How much longer?

Forgive me, reader, for it is a while since my last blog. 

In my defense: it has been quite a year, no? The hits just keep coming. As if the pandemic in a post-truth and science-sceptical era is not bad enough, democracy is being dismantled in the US, brick by brick, even as mamy white USians finally seem to realise that unless they do something, the disproportionate deaths of Black men in particular, will continue. I can name all too many names: Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Atatiana Jefferson, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Akai Gurley, Walter Scott, and the list goes on. 

This year, we have George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake and many, many more. 

Most recently (among the better known) Daniel Prude.

WHEN WILL IT END??

At any rate, I was listening to a podcast (Poetry Magazine) and this was the poem they were discussing. Written by a Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal poet. The discussion was simply annoying, especially the point when they see the rope being pushed under the door as "blind justice". WTF? There is no justice here. Nor is there with the all to common ubiquitous execution at the hands of US police with impunity. A definite candidate for decolonisation. I would like to think the discussion would be different now.

Read, and consider. 

 

 

source: Poetry Foundation  (accessed today)

Am I an African?

Peter Tosh sings that as long as you are a black man, you are an African, no matter where you are otherwise "from". The song came up on my random music feed on iTunes and got me thinking.

I was born and raised on the African continent and have spent the better part of my life there. I lived my formative years there, and yet am I African? I am not entirely European, other than by appearance. It is complex. The term Euro-African is useful.

What I am reminded of when the question comes up, however vaguely is when I was living in Nairobi, it was my privilege to be able to hear Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o speak. I forget the exact phrase, but what he said was along the lines that you never forget where you are from, that place forms who you are.

Whether I am African or not in the eyes of all, Africa and my efforts to deconstruct my whiteness as a white South African is probably the most significant part of who I am.

I am profoundly grateful for that and I like who those experiences have made me. I do not know what it is like to like who you are without having to put in work. I suspect that I, and those who like me who understand what the means are the richer.

An analogy for our times

So like most of the world, I have been in social isolation at home. This has entailed working from home for three weeks (and counting). Other than that, my life is remarkably similar to the norm. Well, perhaps I am actually engaging with friends more than normal. Anyway, been doing the usual to get through the days: read, knit (after a break of a few weeks), and watching online TV.

Yesterday I watched three movies. An old thriller I remember enjoying, with Michael Douglas, "Don't say a word". It was as good as I recall, one of the movies I have actually seen on the big screen. I saw that as someone who has never been a particular movie goer, the last movie I saw in an actual cinema was Star Wars: the last Jedi. That should tell you a lot. The other two movies were the Denzel Washington movies Equalizer and Equalizer two. A bit violent for my taste, but I am such a fan of Washington and needed to see the bad guys get what was coming to them, so to speak and I persisted.

On one level it was a fairly typical, tried and true recipe. In the first movie, the foreigners, in the second, the local bad guys. It was a bit surprising as one didn't exactly get to know the character Robert McCall particularly well. Entertaining enough.

The analogy of our times though, which I refer to in my title? From the second movie. The bad guys, [spoiler alert ahead!], ex-CIA assassins who had worked with Robert McCall, the hero as portrayed by Denzel Washington, head to a seaside town to try to kill McCall. In the middle of a hurricane. The seaside town has been evacuated, but this does not stop them. McCall even parks his car in some kind of plastic igloo of sorts (in case you have any doubts as to the level of absurdity). One even climbs to the top of a tower. It doesn't take much to guess how that ends (the hurricane has little effect).

Watching that reminded me of how the US prepared itself for the COVID-19 pandemic. They saw it coming and yet they headed straight into it somehow. Yep.

200 word story (more or less): There it stood, stalwart!

I listened to an old podcast from 2012 called "Writing challenges" today. It was an episode entitlted: Beginning at the beginning. The writing challenge was to take the first sentence from a short story as the starting point for your own 200 words. I own but one anthology of short stories, The Daily Assortment of Astonishing Things and Other stories, published by the Caine Prize for African Writing 2016. I have picked out ten starting lines randomly and started with the one I considered to most difficult. It turned out to be quite fun. So thought I could post it here. 

The first line is from the short story 77 steps by Kafula Mwila. 

--------------

There it stood, stalwart! Resolute in its intent to remain upright, refusing to surrender. By all accounts the old ruin should have been little more than a pile of rocks after the pounding it had received from the local school’s war club, who had practiced their skills on it the previous day. And yet, against all odds, it remained clear that a sturdy building with thick walls had once crowned the hillock.

She turned to see Phoebe still gazing horrified at her as she advanced in the clearing. Even from the distance of thirty meters, she could see the fear etched on her friend’s face. Comparable of the obstinacy of the old ruin to prostrate itself in the onslaught of the war club’s games, was the determination of the club’s master to flatten the ruin for once and for all. White men did not brook resistance. Certainly not from an old ruin, a mere pile of ancient bricks clinging precariously to some kind of structured formation. How dare relics of the past thwart the will of these boys and their master? Antonia reached out and touched the wall, which was at least still double her height.

“Our past is not so easily brushed aside,” she murmured.  
[207 words]

--------------

It is about how history cannot be obliterated as easily as some think. 

It is about toxic white masculinity which seeks to dominate, including what it does not approve of in its own history. 

It is about the indominability of those who are not white nor male.  

Dinner Guest: Me

by Langston Hughes

I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A -
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
"I'm so ashamed of being white."

The lobster is delicious,
The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of corse, wait.

From: Randall, Dudley (Ed) (1971) The Black Poets

Comment: It is now 2020 and we have not really progressed that much, have we?

A poem to start the year

I ended 2019 with a poem, and I find myself starting 2020 with one too. Yes, it is a bit lazy, but that might also depend on one's goals.

I am currently reading The Black Poets by Dudley Randall and this is one by the editor, which has an important message (as all good poems should, having said which, see the HML principle).

Black Poet, White Critic 
by Dudley Randall

A critic advises
not to write on controversial subjects
like freedom or murder,
but to treat universal themes
and timeless symbols
like the white unicorn.

A white unicorn?

Was wondering if I should comment on the poem, but realised that would be whitesplaining.

So will leave the poem to speak for itself.