Well, I haven't posted for so long because I'...
March 15, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Well, I haven't posted for so long because I've been... err... busy. but I have this application/story for a South Africa programme, and thought you guys might like it:
Every evening before dinner, my Gaborone father- I called him uncle Douglas- read the newspaper. And every evening I slid into a velour chair next to him, and waited for his sitting room stories. In the beginning I had to ask about his life as BotswanaÆs first news broadcaster, his plans to buy a Mercedes with my bride price, or the children he sent off to South African private schools who came back white inside. After a few weeks, Uncle Douglas would fold up his paper without prompting and, eyes half closed as if dictating straight from remembered imagery, begin his monologue.
Like everyone else in Botswana, he had South Africa stories. He worked in Mafikeng when it was still the capital of Botswana, met his wife there, sent two ambitious children to work in Johannesburg, and crossed the border for weddings and funerals every month. We had family there. We spoke Xhosa and Setswana and listened to South African news in Zulu. We brushed our teeth with toothpaste manufactured in South Africa. Uncle DouglasÆ South African stories were not animated like the ones where heÆd get off the bus at the wrong Kansas City. He was quiet, and slower with the plotÆs unfolding. I remember one story more clearly than the rest, when he told me about his certificate from the South African government. During apartheid, Aunt Jean and Uncle Douglas helped ANC members cross the border to Zambia. The story whispered of SADF raids and BotswanaÆs plea for sovereignty in political neutrality policies- the periphery of something I needed to see for myself.
What he couldnÆt tell me, what I had to understand on my own terms, was how the other side of our family lived. I listened but didnÆt have my own images to recall, eyes half-closed. After a seminar and special studies on South Africa, research on Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique, and a semester in Botswana, I have a coherent social, political, and historical framework of Southern Africa. I can articulate how racism is constructed, codified, and inherited with real estate planning. IÆve theorized on the causal factors of the countryÆs political revolution, analyzed dependent development and neoliberalism and examined the race-class dialectic. IÆve even argued politics with Afrikaner farmers on vacation at Chobe National Park. But I havenÆt negotiated my skin privilege in a country where the top five percent consume more than the bottom eighty-five or felt the implications on a kombi. My academic focus on Southern African revolutions is incomplete without an experiential understanding of South Africa. Learning in context would bring two years of regional study into acute focus. Hopefully IÆd also return with my own stories and quiet convictions.
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It was so nice to hear mum and dick's voices ...
March 04, 2002 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
It was so nice to hear mum and dick's voices last night- I'm still in the middle of my papers, and people really do go crazy during midterms. Anna Levitt came into my room last night to say she that her night was full of weeping women- lord. I just hope I can manage to finish my OCD presentation and South Africa paper today without losing any more sleep or drinking too much coffee. Wish me luck, people.
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