Long time ago, when he was far too young to understand, I took my son to Robben Island. It was me who wanted to go. He didn’t care — he just wanted to go on the big boat ride and find seals and laugh and shout and say did you see that one with the […]
Equality
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
When will apartheid victims be compensated?
June 26 is the anniversary of the signing of the Freedom Charter. It is also International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The Freedom Charter is an aspirational document which focuses mainly on freedoms “to” and “of”. One subclause speaks directly to freedom “from”: “The privacy of the house from police raids shall be […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
The hair debate must end
While watching Gillian Schutte’s documentary “It’s my hair … I bought it”, I thought the hair debate must come to an end. It’s banal and redundant. Talking about black women’s hair needs to stop being a question of national importance. Our hair is not all of who we are. Why have I never seen a […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
On hatred and forgiveness
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, his unrelentingly bleak vision of humankind in thrall to a merciless totalitarianism, George Orwell relates how his mythical State of Oceania compels all its citizens to observe a daily “Two Minutes Hate” ritual. All citizens are required to watch a film denouncing the designated enemies of the all-powerful Party and work themselves […]
Posted inEquality, General, Lifestyle
Frogs and queens: Crossdressing and déjà vu (I)
Most of us have split up with a member of the opposite sex. I love the unintended pun: splitting genes, separating the masculine from the feminine. My favourite was Frances. She betrayed me while we were still “an item” for a friend, Angus, who turned out to be a cross-dresser. To everyone’s surprise. Imagine being […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Whose land is it anyway?
It’s no secret, 100 years later and we are still living with the effects of the 1913 Land Act. While watching the news clip with President Jacob Zuma opening yet another exhibition “commemorating” the Land Act, the idea of marking the dispossession of land an occasion to be commemorated by exhibitions makes me wonder about […]
Posted inEquality
Forget the skirt, arrest the fashion police!
If Lindiwe Mazibuko and Angie Motshekga appear poles apart politically, there is one reality they have shared socially — being subjected to public sexist insults. Mazibuko’s case is only the latest in a number of public incidents where women are dismissed on the basis of body, age and dress — that age old language of […]
Posted inEquality
Shit and social justice
Poststructuralist psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has argued that humans distinguish themselves from animals in the instant during which shit becomes something shameful. Thus it is the norm in ‘polite society’ that humans defecate in the privacy of a toilet in which their waste can be instantly flushed away. In fact toilet training is the foundation for […]
Posted inEquality, General
Are non-Afrikans inherently bad?
On June 8 2013 fellow Thought Leader blogger Malaika wa Azania shared a short opinion piece on her FB wall. In it she raised debate around the apparent Ubuntu in African people, and how the white man has “made of us animals with their capitalism and individualistic ideologies”. She argued that Africans have been taken […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
White guilt? You have no idea
“I think I speak on behalf of all whites when I say we are just totally sick of all the race-baiting going on in South Africa.” So says Dan Roodt, who read my last Thought Leader post and was most unimpressed by this “latest sigh of white guilt”. So I thought I’d write about guilt. […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, Health
Name and shame?
I got taken to the doctor. He sat opposite me and said exactly nothing, not even hello or how are you. Pale and discomforted, he looked everywhere. And then I saw his cold hand, white shirt cuff, soft beige jersey, slowly pushing one small white tranquiliser halfway across the polished desk. I asked what it […]
Posted inEquality, Media
White writers writing black characters – a form of literary blackface?
White South African writers who create black characters are often challenged about the authenticity of their writing. If their main protagonist is black, this challenge intensifies, and if they write in the first person, it intensifies further. There is something particularly intimate about first-person narrative. It gets under the skin of the character in a […]