Noni Shakur: A Time Without Hugs in South Africa

South Africa is not a place where keeping a distance from one another matches the traditions of how communities have survived and thrived for generations. But since March of this year, the nation has lived with restrictions, lockdowns, closures and limits of social activities familiar to many people around the world. Meanwhile, the ongoing struggle with gender based violence rages on, though it is not clear if this is a new chapter with real change on the horizon or just a continuation of injustice as usual.

My guest on today’s podcast is the wonderful Noni Shakur joining us from Cape Town to talk about South Africa during Corona, and reflections on what we’ve got, what we need, and what we may not get in the near future.
Follow her on instagram @nonishakur or follow her brand new lockdown project: @yobiggirlplanties – plants as metaphors for life.

Identity in South Africa: A Roundtable Discussion

Identity. Land. Displacement. Trauma. History. Struggle. Fear. Anger. Future. Environment. Income. Danger. Knowledge. Loss. Curiousity. Safety.

These are a few of the words that came to mind listening back to this very special round table discussion recorded in South Africa with 3 South African friends. The major topic was identity in this age of information. From the city to the rural areas. From the past to the present and beyond, we discuss what is happening for many people around the topic of identity. This was a spontaneous, beautiful conversation recorded a few weeks ago at the V4C gathering in Boschendaal. Furthermore, as our dear guests ask at the end of the program, it would really mean something to hear back from you about what you think, feel and experience around these issues.

Voices 4 Change: Indigenous Activists and Friends in Africa

This month I had the great honor of being present at the Video 4 Change gathering in South Africa. This meeting brought together indigenous activists from different parts of the continent, as well as allies and friends from the rest of the world. The topic: the struggle for indigenous rights in a globalized world where in the name of profit and development, people who have long lived in harmony with their environment are being forced to discard their identity and physically pulled from their ancestral land. How is this happening in an era of sustainable development goals and human rights? What can be done to help communities defend themselves and be heard on a national and international scale?

No President is Sacred

Last month there was a big to-do in South Africa over an art piece by Brett Murray, depicting president Jacob Zuma posing in a Lenin-style look to the future along with his penis being clearly visible.  Protesters have called it everything from disrespectful to racist, culminating in one enraged person attacking the artwork, damaging it, and closing the exhibition (or is it back already? I haven’t heard the latest)

Zuma has long been a contreversial figure, especially when it comes to sex and sexuality. He has had 6 wives and from them a grand total of 20 children. More infamously, he was acquitted of rape in 2005.  Throughout his political career in some way sex or sexuality has always been there, either in the background or the foreground. This would seem to be the grounds for which the artist chose to prominently include the president’s penis in the image.

Many disagree. They see these matters and personal and not subject to public criticism. They also feel the president of the nation deserves respect and not to be made a caricature of. But they don’t just disagree and write about it in the media and express their opinion in the many forums available to people today. They take it further and seek to have such images banned and follow that with all manner of accusation about the intentions of the artist.  Its a familiar theme in a world that has become very much about not just expressing an opinion, but stopping others from expressing their perhaps less popular opinion. Everyone is very busy being offended, and they demand someone else get in trouble for their alleged suffering.

Im neither South African nor a real artist, but I think there’s a global message in the events taking place around this work.  Therefore I’m making sure “The Spear” is available on this site… enjoy – or don’t.

They Renamed Pretoria

The plane ride from Amsterdam to Vienna is more of hop than a flight. You’re up, you get a drink and a snack, you look out the window – you’re there.  Yet even in that short time, I found myself engaged in a thought provoking conversation last week on the plane, with a young South African sitting to my left.

What particularly sparks my attention are the details that, even as a socially conscious and worldly journalist, I have missed over the years.  One that will not come as a surprise to most of you as it has been true for several years now, they renamed Pretoria – a fact I was not aware of.  Though the complete name change is still being discussed in some levels of government in South Africa, my new friend informed me that in her home town now known as Tshwane, most signs and official markers have all been changed already.

I didn’t have to ask her why they changed it. Thinking about it for a moment I realized the name Pretoria, even for me an outsider, makes me think of the apartheid era. Specifically I always loved the film Biko, about Stephen Biko’s life, and the depictions of police and Pretoria from that film are indeed prevalent in my head. Beyond that, when I think of former Portuguese colonies like Luanda in Angola (formerly Nova Lisboa) and Maputo in Mozambique (formerly Lourenço Marques), I understand the concept in the context of breaking with traditions and gruesome reminders from colonial times.  So although I hadn’t heard Pretoria was renamed, I immediately did the math in my head and understood what was happening.

It was my seat companion that brought up the issue that inspired this post, when she expressed great frustration at the renaming.  Not because she had some deep seated love for the name Pretoria or for the Apartheid era, but because for this young South African of Afrikaner decent (if I may add with no disrespect intended), the time, energy, and resources dedicated to the process of renaming cities like Pretoria could have better improved the nation by helping to address poverty and the needs of the most vulnerable people of the nation.  Instead they spend huge sums of money and hold endless discussions, all to change a name of a city.

Looking back and forth between this very articulate person and the clouds outside, I was reminded of that great scene in Clint Eastwood’s Film Invictus (about Mandela’s intial time as the new president of South Africa and the end of apartheid).  In this specific scene there is a meeting of the new sports commission about changing the colors and name of the South African rugby team. Rugby having been the sport synonymous with those in power during apartheid. Without going into the extended version of what happened, nor to ruin a powerful scene in the film, just as the new commission is going to approve of a motion to change the name and change the colors of a team that was so important to many white South Africans, Mandela begged them not to.  He felt rugby could be changed from a symbol of division to a symbol of unity.

Mandela has been out of the presidency for a long time and I haven’t read his comments about the Pretoria name change. Maybe it isn’t fair to compare them and indeed the name should go away like Salisbury in Zimbabwe and Leopoldville in Congo. Or maybe the creative and unifying spirit that Mandela brought is gone now, and his fear of people playing politics with symbols and names has come true.

The F Word

Remind me to visit the staff of Radio Netherlands and buy everyone at The State We’re In a drink. Week in and week out the crew produces excellent audio programs on topics related to human rights and human wrongs.

In their latest program they hit yet another homerun with a segment that just reached out and grabbed me; forgiveness.

While I was raised in a fairly religious family, I myself don’t have a religion, nor do I want one.  But one of those lessons many religions seem to try to teach people, is the importance of forgiveness.  Throughout the world there are so many terrible conflicts… and when these conflicts end… if they are really to end.. forgiveness seems to me a very essential stage.  Yet after many conflicts you don’t often see that many truth and reconciliation processes.

In their latest program, The State We’re In speaks with someone from the Forgiveness Project, which is all about understanding and inspiring forgiveness. And later in the program they go to a park in South Africa, know as Freedom Park, which is dedicated to the idea of forgiveness; a place where people (victim or perpetrator) can tell their stories and make amends.

I highly recommend you listen to this segment, and the program in general. If there’s one thing the world could use more of, it is forgiveness.