Did Switzerland Benefit From the Apartheid Regime? The Response of a Piece of Land

©tinyiko sam maluleke

My name is Valdezia, otherwise known as Klipfontein in government archives and in the annals of my latter history. In my day, I used to be a stunner - a foresty fertile jewel of the north – in one corner of what you have now come to call Limpopo province. Nicely ensconced between two rivers – Levubu and Mambedi – I was once as wild as I was untamed. You would think that the high walls of beautiful mountains and the layers of flowing hills that surround me would protect me from human and nature's burglars alike. But alas! I have been burgled several times over.

Teeming with a wide variety of fauna and adorned by a diverse range of tropical flora, many fell in love with me at the very first sight.Those who had made their homes on and with me for years – mainly the Vatsonga but also some Vhavenda - were the envy of many. In my time and over the centuries, I have been walked and worked by many peoples, mostly in joy, but sometimes in fright, flight or fights. All through the 18th century, I developed a bond and a symbiotic relationship with the people who settled on me. These were the descendants of the ancient Maphungubye dynasty and the children of the great Munamutapa of Zimba ra Mabye who accupied much of what you have come to call Mozambique and Zimbabwe today.

Blood was spilt on me in the early half of the 19th century during the so-called difaqane or mfecane wars triggered by the expansion of the Shaka’s kingdom. I was a witness to the marauding and passing battalions of Mzilikazi. Silently, I watched the great waves of migrations as peoples moved across Southern Africa in flight from war and in search for greener pastures.

In 1852, the Afrikaners (then known as the trek boers) arrived with their wagons and their horses; apparently having migrated from the Cape in the so-called great trek. From the whispers of some of my inhabitants, I learnt that the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (South African Republic) was formed in December 1856. What puzzled me and my people was that I and them were summarily transferred into the ownership of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. As if this was not enough, I was given a new name. Klipfontein. Neither I nor the people who lived on me could pronounce the new name. ©tinyiko sam maluleke

I woke up on the beautiful morning of the 3rd January 1872 to discover that I had been gifted by the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek to a Mr Willem Andries Pretorius.  This reality was to dawn slowly on me and my inhabitants. Within three months of acquiring me, Pretorius sold his Klipfontein to one Manuel Maria De Gama on the 3rd of April 1872. Nearly a year later De Gama sells me to a Scotsman called John Watt on the 7th of February 1872. Three years later John Watt sold me to a Swiss gentleman by the name of Paul Berthoud. He was apparently buying me on behalf of an organisation called La Mission Suisse dans L’Afrique Du Sud. This was on the 3rd of April 1876.

In four years, I was exchanged between four different owners. All this was done behind my own back and behind the backs of the people who for centuries had made their homes on my planes and beneath the hills that adorn my landscape. Throughout all these, I had a keen sense of being a dispensable commodity. My owners passed me so quickly between them like a rugby ball, I was left dizzy.©tinyiko sam maluleke

Nor do the mainstream histories about me and the surrounding areas – written mainly by the Swiss and their academic hangers-on - say much of the people who lived on me, except stories that relate to their own exploits and their so-called evangelistic work.  How did they manage to miss the vibrant life that existed outside the narrow confines of the artificial social construction called a mission station? How did they fail to listen to the rich history that preceded and surrounded them even as they were within a stone throw from the great Mapungubye? I do not understand how they failed to notice the meticulous social organisation and governance glued together by  a complex system of indunas, chiefs and kings. How did they manage not to see the innovative work(s) of a people who had for centuries been involved in iron and copper mining, sophisticated midwifery practices, pedagogic folklore, construction and the treatment of a wide range of diseases and ailments? There was life, history, work, knowledge, culture, agriculture and governance before the Zuid Afrikaansche republic and before the Swiss arrived.

Once they had acquired me, the Swiss young men Paul Berthoud and Ernest Creux proceeded to rename me (again!) into Valdezia. In four years I was given two names that had nothing to do with my past, present or future. My new name was given apparently in honour of their home province in Switzerland, the canton of Vaud. They also proceeded to start processes of ‘discipling’ the people, through the introduction of a Swiss school system in place of local systems of educating the young, church in place of local beliefs and traditions as well European building and agricultural methods in place of local building and agricultural knowledges and methodologies. Through these strategies they reckoned that they were taming and civilizing both the people and me, the land on which the people settled.

Of particular concern to me was the manner in which my landscape was re-ordered and remade by my Swiss owners, especially in the area designated as their mission station. European blue-gum and pine trees were introduced in place of what they saw as the nameless, meaningless pagan trees that littered their newly acquired Valdezia. More ‘civilized’ farming methods and produce were introduced. The ‘backward’ circle was replaced by the ‘civilized’ square in all buildings and built structures. The thatch roofs were hastily replaced by corrugated iron roofs.

But who says the circle is backward either in philosophy, architecture or engineering? Who says corrugated iron roofs are better than thatch roofs in the African climate? Have you noticed how those who once spoke against thatch roofs are living in thatch-roofed houses today? ©tinyiko sam maluleke

Knowledges that suggested that forests, rivers, frogs, snakes and mountains are alive and may carry vital messages as well as vital clues to humanity’s livelihood and future were not only ridiculed by the Swiss but actively rooted out. This is what was called animism and paganism - la culture païenne, they called it. The Swiss prohibited all trading and all entrepreneurship by Africans in Valdezia well into the 1990s. Entreprenuership and economic activity was also seen as part of pagan culture -la culture païenne. Yet the Swiss continued to trade and to engage in commerce right on me and back in SWitzerland where they came from. They banned and banished all other gods except themselves. Little did they know that the gods of the land do not die easily - they should have asked me. They prohibited and outlawed all other churches except their own. The drinking of alcohol was banned. Circumcision schools were outlawed. Forests were cleared of all 'pagan' trees, bushes, fruits and vegetables. In their place were installed civilised forests, trees, fruits and vegetables from Europe. All of these, I had to bear and carry on my back. All these terrible secrets I have had to keep in my chest.

Have you noticed how those who once taught that trees and rivers are lifeless things deserving no  respect and no veneration have since changed their tune? They now speak in favour of what they call 'environmental sustainability'. They now speak to trees and campaign to save animals. One hopes this too is no passing fad.©tinyiko sam maluleke

Roughly fifty years after purchasing me, the Swiss sold portions of me to a select group of so-called educated and converted men who were their members – something for which the Swiss have never ceased to congratulate themselves ever since. But the new African landlords were buying land on which they and their ancestors had been living for at least a century before the Swiss arrived. Essentially they were buying their own land from the Swiss. This is reminiscent of the story of satan asking Jesus to kneel before him so satan could give Jesus the earth. But the earth already belonged to Jesus! You get my point? The creation of a new landlord class, created further social stratifications and resentment among the people who lived on me.©tinyiko sam maluleke

Yet some of the most vexing times in my life as a piece of land were during the reign of the Bantustan system in South Africa – starting in the late 1950s lasting up to the advent of democracy in 1994. First a decision had to be made as to which homeland would lay claim to me – Venda or Gazankulu was the question. It turned out that geographically I belonged to neither. I was a piece of land that sat wholly in a so-called white area. Yet the people who lived on me were not white and they overwhelmingly belonged to Gazankulu ethnically and linguistically. What do to? The Apartheid social engineers thought at and thought. At one stage they called me a ‘Tsonga finger’ which was irreverently and illegally poking into a white body (of land). Eventually they decided that the people who lived on me had to be moved to ‘their Gazankulu homeland’ leaving me to the whites in ‘whose geographic territory’ I was situated. Apparently, these black people who lived on me made me a black spot on a white body of land. But the Swiss did not wish to let go of me their 'investment'.

Thus started a period of intense negotiations between the Swiss, the Apartheid government and the Gazankulu Bantustan about my future. Conspicuous in their absence were the Valdezia inhabitants in the negotiations regarding the future of Valdezia. Especially excluded from the discussions were the century old (at least) chieftaincy of the people of Valdezia. ©tinyiko sam maluleke.

In part, the negotiations with the Apartheid government were used both by the Swiss and the Gazankulu homeland representatives to sideline and elbow out the local chieftaincy whom the Swiss have resented from the first day they set foot on me. Instead a make-shift and artificial out-of-the-blue chieftaincy headed by an appointee they had selected was installed in the place of a chieftaincy long established and long known by the people. All this was done under the pretext of a quest to ‘save’ the people of Valdezia from being removed. The Swiss and their side-kicks have never stopped beating their chests in self-congratulation for their allegedly 'selfless' task of ‘saving’ Valdezia. I have silently looked on to all these shenanigans with dismay. They 'saved' neither me nor the people who lived on me. Maybe what they 'saved', at least for that time being, was their 'investment'. How can a people who depend on me for their very lives save me? Only I can save them.

Over time, the benefits and meaningfulness of the Swiss and Bantustan salvation have evaporated into thin air. If you do not believe me come and visit me today and see for yourself.

One hundred and forty years later, neither I nor the people living on me look anything like we did at the beginning of the 19th century. I the land am almost bare. The forest that once adorned me is gone. The blue gum and pine trees are still here. But the rivers and the fountains have run dry. The birds and the animals that once roamed have left without  a word. All who can; have boreholes next to their houses. The rest buy their water from the borehole owners. There is significant overcrowding. The roads are still dusty and untarred. One hundred and forty years later I bleed and I plead. One hundred and forty years later, all descendants of the Swiss who chose to stay in adjacent farmlands have become wealthy land owners. One hundred and forty years later the vast majority of descendants of the people who lived on me remain landless and poor. ©tinyiko sam maluleke

The artificial moral universe created by the Swiss has collapsed almost completely. Shebeen and tavern trading businesses are thriving everywhere. Loud music plays in the taverns throughout the night. Rival churches have set themselves up at the doorstep of the Swiss church of Valdezia – armed with blurring loudspeakers and amplified musical instruments.  Business is booming for the traditional healers and sangomas - and why not - don't they stand in the great traditions of the indigenous religions and spiritualities? The gods the Swiss tried to banish and suppress have come back to dance.  ©tinyiko sam maluleke

But social organization, governance, community cohesion and community leadership lies in apparent tatters. The local political council shows every sign of lack of vision, being one of the most divisive entities in the community and behaving more like the latest landlord rather than a body elected by the local people to serve the interests of all local people.

I am resilient and I have no doubt I and the people who live on me can rise again. For my renewal to happen several things need to happen. Central to these is a visionary local and provincial leadership with a keen appreciation of my historic trials and tribulations. I am also in need of friends who will act in solidarity with me, the people, the fauna and the flora which live on me. This must happen before I am auctioned off to the next set of burglars with yet another fancy name. Perhaps even the Swiss may wish to make amends for a piece of land from which the have derived so much more than money can buy for one hundred and forty years. After all did they not bury some of their own in my bowels?
©tinyiko sam maluleke

The State of the City of Pretoria

On Friday the 5th of April 2013 I had breakfast with the mayor of the city of my residence – the great city of Tshwane, otherwise also known (for the time being) as Pretoria. Don’t we all deserve and need a bit of name-dropping from time to time? The mayor of this great city is none other than Comrade Kgosientso Ramokgopa. The occasion of our historic meeting was a breakfast designed to discuss The Pretoria/Tshwane 2013 State of the City Address, less than twenty-four hours after it was delivered by the comrade mayor. At this event the mayor further engages a carefully selected audience, notably from the government, business, media, senior members of his staff, as well as some key people in the diplomatic and academic arenas.

Councillor Kgosientso Ramokgopa is one of the more able, sharp-witted and most engaging of the current crop of mayors on offer in the country. Blessed with the gift of the gab, Ramokgopa also possesses a good sense of humour, with a veritable community of cheerleaders and hangers-on among his staff and comrades. I am not sure that he is always in sync with his speechwriters, though. Nor am I sure that he always has both his feet firmly on the ground. Some of his ideas are so philosophical and so theoretical one can be pardoned for wondering if they are practical enough for implementation.

Several things worried me about his SOCA 2013 and the comments he made at the subsequent breakfast – things he said and things he neglected to say. As a discussant of the SOCA at the breakfast, I shared some of my thoughts with the audience.

Firstly, the very idea of a coherent Tshwane Metro - given its vastness, its inequalities, its unseemly legacies and its sprawl – is a difficult one to sustain. The idea is difficult to sustain geographically and it is difficult to sustain ideologically. Between Makapanstad in Hamanskraal and Olievenhoutsbosch near Midrand you could fit most if not all of Switzerland. So what holds Olievenhoutsbosch, Groenkloef, Stink Water and Mabopane together? A network of roads? A shared telephone code? The mayor? What is it that holds together the suburbs, townships, squatter camps and villages currently thrown into a pot called 'Tshwane Metro'? Just the name? I am afraid these things are woefully inadequate as glue. Even a new name will not bestow the integrity and the coherence of which I speak. Can this behemoth called Tshwane Metro be held together either as an idea or as a geographical reality? Who are the real beneficiaries of the current arrangement? I ask this question because it does not seem to me that there is much benefit accruing to the residents of the poorest areas in the Tshwane Metro.

The connections between the villages, townships and communities that constitute Tshwane Metro should run deeper than tarred roads - roads whose traffic will inevitably flow in one direction only, namely in the direction of the Pretoria city center. To tar the Mabopane roads so that Mabopane residents can travel with ease to Paul Kruger street at the centre of Pretoria is to maintain the old and the familiar. Indeed what ease of travel am I talking about? Anyone who has been caught in the Pretoria-Mabopane afternoon traffic will know that even tarred roads do not help. What we need is developmental logic that will reverse and balance out the traffic flow on the Mabopane highway. We must reduce the need of Mabopane residents to go to Paul Kruger street every morning and create incentives for the residents of Waterkloef to travel to Mabopane for work. There is need for more deliberate, more forward-looking and more radical community building interventions for the short and the long term if the idea of Tshwane Metro is to materialise. We cannot continue with a developmental trajectory in terms of which you build roads and erect road-signs in black township while the more substantial projects are still being heaped upon old Pretoria and its immediate satellite towns such as Centurion, Cullinan and even Bronkhorstpruit.

Secondly, while basic infrastructure and basic amenities are so poor that a massive intervention at the most basic level is needed in Oskraal, Madidi and Kgabalatsane: what Madidi, Olievenhoutsbosch and Kgabalatsane need is exactly what central Pretoria has, and why not? That is why the exclusive apportioning of the high infrastructure and renewal projects to central Pretoria and the suburbs and towns in its vicinity is short-sighted, backward-looking and ultimately unjust. It is unjust to the peoples who built Pretoria but were deliberately kept at its periphery and its margins.

Thirdly, I am deeply skeptical about the logic behind the concept of South African city metros and even more doubtful of the redress and restitutionary potential they are supposed to have. These huge entities have little potential to produce the development and service levels required by communities long marginalized, impoverished and torn apart from the hand that they have been feeding. The hand that they have been feeding is Pretoria. The conventional expression is that of 'biting the hand that feeds one'. For Tshwane's poor residents, it is a case of being throttled to death by the hand that one feeds! Apparently, the redeeming logic behind metros is that of cross-subsidization in terms of which the wealthier sections will subsidise the poorer sections. But this idea is overrated.

The poorer areas are not merely a string of villages full of beggars who parasite on their distant cousins living in the wealthier areas. In truth the so-called poorer areas have been subsidising the wealthier areas for years. It is the residents of the poorer areas who spend up to 60% of their income just to pay for travel to work in Pretoria and its surrounding industries and suburbs. The cost of that is way beyond money. Think of the time spent on dangerous roads and trains. Think of the cost paid by kids left to fend for themselves when parents leave home at 4am to go catch a bus. Think of the long-term impact of all this. Now, who is subsidizing who? Our city development trajectories must aim to put a halt to and even to reverse these costly forms of subsidisation of the wealthy by the poor.

Fourth, the fatal fault line in the operations of metros, municipalities and government departments is captured in a small six-letter word – tender. This is the elephant in the room. It is the heart of the SOCA. Though this is never mentioned in the SOCA, it is perhaps the most important aspect of it. At the breakfast, we could all ‘feel’ it in the discussions as municipal managers and business people intervened passionately. As important as, if not more important than, the infrastructure projects announced is the questions of what tenders will be available, who will get and who will not get the tenders? The real stuff happens not when the infrastructure is delivered but the real stuff happens in the stampede for tenders, the wheeling-and dealing, the brown envelopes that change hands, the kick-backs and the javelin throwing. This is really what it is all about. To rephrase Bill Clinton's statement about the importance of the economy, I suppose we should say, 'it is the tenders, stupid'!

The possibility exists that not only do the poor subsidize the wealthy in the Tshwane Metro and elsewhere, they, through their rates and taxes, also subsidise the tender sellers, the tender buyers and the tender winners. More than merely talk of the intention to award some of the smaller tenders to members of the designated groups (which sounded like the allocation of tender crumbs to the designated groups), I would have liked the mayor to say more about how the tender regime and processes will be managed and governed so that they are transparent, fair, ethical and just.

Lastly, I take note of the high-flying plans and ideas to make Tshwane look and feel like the capital city of South Africa, of Africa and of the world. These include the plan to build a hi-tech diplomatic precint for the hundreds of foreign missions located in Pretoria. There are also plans to build a smart city. There are plans for a world-class convention centre. I say, don’t build these things in Pretoria or Centurion (only). Go set them up in Atterdgeville, Mabopane and Madidi. The current municipal leadership is called upon to be bold and forward-looking and not merely to tinker with Apartheid cities. They must imagine Soshanguve as the new city of Pretoria and Makapanstad as the new industrial centre just like Rosslyn. They must dream of Madidi as smart city in which kids can access the WIFI under every tree and under every street lamp. Our leaders must replicate the Menlyn Shopping Centre at the centre of Stinkwater.

In the days of the struggle against Apartheid, we used to sing the struggle song ‘si ya ya ePitoli’ (we are going to Pretoria). The intention then was to sing our way into Pretoria, with a view to taking it over and change it from being the center of injustice into becoming a center of justice. It says a lot that today, South Africans still sing this song when they protest. Could it be that they feel that there is still room for improvement in Pretoria? After the nice and tender breakfast we had, my residual view is that the question for Pretoria/Tshwane City residents is no longer whether they go to Pretoria or not, the question is rather whether Pretoria is willing to meet them half-way.

It turns out that I could have saved myself a lot of time and money, if I had skipped the 2013 State of the City Address and simply read the old 2012 State of the City Address. Apparently a huge chunk of the 2013 speech was the exact replica of the 2012 speech -verbatim. Was comrade mayor given the wrong speech? Were the speech writers so busy that they resorted to the one of the 21st century's greatest inventions called  'cut-and-paste'? Or is it something more sinister, such as the possibility that in fact little by way of implementation has happened in the Pretoria City Metro since 2012? How else would we explain an alleged cut-and-paste speech? Tell me.

A Move to the South

Several years ago, a base-ball cap-wearing twenty-something year old in tight jeans sauntered into the office of a professor at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. Armed with a big dream and a recently acquired American postgraduate degree, the young man had come to enrol for the PhD.

One hour later the young man left with the devastating news that he might have to do another postgraduate degree before admission into doctoral studies. At that point he wondered whether he should not rather pursue a childhood dream of becoming a famous lead guitarist in a famous jazz band - or better still an award-winning playwright.

One year later, the professor engaged the young man as a research assistant. The rest is a history of unbridled, abundant, boundless and undeserved grace. That young man is still striving to reach the levels of professorial sophistication and outputs he saw among his revered professorial supervisors and mentors - mentors who imparted academic skills and imbued passion for research and scholarship in him.

Now our young man is a member of an army of eighteen thousand academics located in 23 publicly funded universities and a few science councils. This is the army on whose shoulders lies in part, the national dream of an economy built on knowledge and not merely on mineral resources. On the shoulders of this army of researchers and scientists lies, albeit only in part, the national dream of a more equal society; a country with a lesser disease burden - the dream of a future without poverty. There is a legitimate expectation that the Higher Education sector will be one of the key players in assisting us to deeply understand and deftly plan to meet the challenges we face as a country.

For his part, our young man has, in the mean time, published several dozens of peer reviewed articles, supervised several PhD and master's students to completion, become a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher and a member of the South African Academy of Science.  He takes special delight in the colleagues and students he has had the privilege to encourage, mentor and enable over the years - at universities in South Africa and abroad. His latest PhD student graduated in 2013 from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Who might that young man be? Yours truly. I am that young man.

There was something deliberate, self-conscious and sombre about my morning drive to work in Pretoria at the University of South Africa on the 28th March 2013. After the Easter weekend, from April onwards, I will be making a small move to the South - from Pretoria to Johannesburg. I will join the University of Johannesburg. The higher education sector continues to offer a privileged and special space from which to serve one's country and from which one may exercise one's responsibilities as a global citizen.

South Africa has one of the best higher education sectors in Africa - in terms of funding, infrastructure and productivity. There remains lots of room for improvement in terms of state and corporate investment in science and technology as well as in terms of our share of continental and national contributions to global knowledge production. Fortunately, South Africa has an acute awareness of these challenges and they are being variously addressed. I am delighted to be living in one of the most exciting countries in the world and I am determined to make my own small contribution to its development.

The young man who walked into the office of a university professor many years ago has stayed with me throughout. He is still in me and I in him. To him I owe my curiosity, energy and passions.

It is with excitement that I join the University of Johannesburg - a cool, youthful, vibrant, dynamic forward-looking and excellent university. I am eager to go and add my own contribution in the work of an excellent group of colleagues and a cohort of hard-working students at the University of Johannesburg. Together we will make our contribution to science and education in this country and beyond.

Invaded by Women

The first door knock was soft and tentative. Maybe I imagined it. I only responded after the second installment. Outside my door stood a group of stern-looking black women in church uniform. Short, tall, thin, fat, young and old black women.These are members of the so-called 'women of prayer' group also known as the 'Manyano'. All the major so-called mainline churches have women's groups complete with their own sub-constitutions, their famous Thursday prayer meetings, their community service initiatives and of course their colourful uniforms.

These types of women prayer groups are as much maligned as they are praised.  For some observers these women groups are the ultimate demonstration of the acquiescence, delusion, compromise and oppression of women in and through religion. Their very focus on prayer as strategy and rallying point settles the matter for many critics. The choice of prayer as strategy testifies to the absence of strategy, the critics argue. They argue that the challenges faced by women are so real, so crushing and so gruesome that prayer is the least appropriate tool, the least effective antidote and the most ineffectual rallying point. As some feminists have argued, women should walk out and stay out of mainstream and (necessarily) patriarchal religion – for their own sakes. 

On the other hand, there are those observers who argue that these women's groups are sources of creative power - relative power but power all the same. What power is absolute? These women's groups are the engine room from whence comes women's agency, self-love, mutual support, outreach, role-play, purposefulness and counter-hegemonic leverage. The women do not merely sing that ‘Jesus never fails’ they proceed, through collaborative, concrete, strategic and purposeful action to ensure that Jesus has no chance and no excuse for failing them. While prayer may be a useful rallying point it is hardly the only thing that happens when the women meet.

Nor must the prayers uttered in such gatherings be understood exclusively in some contemplative euro-medieval context. Often the so-called prayers are a mix of libation-type utterances, dancing and singing during which space is created for the venting, articulation and enacting of issues of dread, hope, pain and joy. In this sense, prayer is both the cover for and motivation of their purposeful actions.  In these groups women pool and pull their resources – all their resources material and spiritual in order to deal with all the curve balls life sends in their direction.

The truth about these prayer groups probably lies somewhere in between the two extremes.

Back to me and my visitors: The grey and white uniforms of my visitors started to file into the living room. My exaggerated welcoming smile was masking a growing sense of unease at this unmitigated surprise visit. Did they come in peace? Was it an unannounced spiritual inspection visit? Or was it, worse still one of those house invasions by fanatical 'prayer warriors' who come with ready-made answers for questions no one is asking? I was embarrassed that they should choose to visit me on a Sunday in which I had bunked church. Was this deliberate? I wondered.

It turns out that the women - who all hailed from my local church - had come to offer their prayers and condolences for the passing of my maternal grandmother – the last surviving grandparent I had. The problem is that my grandmother died on the 18^th of May 2011 and was buried on Saturday the 28th May 2011.  Almost two years later, on the 10th of March 2013, the church women came knocking at my door. But that is my problem and not a problem to the women. ‘Nkosi a wu boli’, they said, meaning it is never too late to offer condolences. They sung their lungs out and prayed their hearts out.

I took another look at the uniformed women who had invaded my living room.  In the singing of the women, their feet shuffling rhythmically and in the cacophony that came out of their trembling lips as they prayed simultaneously; I had a vision of us as the family we have never quite been. I the four year old. My brother the seven year old. My eleven year old sister.  My seven months old little sister held securely in the hands of grandma. Strange enough, my mother was there too, standing tall behind us all. For a brief, flashing but crystal clear moment when I closed my eyes, I saw a family portrait of us up in the sky.

Later when I said a word of thanks I found myself talking to my women visitors about both my grandmother and my mother in a manner and at a depth I seldom permit myself to. My mother died when I was three and a half years old and my grandmother brought me and my siblings up.  These two women have had the most enduring impact and influence in my life – the one through a gaping absence and the other through a powerful presence.

Before the church women left the house, they had one more surprise for me - a gift – a small colourful handkerchief ‘for the wiping away of tears’, they said. At that moment, tears started rolling down my swollen cheeks and continued to flow long after they left. I had not known then what I know now - namely that there is perhaps a fierce river of tears flowing gently beneath the surface of the thick brown skin that covers my high cheek-bones. Is that the reason why mine and my brother's tears flow freely when we laugh most heartily? 
 
(c) tinyiko sam maluleke

Beyond Oscar Pistorius

The sickening state of violence  - especially violence against women and children - in current South Africa as well as the increasing brutality of the South African Police has left me angry, fearful, confused, ashamed, traumatised, gasping for air, speechless and searching for meanings everywhere - inside and outside of me. Where to flee? How to flee? A few years ago I wrote a piece in which I considered how I could meet my own death in violent, Afro-phobic and Xenophobic South Africa. I end that piece with a graphic description of how I could try and fail to flee from my killers. I remain in danger of dying the death of Mido Masia - a young Mozambican - pictured above - who died after being handcuffed to and dragged behind a fast moving police van last week - 26th February 2013 to be precise.

It is my view that many South Africans have taken refuge from their violent reality in Pistorius. Oscar Pistorius. Daily they milk and nibble over every detail of the life and guns, spinners and pastors, lawyers and family of Oscar Pistorius. Reading through the headlines, one might be pardoned for thinking Oscar Pistorius is in danger of dying soon. Have you noticed the sexy smiling pictures of Reeva the media insists on publishing with every reference to her? Yes she was a model but are these the only pictures of Reeva available ? What more can Reeva do to appease or infuriate the media? What more can she do than what she has already done through dying when she was killed. Or is there an unspoken anger at her for dying when she was killed?  Had she survived, perhaps she might have smiled her famous smile and reassured the world now.

Maybe there is covert anger at Reeva for 'refusing' to disappear and vanish completely even after she died. From the grave she continues to disrupt our official narratives and to interrupt our glory stories. Her  silence is a haunting loudness. Her absence is a disturbing presence. Her grave is counter- hegemonic. She is the counter-narrative. The smoke from the cremation of her body rises up to the skies and sits up there like a stubborn left-over cloud that lingers long after the storm. On that lonely cloud is written uncomfortable truths about our country and about our world.

Consider this. No two South Africans could be said to be more differently-privileged than Anene Booysen and Reeva Steenkamp, right? The former is an adopted black girl in her teens from a poor family in a poor town with poor if any prospects in life. The latter is a white graduate young-adult woman whose life and career is on the up and up.  Do they have anything in common? The former dies in the unsafe streets of  the unsafe town of Bredasdorp in the Western Cape. The latter dies in a relatively safe home within a so-called gated community.  They both die allegedly in the hands of men they knew. Premature violent avoidable and unnecessary deaths. Surely, no two South Africans could be more different, one from the other, right?

And yet consider this again. There is a report of man, allegedly, languishing in a South African jail, never been on bail, awaiting trial for two years already. Like Pistorius he is disabled - according to this report.. Unlike Pistorius he cannot afford bail. Like Pistorius he is charged with the commission of a crime. Unlike Pistorius he has not been charged with the commission of a violent crime. Surely, no two South Africans could be more  similar and yet so different, one from the other!

While the killing and the raping continues - meant both literally and metaphorically - Oscar Pistorius has become a convenient (inter) national diversion. But such has been the enthusiasm of some they have even compared Oscar Pistorius to Nelson Mandela in terms of polularity and to some extent significance. Indeed the picture of the one day when Oscar Pistorius met Nelson Mandela has been flighted on our small screens a few times. But how do the violent events of 14th February 2013 in Oscar Pistorius' house earn him the right to be compared to Nelson Mandela?

What we are going through as a country is enough to drive one to drink. Amongst other drinks, I have resorted to a sip of Bob. Bob Marley. Pardon me as I stagger and blunder in my plunder of his timeless, simple, acoustic-guitar-plus-voice, 'redemption song'.

... Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Woh!
Have real fear for South Africa's children
For most of them are gonna die before time

... How long shall men kill the women?
While we stand aside and look?

Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfil the great
national revolution

Won't you help me cry
The  cries for freedom
'cause all I ever heard
are redemption cries
These cries for freedom ...


(c) tinyiko sam maluleke
follow me on twitter - @ProfTinyiko

Marikana: Post-Apartheid South Africa's Own Little Atrocity

Speech read on occasion of the opening of the Pitika Ntuli art exhibition titled ‘Marikana Hill to Constitution Hill’ on 15 February 2013.

A handcuffed miner begs for his life

Comrades and friends

Ladies and Gentlemen

Ms Pethal Thring, CEO of Constitution Hill, we gather here tonight at your pleasure and hospitality. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to gather at a place that has become a national shrine to our democracy – Constitution Hill.

I have noted several eminent friends of Professor Pitika Ntuli, his fellow poets, his protégés,  writers and academics. I wish to thank each and every one of them for gracing the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of the sculptures of Pitika Ntuli dubbed ‘From Constitution Hill to Marikana Hill’.

To Professor Pitika Ntuli, great son of Africa, one of the most talented and one of the most erudite academics this country has ever produced, thank you for inviting us to this wonderful exhibition which rightfully focuses on the Marikana massacre.

At a young age, Ntuli responded to both the call of his ancestors and the call of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe - sensing a deep resonance between Sobukwe’s call for political liberation and the ancestral project of cultural and spiritual liberation. Twenty year old Pitika Ntuli fled South Africa. Thirty two years later, several countries later, a dozen qualifications later, several artistic ensembles later, Pitika joined thousands of fellow South African personae non grata and journeyed back home. 

On Monday the 18th February 2013 Pitika Ntuli will be 73 years young. When I grow up, I want to be like Pitika Ntuli!

Pitika deserves our thanks for daring to broach the subject of Marikana and for broaching it in this powerful manner - through the voices of rocks, bones, metal tools, metal debris and modern technologies. We must thank him for doing this at a time when many have acquiesced to the injunctions of silence. Thanks to Pitika for doing this at a time when many seem to have outsourced their analysis and their judgment on Marikana to a commission of inquiry. But how can a commission tell us how to feel, what to feel and how to think? Thanks Pitika for voicing what we feel but are not able to verbalize. Thanks for portraying what we need to see, but we are too afraid to look in the right direction. Through the exhibition of art on Marikana, Pitika Ntuli helps us look back from whence we come, he urges us to look carefully at where we are and he assists us to look to the hell road that is beckoning.

In the life of any nation, as it is in the life of an individual, there are events and moments, whose catalytic significance is palpable. These moments are often described in words and phrases such as ‘watershed’, ‘turning point’, ‘historic’ or ‘milestone’. But these descriptions exist only in contestation – i.e. as part of the often fierce contestation about how best to understand the events we deem significant. 

There is no such thing as an uncontested or self-explanatory watershed or historic moment. These moments have to be met, they have to be defined even as they define us; they have to be asserted, stated and restated.  Through this exhibition Pitika Ntuli sets us up to meet the Marikana moment.

Through this exhibition, Ntuli is forcing us to consciously choose and carefully construct what we feel and see as watershed moments. It is up to us to identify and give meaning to such moments. His work makes it clear to us that the choices we must make are neither freely available nor freely made. They must be forged in the face of fierce contestation and even danger.

It is not so much that Ntuli has chosen Marikana; rather it is Marikana which has chosen Ntuli from the day it burst into the small screen in his living room and into his consciousness, awakening memories that he thought were tame, lame and gone. It is not us who have chosen Marikana. Marikana has chosen us and our generation. It is terrorizing our souls and it is poised to haunt our children and our children’s children.

Turning-points and watershed moments are seldom fully recognized as such at the time of their occurrence. In this sense historic moments and turning points tend to be products of hindsight rather than foresight. But Ntuli, has dared to foreground the path of foresight by risking to articulate his innermost feelings about a contemporary, contentious and painful event.

The inability to recognize historic moments can be a function of the blindness of vision sometimes caused by the unbearable brightness of the current and the contemporary. Such inability to recognize turning points can also be a function of wilful ignorance, resistance to truth and even self-delusion. This is especially possible where the historic event concerned is controversial and traumatic. In such instances the temptation of slipping into denial and paranoia is great.

As well as saving us from denial and paranoia, Ntuli’s work shatters our fearful silence and exposes our complicit inaction. His work speaks for us at a time when we cannot find words with which to feel and be felt; words with which to cry and be cried for; words with which to make meaning out of evil and purpose out of needless suffering. When our words and languages are stumped into silence by the sheer enormity of the atrocity we face, this is where fine art and the arts in general become our refuge, our advocate and our conscience.

In his book on the Sharpeville massacre, Tom Lodge, in two short pages, lists a dozen South African massacres all sponsored by the state in the 20^th and 21^st century. He calls them a ‘catalogue of carnage’. The largest massacre in terms of the number of victims killed in one day was Bulhoek massacre where 183 people were gunned down on Ntabelanga hill. Over the past half a century, our country’s profile of massacres is as follows:

Sharpeville massacre (21 March 1960, 69 people died)

Soweto massacre (starting 16^th June 1976, up to 700 people, mainly youths died)

Boipatong (17 June 1992 – roughly 40 people died)

Bisho Massacre (7 September 1992, where 29 people died)

Marikana (16 August 2012, 34 people died)

While it seems like we have had a long massacre holiday-break between 1976 and 1992, the truth is that the period in between (1976 to 1991) was one of the bloodiest and most violent in our history – with thousands of lives lost. As a country, we do not seem to have managed two decades without what seems to have become a national rite of blood.

Whereas we might have understood why and how the gods of Apartheid needed to be served a diet of blood from time to time, we are having a hard time understanding why and how the gods of democracy would also need to be appeased by the blood of the innocent. This is part of the reason we, as a nation, are struggling to make sense of and to give voice to Marikana. If the democratic dispensation has not cured us from our rites of blood, what will?

Pitika Ntuli’s work on Marikana is a challenge for all the people in the arts to dare to give voice to the painful, the taboo-ed, the beautiful, the ugly and the unseemly for which society lacks words or courage or both.

The Marikana sculptures exhibition of Pitika Ntuli does several things for and to me.

First it destroys the warped myth of Marikana exceptionalism in terms of which we are supposed to bracket both the past and the future so that Marikana is seen as a once-off incident that is disconnected from both our past and our future. Part of this myth is the suggestion that Marikana is not a massacre but a mere ‘tragedy’ or an ‘unfortunate event’. There are several other (linguistic) devises of expression and control being used to reduce Marikana into ‘just a little atrocity, without any publicity' as Miream Makeba sings in her song titled 'Soweto Blues'. They failed to turn Soweto 1976 into 'just a little atrocity without any publicity' and we must ensure that they fail again to reduce Marikana into a mere 'unfortunate event'.'Unfortunate event' my foot!

We cannot witness - on live television in part - the manufacturing of 34 widows in a less than fifteen minutes and then pretend that we have not just witnessed a massacre. Nor can we pretend that two groups that clashed that day were of equal strength. Marikana is not just a little atrocity. It is a bloody massacre which must be understood in the context of other bloody massacres. As it was in Sharpeville, Bisho and Boipatong, we witnessed the violence of the state meted out against civilians. Whether the state in question is said to be democratic or not, when it deals out violence against citizens, citizens suffer, citizens die, citizens are bereaved. People shot at by the police force of a democratic state do not die differently or nicely. They die death - cheap violent premature death.

The refusal and reluctance to call Marikana what it is, is both a refusal to acknowledge what happened on that fateful August the 16th 2012 and a signal of an unwillingness to commit to making sure that that there will be no more Marikanas in the future. If you can't call rape what rape is you are probably not prepared to stop it.

Secondly, the Pitika Ntuli exhibition on Marikana is not ahistorical. Indeed a careful reading of the build-up to and aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre will reveal uncanny and striking resemblances in choices, arguments and actions taken. The reasons offered for shooting at the crowd are very similar. They range from the need to ‘teach the people a lesson’, ‘massacre by mistake’, ‘pre-emptive shooting’, ‘their leaders led them to slaughter’ and ‘if we had not killed them, they would have killed us’.

To Lieutenant-Colonel Pienaar, the prototype incarnation of apartheid police culture, the explanation for Sharpeville is to be found in the simple fact that black people lack self-control and are intrinsically violent. When congregated they inevitably pose a danger to public order that can best be dealt with short, sharp painful treatment. The fundamental contempt for the moral condition of the ‘Bantu’ was the essence of his lengthy testimony before the Wessels commission. And t remains a point of reference for many of his colleagues who have survived the passing of the years. (in Frankel An Ordinary Atrocity p123)

Literature on the Sharpeville massacre, like literature on other massacres tell of the initial frenzy of shooting, the quiet that comes after that as well as the gruesome work of finishing off the dying and the wounded. There was also a concerted effort by the police to pursue the injured in the wards of Vereeniging hospital. One of the reasons there is a concerted effort to discourage people from calling the events of 16^th August in Marikana a massacre is a desperate attempt to prevent us reading the Marikana massacre against the backdrop of other massacres. There is an unspoken fear that if we scratch that surface we may see that the logic of the state and the police against the poor blacks who congregate in protest has not shifted much.

Thirdly, the Ntuli exhibition makes connections. There are historical connections between the pain of Marikana and the pains of the past. The Marikana sculptures are steeped in the inherited histories and cultures. Right in the midst of this Marikana ensemble, is to be found a piece capturing Sam Nzima’s famous photo of a dying Hector Petersen being carried away by Mbuyisa Makhubo. What has 1976 to do with 2012, some may ask. The answer is; everything. Soweto 1976 helps us understand Marikana 2012 and vice versa. What has the Marikana massacre to do with the death of Andries Tatane? What has the Marikana massacre to do with the bestial violence that is raging in our society? The state is leading by example!

A clear but not so obvious connection made in and through this exhibition is the connection between Constitution Hill and the Wonderkop Hill on which the men of Marikana fell. The one hill is a hill of shame while the other is the hill of justice. The hill of justice used to be a hill of shame. Can the Wonderkop hill of Marikana be transformed into a hill of memory and justice? Maybe. But not before we recognize what the Marikana massacre is, what it means and what it stands for.

The sculptures speak of economic connections symbolized by the hoe, the wheelbarrow, the computer motherboards and the pinions and the shafts. Even religion is featured. One of the pieces depicts a hand-cuffed miner begging for his life, and another clinging to his cross even as he falls. The attempt to bastardize Marikana and isolate it from its cultural and historic roots is powerfully shattered in the exhibition.

Fourthly, this exhibition of Pitika, more than any other, signals the end of our innocence. It is the ending of many honeymoons – the honeymoon between citizens and state, labour and capital, labour unions and their members, between political party and labour unions, as well as the honeymoon between party and capital. While the marriages may not yet be over, the honeymoon is definitely finished. No one can walk between the art sculptures of this exhibition and not realize that the honeymoon is over. Consider the possible meanings of the piece titled ‘tripartite alliance’. It is a cross between a car and a human being, except that the car has three wheels. Consider the vivacious and conspicuous piece in bright pink depicting Thuli Madonsela, titled ‘a step in the right direction’. The victims of Marikana cry out for the protection of the public protector. They are dying to be heard – literally.

Fifthly, Marikana exposes the unshaken violent foundations of the state. It reveals the extent to which the logic of violence is embedded, ensconced and entrenched in the veins and arteries and genes of the South African state. This is the violence of the state and the state of the violence we are in.  Nor does the violence of the state begin when the shooting starts. There is violence long before the crackle of guns, there is violence during shooting orgy and there is violence long after the guns have fallen silent – the last, deadly and gruesome phase of a masscre. The logic of violence reigns supreme. The pieces of Pitika Ntuli speak all these truths and do so with an amazing eloquence. Feel your body cringe as you see deformed and violated metal trying to rise and regain dignity!

Part of the reason we are not encouraged to think of Marikana as a massacre is that we might unveil and unravel the psychological (and physical) bunkers within which is hidden the state’s violent intentions – the spaces where violence is manufactured, stoked and readied before its deadly deployment as and when it suits the state.

Sixth, the Pitika exhibition is deftly crafted in such a way as to foreground the humanity of the victims.  Walk around the pieces and you will see human figures rebelling against mechanization, instrumentalization and dehumanization. Walk between the pieces you will meet Mphumzeni Ngxande of Lujizweni village in Ngqeleni outside Mthatha; you will see the 35-year-old Mvuyisi Pato of Mbhobheni Village in Mbizana; you will hear Mzukisi Sompela from Lusikisiki; you will feel Phumzile Sokhanyile, the rock driller  preacherman from Mdumazulu village in the Transkei; you will connect with Khanare Monesa of Boroeng near Butha Buthe in Lesotho; you will engage with Janaveke Liau of the village of Likolobeng in Lesotho and you will converse with Tsietsi Monene of Mpumalanga to name but a few. This is not an exhibition about issues, processes, arguments, policies, abstract ideas and structures. It is an exhibition about sons, husbands, brothers and breadwinners. It is an exhibition about flesh and blood human beings practising their humanity in the face of great odds. This is an exhibition of sculptures about discarded people resisting against the forces of their dehumanization. The sculptures are built with discarded, derelict materials used in or as tools - useless and abandoned pieces of tools used to depict people who are treated as if they were worthless tools. It is a statement against the tool-ification of human beings. This exhibition is a powerful display of people rising against dehumanization - a people rising through and in the abandoned debris of modern and not-so-modern tools and cultures to assert their humanity.

Seventh, the art ensemble we have come to witness here today opens up the most avenues for our search and explorations for the many meanings of the Marikana Massacre so far. I have seen nothing written – historical, fictional, academic, journalistic or artistic – that comes close to the depth and variety of meanings of Marikana found in the work of Pitika Ntuli in this sculptor ensemble. The genius of Pitika's depictions is that he invokes and suggests not one but several possible meanings of  and to Marikana. Like the Sharpeville massacre before it, the Marikana massacre represents what Frankel in his book An ordinary atrocity calls 'an end, a beginning, a social commentary and an evaluation’.

This exhibition makes it clear that Marikana is a historic moment and a turning point. But will South Africa turn? Could Marikana become yet another turning point at which nobody turns? If we fail to turn, Marikana will come back to haunt us.

We have come here to celebrate the work of a man whose words and works tease, soothe, heal and bruise all at once. Through this exhibition, Pitika is only a messenger. Let us not shoot the messenger. Thirty-four mine workers have already been shot dead.

We are here to be challenged by a man whose touch brings dead wood back to life – a man who battles with stone until it smiles suspiciously at him. Here is the work of a man who bypasses flesh and blood and goes back to the bone to carve meaning and invoke immortality.

Here is an agent provocateur whose hands and mind can inspire an uprising of the debris of western industrial, agrarian and information-age cultures. Here is an artist who can instigate discarded metal against its users and its uses alike. Under his spell, derelict wheelbarrows, abandoned exhaust pipes and irreparable motor engine parts have come back to haunt us.

Come now my friends, let us immerse ourselves in the art works of Pitika Ntuli. Let us soak ourselves in his razor sharp mind deftly deposited into each of the figures, figurines and sculptures on display at this exhibition.

Come, let us converse with his Marikana pieces. Can you hear the prayers of the human wheel-barrow man asking for his life to be spared? Can you feel the messy agrarian revolution superimposed on an industrial revolution superimposed on a computer-age revolution superimposed on the greed of capital?

Come, let us consider the meanings of Pitika’s portrayals of the fallen men of Marikana.

We can wipe away the blood off Pitika’s stone sculptures but with what shall we wash away the stains in our complicit consciences? (c) tinyiko sam maluleke february 2013