, it’s here that you’ll hear that quirky pet name that only your loving extended family calls you – all 300 of them – which you hate with a passion, and them for reminding you of it every year.

There’s the uncle who has told the same jokes badly for 40 years. They’re not really jokes, just silly memories of his own growing up, or the growing up of someone he read about in one of the tatty copies of the Reader’s Digest he keeps on the bookshelf, interspersed with arbitrary factoids and homilies.

You’ve heard them, everybody else in the room knows you’ve heard them, but will the family idiot ever realize that nobody is interested in hearing his stories, especially those who’ve traveled a day-and-a-half to get here.

It’s almost as bad as the compulsion the family feels about telling your latest new (girl)friend all your embarrassing habits. They do this every year when you bring a new (girl)friend home for Christmas, under the pretext that she’s never heard the stories before. But you have – a thousand times. Doesn’t anybody care? Makes you wish that this year you really did take up your mate’s offer to go white water rafting somewhere in in the Northern Cape.

Why do you do this to yourself every year? you ask as you pack the car for the trek home, to your real home, where people who call themselves relatives don’t abuse you.

Thank goodness for distance – of bloodlines and geography! And Tommys and Freddies who create great memories of family holidays.

Longer time-horizon ameliorates experiences of a bad year

While there is no golden rule, there is a kind of intuition that columnists should be seasonal in their reflections. So, this is supposed to be a column about looking back over old years and ahead to a new one.

As seasons go, this has been a pretty wretched year for many – economically, emotionally, spiritually, even politically (except for the mob purporting to run one or another faction of COPE), as the chair became the political weapon of choice in meeting halls across the nation.

Some were not directly affected by the storms but, having noticed how others were being tossed about, thought thrice of venturing out, instead hunkering down in a little corner until the weather turned.

Of course, this kind of seasonal analysis is fraught with inaccuracy and subjectivity and the natural human proclivity – exacerbated in South Africans - to wallow in misery instead of looking up, seeing the sun rise and anticipating a new day of opportunity. The glass remains half-empty.

There are few business leaders who will readily attest to having had a fantastic year. Most will find reason to be miserable about trading conditions and will only offer a positive outlook on the past or the next year under great duress – like when decisions have to be made about such critical matters as bonus payouts to executives.

One must wonder if, as suggested by the doomsayers, geo-political challenges are greater today than in the 1930s and every succeeding decade since then.

Is the world really in danger of turning back the clock on the rights of children, women, gays, journalists, migrant workers and minority groups as claimed by single issue activists?

Notwithstanding a litany of charges – corruption, bungling and insensitivity to the poorest of the poor among them – is the current government performing worse than the lot we had under apartheid, as indicated by the vile comments from ordinary citizens on any discussion forum? And are the policies they implement more archaic than the ones which gave rise to bantustans and group areas?

The middle classes in all societies may have been under threat from global recession but their primary identifier of status – what cars they drive – was not. An enduring pastime of the holiday season is observing how many new cars hit the roads at this time. This season has been no exception, as cars are being “pulled out of the box” all over the place.

And if the average Joe or Thandi is to be believed, this was a year of near-starvation, when in reality they were still more likely to have spent a considerable amount of time and money in as wide an array of retail outlets as it is possible to comprehend.

I’m not convinced that our life on the planet this year has been worse than any other 12-month period since the calendar was invented. Although I’m certainly not suggesting there were not major challenges or negative aspects associated with the milestones achieved.

For example, probably the only bright spot in 2010 we can all agree on was the amazing interlude we had for about 31 days mid-year, when we were the oyster of the world and the quid pro quo was seeing world-class football and enough celeb footballers in our back yards to last a lifetime.

Even that came at a price - an overly hefty bill for stadiums, and the emasculation we suffered as a country by a steam roller driven by the smug Mr Blatter who, despite pretentions to the contrary, is not the best fairy godfather a continent can have. At least we hung on to our vuvuzelas right up to the last. To think we even wasted one of our national orders, Companion of OR Tambo, on him.

But, the real trick to having an outlook that the glass is half-full, is to have a longer time-horizon, so that the life-challenging experiences of one “bad” year are ameliorated across a decade or a single dry season has a different value in the broader context of half-a-lifetime.

I’m realising the significance of a quarter-century horizon. Twenty-five years ago this week my feeble attempt at telling the story of a young mother who committed suicide in the bushes near the Nahoon River at East London gave me my first front page lead article and left me in no doubt that I was a writer. But it’s taken me that long to be comfortable with the mantle and not feel guilty that I split infinitives.

And today, a silver jubilee ago, despite the madness of apartheid, I was able to make a lifetime commitment to my sweetheart. No single season can wipe out that time line.