'Afrikaans Kos' and more

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"What is this? This is for you, daddy told her. Because it is your birthday. It has four thick feeth. Two ears that look like towels which have been eaten. On his back and head there is a a bump full of thin red small hairs. Hanging from his thick behind, there is a tail hanging, longer than Ping's plait. But craziest of all, this crazy dog has a nose that is hanging till the ground. This is not a nose, this is a trunk, said daddy. And this is not a dog, Marthe , this is an elephant. " Antjie Krog was reading out of a 'miraculous' Flemish children's book "Sam, a true story of a daughter and her elephant" written by Ingrid Vander Veken and translated in Afrikaans by Antjie Krog. Lapa uitgewers organized its annual meeting where African writers could present their book. As the annual tradition wants it, there was also a Flemish writer invited. This time Antjie, renowned South African writer, had chosen the book. She stayed at the 'writers' apartment in Antwerp, and found on the book shelves this nice booklet Ingrid wrote. It is a story about a girl who received an elephant for her birthday. It is a story based on true facts. It was organized at the premises of the literary club of Dutch - Afrikaner literature. There has always been a close bond between South Africa and Flanders of which the meeting was a prove of. Is it the language or is there more? Afrikaners are natural descendants of Dutch and Germans but there is still a certain complicity with Flemish people. The language is closer to the Flemish than the Dutch. Ingrid told me that she thinks there are many similarities between West - ,East Flemish and Afrikaans. The sk-sound (instead of sch) for sure and also the double negation and words such gezei (said), seun (son) but it is not only the language, there's more. When I entered the building, I was thinking of a conversation with a South African friend, who has been visiting Belgium recently and was asked to make a work of art that is typical for Flanders but also to bring the different cultures together. The artwork still needs to be revealed, but food and drinks are involved. He told me that he was struck to see that people seem to find each other in restaurants, tea rooms, cafes and that these are the places where Flemish, Belgians and other cultures do not care about differences. We all eat Chinese, Flemish, Belgian, Turkish, Spanish. And just this is what strikes me about South Africa as well. Afrikaners also love food and drinks. You have to admit that receiving a glass of white wine at a literature event at 9:30 am, might only happen in Belgium as well. Although in Belgium you'd rather get a glass of beer instead. Not only wine was served to tickle our taste buds but also delicious dishes were being served. They all are the result of a history of several cultures as their names suggest. Huge platters with bobotie sosaties, samoosas, vetkoek and of course the melktert, sweets, koeksisters, malvapudding, tambo  colored the tables. And as it happened I just read the book of Antjie Krog "Change of Tongue". She describes the importance of the kombuis (kitchen) for Afrikaners. Her Ouma once made a feast for the English Governor General, the enemy of the Afrikaners. The love for eating radiates from the letter that her Ouma wrote about the the event: "Klasie presented this enormous pudding to him in a Newley painted wheelbarrow. With the coffee we served milk tart, koeksiskters and Aunt Stoffie's feather-light jam puffs and paper -thin slices of guava marinated in port. " Much has been written about Afrikaners and they very definitely have a complex history but now when I will return I will associate the Afrikaners, just like my South African friend says for him the Flemisch identity is associated with the food culture, with the delicious dishes and a glass of wine. And perhaps here lies our complicity, in the ability to experience the culture of the other in our own culture through the food culture.

Frustration

South Africa, a changing country, but also a country full of frustrations. The images of the past few days about the shootings are shocking and a lot of the analysis as well. Politicians fight over who is to blame. It is the fault of the ANC, it is the fault of the police, it is the fault of the unions, it is the fault of everyone ... but perhaps most of all of poverty. The riots last week in Cape Town as well. During my stay in the past few weeks I have been constantly trying to wonder how I could survive in these circumstances. People try to be creative, some try to make something out of it, others try to make their dreams come true ... but we can try to romanticize, the harsh reality remains that many have no running water, many no electricity, no plumbing and alcoholism, drugs, abuse of women is rampant. Take the miners, they live in similar settings, working in very unhealthy conditions and earn a mere 400 Euros per month. In all honesty, I have to say that in all my despair, frustration and anger I would protest as well and probably would do stupid things. Because, what have  have you got to lose? If you no longer have human dignity, what remains? Twenty years after apartheid, the weak still have to battle. All their hope was aimed at having a better life but still a lot of people are waiting for it to happen. Twenty years after apartheid, apartheid still remains. Not necessarily the white against the black, but the rich against the poor. And yet change must come. That's what this is all about, 'change'. Hopefully the political leaders will realize that change must come for everyone. Talking to people, the main tone of the conversation is frustration. There are probably political theories, economical, and certainly also anthropological, but sometimes when one witnesses images as the mining killings, one must be one's reason aside and let the heart speak. Once again, the poor Africans are the victims. Let me end with one of the figureheads of the negritudebeweging.

Aime Césaire

those who have invented neither powder nor compass

those who could harness neither steam nor electricity

those who explored neither the seas nor the sky

but those without whom the earth would not be the earth

gibbosity all the more beneficent as the bare earth even more earth

my negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day

my negritude is not a leukoma of dead liquid over the earth’s dead eye

my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral

it takes root in the red flesh

of the soil it takes root in the ardent flesh

of the sky it breaks through the opaque prostration with its upright patience

Eia for the royal Cailcedra!

Eia for those who have never invented anything

for those who never explored anything

for those who never conquered anything

Pink Boots

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‘God created the rose in the likeness of Woman '. It was written on the card Kamilla and I received on one of our visits to the townships of Strand. Five ladies in blue t-shirts, accompanied by their male colleague in police uniform, handed the cards out . They visited the school to wish all female teachers a nice Women's Day. This is was not the only Women’s event we witnessed that day. When visiting the school, we noticed all female teacher were absent.  The school principal had taken all of them out to have a cop of coffee. Should this this have happened at a Belgian school all kids would have been shouting and having a party. In this school, children were working and this without having a teacher in front of the classroom. ‘This would never happen in Belgium’, said Kamilla. Elsa, the lady who was my guide for the day, is very proud of the township school. She contributed a lot and invested a lot in the school. She even is paying for a music teacher who started a choir, but she also made sure there were computers and a lot more. The school principal  is proud to say that the number of pupils has tripled in recent years.

I would like to dedicate this story to celebrate Women's Day and you can be a witness of these  'wonderful women' as they are called. In my quest for stories about people in post-apartheid, I was brought into contact with Elsa. She was a doctor in psychology in Potchefstroom. Like many others, when she retired, she traded the dryness of the desert for the coastal beauty of Cape Town. She is a convinced member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and precisely because of her faith she thinks it is her duty to care for the less fortunate. My first conversation with her had me baffled. Stories of people who have experienced apartheid as Afrikaner and were part of a system, evokes ambiguous feelings. At one point, she told me that during the eighties the Cosby show was shown on TV, people realized that 'blacks’ also could be intelligent. It became clear to her that everyone is equal in the eyes of God. It kept playing my mind ‘How could a teacher psychology (psychology) think like this?’

Like every Afrikaner I talk to, she is convinced that getting rid of apartheid was a good thing and at least everyone gets an equal chance now. This opened up a whole range of possibilities for a lot of people but it also the gave opportunity to people that has been so haunted by their history to re-profile themselves. Although religion is declining, South Africa is still a very religious country. There are so many religions as there are people and despite the many problems in this country, between different religions, there appears to be no conflicts. Elsa is a convinced member of the Dutch Reformed Church and finds that in the present circumstances it is her duty to help the less fortunate. She raises funds for the local school in the township to buy food, organizes food handouts in the hospital for HIV-patients who have to take their pills with food, she wants a daycare center for children in the poorest township in Strand, Casablanca . Casablanca has an exotic name but it is a sad sight of deteriorated houses. Elsa shows me the plot of land where they want to build the daycare center for children. Now they make do with a small container without water and electricity for the children. There is only room for 12 kids from the neighborhood and it is Elsa’s dream to be able to house all the kids of the neighborhood. The poverty of the area is hard to describe. Not only Elsa is doing a lot but the women of the district are putting in their weight as well. Irma is one of the people who are better off in the neighborhood. Her husband works in construction and they have build a 'proper' house. It is not huge but cozy. She also has a stove on which she prepares soup. Elsa provides the ingredients and Irma prepares the soup  twice a week in her Sopkombuis (soup kitchen). The locals can get soup for free. At least they eat healthy twice a week, she says. Last Friday we helped at the 3-monthly second hand clothes sale in Casablanca. The magnitude of the poverty struck me at that moment. The sale had the same effect as sales In Belgium. The people rushed onto the clothing and for 0.2 cents a piece, they could get a whole outfit. Elsa said she had to ask money because the first time when everything was for free, people started fighting  and burned down the place.

There was a kind of roughness in the room. Boys rushed to our car upon arrival, hoping to earn some money by helping us carrying bags. The cringing behavior, sir, madam ... I do not get used to it. Yet, there was also some happiness. Adolescent girls found a pair of pink boots with very high heels and this was reason enough for them to spend some time in a dream world and have the illusion to be a model.

I talked to Jennifer that day. She also lives in Casablanca and is considered the mom of the neighborhood. She also helps with the sopkombuis because she wants to care for the people. ‘I love people’, she says, ‘I do not have anything but I like to give because I know what it is to be hungry.’ She has three children, and has already known a lot of misery in her life. Her son was hooked on tik, a type of drug, and he even robbed her of what little they possessed, because he needed the money. Luckily he gave up on the drugs, she said, and now has a job. Her youngest daughter was pregnant when she was 15 and now Jennifer takes care of her four year old grandchild. She is so proud that despite her daughter's pregnancy, she is a good student at school. This could not have happened without the generosity of the people from church, she says. She really wants her daughter to get her diploma so she can find a job. ‘I keep faith in the Lord above. He means the best with us ‘ she continues. She is a member of an African Christian church and this keeps her going. ‘God is there to take care of us.’

I only had one thought in my head when we drove away. God can never have wanted all this misery.

And yet it is moving. Elsa with her group of volunteers from the church, living in the nicer part of ​​the city, trying to give their fellow citizens in the slums a dignified life. The religion as a bridge between two parts of the city. Many questions still haunt my mind but for now I stick to the testimony of women who get the strength from their faith. One to help each other, the other to give meaning to her existence. And if only for one hour, a few teenage girls get pleasure from a pair of pink boots ... 'God created the rose in the likeness of Woman '

Madiba's Birthday

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It was Nelson Mandela's birthday. He turned 94 on July 18 and for one day, everyone was under the spell of Mandela. Blacks, whites and everyone in between, everyone loves Madiba or tata (father) as he is called here. We only saw pictures of the man and only a small crowd of people was allowed on his party, but an entire nation celebrated his birthday by doing 67 minutes of charity work that day to honor his ideas.

67, since the man devoted 67 years of his life to fight for equality for his people and all other cultures. Exactly on that day, the nation was relieved from a period of bad weather, and the people Mandela fought for could take a break from all the water misery that plagued the townships. The sun and warm temperatures were doing community service  for more than 67 minutes as a tribute to Madiba.

How a people that has been so oppressed and so humiliated, keeps believing in a better world but even more so how a man after being plagued by so much misery and was excluded by the government based on his skin color, forgave these people, is almost unreal .

The day before, I visited the District Six Museum with my family.  District Six is an ugly wound in downtown Cape Town and is a symbol of the apartheid policy that ruled the country for years. It was a working-class area, but very lively and multicultural, so the stories tell. Many nationalities were living together and it was a vibrant neighborhood with lots of restaurants and bars. The colorful picture of this district did not fit into a clean and Calvinist lifestyle that the apartheid government had in mind. Spatial planning in all its extremity was executed and what does not belong, should better be removed to another area. In the 60's it was decided to evacuate the area completely and change the area into a new white neighborhood. In the end, the white neighborhood was never realized. Visiting it today, you will see a partly built area but most of it is empty land. The inhabitants were exiled to the ‘Cape Town flats’, on the other side of Table Mountain. To date, these are the townships that are still embracing Cape Town.

We were lucky Noor, a former resident and banished from the neighborhood, was witnessing about the good days in District Six. That day, he accompanied a group of Muslim schoolkids, neatly in their uniforms, some girls with vails, some guys with fez,  but mostly a cheerful bunch of teenagers, now living in the surroundings of District Six.

Noor was born in District Six. He was second generation in the area. He started his family in the District, had a job until one day in 1975, everything came to an end. His family had one month to empty the house and move out of the area. Every day, for six years long, Noor revisited his former house and on one day it was gone. Noor witnesses about  the colorful life in the district and about the many cultures living together in harmony. Perhaps the memories are more romantic than real life was, but how can a government decide that a neighborhood that was created by its inhabitants was inferior to that of its own people? How can a government be so obsessed with protecting its own species that it compares the lives of the inhabitants with stones and hope that everything will disappear with a bulldozer? These are questions that are crossing my mind and my conversations with the Afrikaner people that were part of the apartheid regime, confuse me even more. Maybe because they are humans as well and a lof of them victims of a dogmatic policy.

Not only families were torn apart in District Six, but an entire community was destroyed. The consequences are dramatic, especially for cultures where community life is so important and family is the foundation of their existence. To blame apartheid as the only culprit for the huge misery in these townships, would not be correct. Twenty years have passed since apartheid, and a lot of the poverty and despair is also the result of a constantly changing world where globalization, neoliberal policies and as a lot of people are telling me, a failing policy of the current government. Poverty is becoming more poignant and the values that ​​were once so important to different communities are disappearing and leave people adrift.

Yesterday, my daughters and me visited an education project in one of the poorest townships of Cape Town, Lavender Hill.  Gangs are controlling Lavender Hill and there is a lot of violence. We were told that this was one of the areas where people of District Six were removed to. We participated in a program that assists parents in raising their children. Coming from Belgium, the sight of the houses with corrugated iron roofs and old billboards that are used as a wall but also houses with small gardens to make it a bit cosy, remains hard to getting used to. It remains incomprehensible that so many people can live on such a small area. And yet people try to make the best of it, they bike, women are gossiping, you see men chatting ... But my ignorance of life in a township became clear when I talked to Natasha, one of the parents. She is a single mother of a boy of seven and lives with her mother not far from the school. Quality time with the children was the theme of the meeting. We had to tell each other how we spend quality time with children. I said I had it with my kids in the kitchen during cooking. She replied that this was not possible for her because they only had one room which served as bedroom and kitchen and it was too small. When I replied that they could do this at the table, she replied that they did not even have a table. At this moment, I realized that I can not even begin to imagine how life in the townships is. Both of us are a mum, and we both want the best for our children but the odds are not the same and when I saw these mothers, teenage mothers, aunt, grandma and dad sitting in the room, I knew that these opportunities are so important. They themselves never enjoyed a good education. They are being teached how to talk to their children. How important it is to read stories to their children in order for the kids to learn new words. For us, this seems so normal for these people, it is not.  The moms, aunt, grandmother proudly tell us how they spend quality time with the kids and how they teach them new concepts by doing things together. One of the moms was so proud to tell us  ‘my child would love this whale book because he loves boats and whales’, is moving but also hard. They want so badly to provide their children a good future, but to realize that these children may never get the opportunities to enjoy a decent education is a harsh reality. The environment in which they live is one of gangster violence and drugs and quick money and this is the future of many innocent, happy children we met that day. Desmund Tutu put it nicely, the day after Madiba's birthday: "Madiba’s heart would bleed, luckily he does not know everything."

And yet I do not want to end on a negative note and despite those harsh realities, there are people out there who are active in order to help these communities. The teachers at the school that accompany the children every day, the many volunteers such as Brigid and many others that try to give the people the tools to create a better life for themselves. There is a lot of misery in this country but also a lot of good-will of its citizens to give everyone equal opportunities. Such as the anti-apartheid movement at the time changed the course of the country, different communities, black and white, rich and poor,  will make it possible,  little by little, to overcome the poverty and misery and make  Madiba's dream come true. As Desmund Tutu  ended his interview: "there is a lot of wonderful people of all races that love South Africa with a lot of passion." These are similar findings I encounter in my search of the evolution of the postapartheid society.