Ctrl+Alt+Delete -- resetting this blog

I let this blog space go dormant for more than a year. I let it “rest” for two main reasons. First, because I felt increasingly uncomfortable engaging in discussions on what was happening in South Africa, least of all because I have not lived in the country since August 1997. Second, because I have been making serious formal and informal enquiries about returning to the country, and did not want this blog space to turn into an extension of searching for a job in South Africa. I have a very long and organic relationship with the Mail & Guardian that goes back to its founding days. It is a bond of which I am proud. I have always and will continue to consider writing for or publishing photographs in the paper as a privilege and will not abuse that privilege.

Anyway, leaving room for irrationalities, I have, now, all but given up returning to South Africa and will resume this blog (that you are reading this, means the editors of Thought Leader have approved this resumption). I will, however, not get into any details about what is happening within the country, just because I may, but focus on a more unique area of discussion around my personal and professional interests as a displaced South African with an active interest in the media and global political economic matters.

This does not mean that I have no interest in issues like race and class, or inequality and injustice — issues that are transnational and intergenerational, but which, it would appear, are presented as unique to post-apartheid South Africa. Indeed, unlike most of the expatriate South Africans I have read about or listened to, I don’t believe that violence against women and children, crime, corruption and misadministration began on April 27 1994. Parenthetically, I met an outstanding couple a few weeks ago who do not fit the profile I describe here. This was one of the very, very rare occasions when I formally met and sat down with a post-1990 expatriate. Nonetheless, others I know of arrive in Europe or North America and mysteriously lose all their passion and agency around issues like violence, crime, unjust incarceration, social breakdown, greed, cronyism, racism, exploitation and expediency — again, as if these pathologies are organically tied to post-1990 South Africa.

Some of them are highly placed among the intellectuals organically tied to the transnational managerial class of global capitalism. Other than making friends with dark-skinned people in trendy restaurants, wearing ethno-chic clothing or supporting African countries during the football World Cup, trading on their anti-apartheid credentials or framing themselves as victims of post-apartheid crime, they seem to ignore crime and injustice around them. I have often tried to understand this, intellectually. Sometimes it smacks of cognitive dissonance, sometimes it is best explained by the concept “confirmation bias” in terms of which one ignores evidence that makes you feel uncomfortable or you hold onto your beliefs notwithstanding evidence that contradicts such beliefs. Sometimes I think it is just subtle and insidious racism (that any black government in South Africa would be/is necessarily bad, regardless of what the government does) — most of the time, other than occasional banter, I keep my mouth shut. If there is one generalisation that can be made, it would be that there are no racists in South Africa and that nobody actually supported apartheid.

Social pathologies home and away
Having lived in Britain, continental Europe and North America over the past 14 years, and having spent some time elsewhere in the Americas I find it quite befuddling that once some South Africans leave the country they tend to ignore what is happening in the lands that they now call home. For instance, in the US, today, there are types of pogroms against migrant workers and foreigners in states like Arizona and Texas. Such is the perversity of the anti-immigrant tendency in places like Arizona, that that state proposed banning ethnic studies courses. Also in Arizona, in January this year, a politician, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot by a gunman who, it would appear, took his cue from a right-wing political movement. In South Carolina, a politician referred to poor people as stray animals. In the country’s legislature a politician’s response to the plight of the unemployed was dismissed as “tough shit”. This week, riot police were called in to break up a student block party at Western Illinois University. Unemployment, inequality and poverty levels in the US are at the highest levels since the Depression; the country has a deficit that is truly astounding — it outstrips that of its competitors (the problem of competitive states can be discussed at another time); de-industrialisation has caused the production core of the country to rot and decay and millions of jobs have been lost in high-wage, high-skilled manufacturing jobs in the county and forced workers into other low-wage sectors like waiting on tables and health service. In some states the current recession has affected black and Latino communities disproportionately severely .

I should be clear, like South Africa, the US is a great country, but poverty, inequality, injustice, cruel and insensitive politicians, racial or ethnic discrimination and violence are not unique to either country. Perhaps most importantly, April 27 1994 was not the fount of these pathologies; presenting them as such conceals much more about those who, in fact, do so, than they reveal … it is some of these “concealed” biases and meanings that I will try to explore. So, between my work and teaching international political economy and international relations and my interest in the media (more than just the press) I resume writing this blog. Of course, since I don’t take myself too seriously, I am also up for a laugh.

For the record (again): I have permanent residence in the US. I first qualified for US citizenship and passport four or five years ago, but renewed my South African passport, instead. I teach at Elon University in North Carolina and there is a chance that I may take up a new position somewhere else (in the US or in a developing country) within the coming weeks and months. I perpetuate no ethnic, racial or religious identity and have an unwavering commitment to pacifism and non-violence, and to non-militarist solutions to human insecurity.