Foundations of Morality and Renewal - A Review of Raising The Bar: Hope and Renewal in South Africa by Songezo Zibi

Songezo Zibi’s manifesto, Raising The Bar (Picador Africa) may not come across as revolutionary to most people. After all, literature of this sort – the kind that tackles social ills such as racism, sexism and other social phobias stemming from a combination of the aforementioned with nationalism of some form or other – does tend to attract the type of audience that is generally predisposed to agreeing with most if not all the arguments presented within its covers. A lot like how feminist literature is most likely to be read by feminists, and religious literature is most likely to be read by those who subscribe to religion. In short, it’s a little like preaching to the choir.

Using a combination of some of the more recent scholarly works by thinkers like Cornel West, Xiabobo Lü and Slavoj Žižek amongst others; news items from the first two decades of South Africa’s democratic era; as well as anecdotes from his personal life (the most endearing of which relate to the period during which he was in his grandparents’ care, in rural Transkei); Zibi weaves together a compelling argument that objectively assesses the current ills that afflict contemporary South African society, and in particular its politics. He does all this while providing some rather elementary solutions. That is not to say that Zibi’s analysis is not sophisticated or incisive. In fact, his exposition offers an Occam’s Razor that leaves you wondering why you hadn’t thought of his propositions before, let alone execute them in our own way as per his suggestion.  

For an example, in the third chapter of the book, entitled A Bright Future Is Possible, the Business Day editor suggests that in the process of tackling the race question leaders should view redress as a matter of ethics and justice, as a opposed to one of revenge. This is a call that does not necessarily apply to “leaders” alone, but to all South Africans, as evidenced by the tendency for public discourse to degenerate into a tit-for-tat debate that centres on retributive justice almost to the exclusion of all other forms of justice.

Another example is the chapter on Politics which provides three scenarios that may bring about the change required – the first is a catastrophic event such as a civil war, the second is the emergence of “an intellectual breath of fresh air, which follows a period of deep introspection”, and the third a combination of the two. It is the second that speaks directly to individual South Africans and asks of each of us to become the change that we would like to see in the world, as the hackneyed modern proverb goes.

Raising The Bar is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a flawless work. Each reader will take away from it what they can and quietly (or not, in the case of the ever militant and seldom satisfied #peoplestwitter) observe those passages in the book that deserve further interrogation and scrutiny. One of the troublesome elements of Zibi’s otherwise lucid and cogent analysis, is his insistence on singling out the role of The Church (or churches) in this grand project of “hope  and renewal in South Africa”. You cannot help but wonder if his narrow definition of what may also be understood to refer to human spirituality in general would not be lost on some readers if for no other reason besides the fact that not everyone subscribes to Christianity.

We South Africans are notorious for what National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) secretary general, Irvin Jim, once cleverly phrased as to “listen with your mouth”. That is to say, listening not with the intent to process and understand that which we have heard (or read), but instead listening with the intent to respond. Responding regardless of whether or not we have understood the position or argument to which we are responding – responding merely for the sake of responding.

For this reason it is fair to be concerned that an important work such as this  may get lost in the milieu of 50 million-plus voices expressing their opinion – valid or no. Voices weighing in on an argument which Zibi has, no doubt, developed over a long period of time, applying the requisite measure of careful thought as one might expect from the editor of one of the biggest business dailies in South Africa Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the singling out of churches, and churches alone, as a bastion for morality raises further issues which may or may not be related to each other.

Almost every chapter of Raising the Bar constitutes a clarion call for a return to a single, commonly held set of morals as a panacea to almost all - if not, in fact, all - that ails us as a nation. This is not the first time such a call has been made. During the period in which the current South African president, Jacob Zuma, deputised for then state president, Thabo Mbeki, he was tasked with the noble responsibility of overseeing the nation’s moral regeneration. An assignment which, in hindsight, made for comical irony.

Morality is a very tricky animal to capture because it is almost always the outcome of whatever reasoning and rationalisation predominates within each culturally distinct place and time. It is only the most fundamental of moral tenets that bear a universal quality. In his 2008 essay for the New York Times Magazine’s online edition, titled The Moral Instinct, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker borrows from the moral foundations hypothesis – an idea developed by a trio of academics led by New York University Professor of Ethical Leadership, Jonathan Haidt – to describe these psychological foundations as “harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity”. The hypothesis suggests that the reason for morality to take on a seemingly fluid and variable character as one moves from one culture to another is due to how much emphasis different communities place on each of these moral foundations. In the same essay, Pinker also fleetingly mentions the concept of a “universal moral grammar”, analogous to the “universal grammar” first theorised by linguistics professor Noam Chomsky who describes it as “genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible”. To apply the analogy, universal moral grammar, therefore, would be the genetic endowment that allows for the acquisition of moral sense, while limiting which moral senses will be acquired and sharpened.

South African society has suffered a protracted and repeated defilement of its moral fabric throughout its history; from the introduction of slavery in the Cape during the time of the Dutch East India Company’s tenure, onwards to the establishment of concentration camps by the British during the South African War and well into the 20^th century with its hallmarks of massacres and states of emergency during apartheid’s zenith. The timeframe within which this unrelenting assault on South African morality has sustained itself may perhaps even be thought of as evolutionary in its impact on the hearts and minds of present-day South Africans. In fact, if we apply the language analogy to this specific situation, it would behoove any observer to note the stark changes in the linguistic landscape from the lands that were the hunting grounds of the Khoisan and the farmlands of the Xhosa and the Zulu and others, before they were British colonies and Afrikaner volkstaats; to the beleaguered republic we see today.

An expectation of moral regeneration driven from the top down, as Zuma was tasked, or as proposed by Zibi in his suggestion that churches be called to lead the cause, is one that is laudable in its ambition but weak in opportunity for success. For one thing, being that churches are already the self-appointed custodians of morality (this being their chief raison d’etre in the race to prepare good Christian souls for an eternity in heaven), had there been a single iota of hope for their success in this bold new incarnation proposed in Raising the Bar, one would expect the fruits of this success to have already had an impact on South African society or at least be at such an advanced stage of pre-deployment that the anticipation would be palpable to most, if not all, citizens. Judging from the unabated degeneration of the societal moral fibre, as evidenced by daily reports of astounding violations visited by citizens on fellow citizens, it would be safe to assume, sub specie aeternitatis, that churches have not been, and possibly may not be, successful in this regard.

That being said, the book actually reads like a user’s guide to good citizenship and should probably – no, definitely be issued to all living South Africans with immediate haste. One of the many shining moments that struck me was the suggestion that civics should be included in the school curriculum. This book would make an excellent setwork book for such a class. It is of no use for citizens to moralise ad nauseum about the present situation when many of us shirk even the most basic of civic duties, which is to vote.

To be taught the qualities and duties of good citizenship from an early age, would augur well for the establishment of an active and involved citizenry. In place of a campaign for common morality, which is near impossible given the much lauded cultural diversity held within the borders of South Africa, it would seem more logical that a path towards a state of universal mindfulness be sought, governed by such philosophical principles as to inspire a culture of introspection and self-correction, instead of the lazy method currently consuming our society of seeking retributive justice for behaviour that is deemed morally reprehensible.

(edited beautifully by Mary Corrigall. a version of this review appeared in the Sunday Independent of the 7th of December 2014)

Embrace The Detours

My most favourite thing about summer is the roadtrip. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my grandmother and I, travelling in a Nissan E20 from Mdantsane, in East London, to Cape Town to visit her family. We travelled this route so many times that I need only close my eyes and the smell of freshly-baked bread, umleqwa (a home-reared chicken raised on mielies from the family mielie patch, ceremonially slaughtered for such a journey) and the twist-fizz sound made by a one litre bottle of warm Fanta Orange shared amongst passengers – friends and strangers alike – all come flooding back, belying the two decades in between.

Now in my thirties, the open road has become a bit of a drug. Like an addict searching for his first high – in my case, the first time I remember going into the Huegenot Tunnel and marvelling at the fact that I was inside a mountain – I find myself constantly stretching the idea of the roadtrip. And I have been rewarded handsomely with every endeavour. It also helps that I have an enabling friend whose default reaction to any suggestion of a roadtrip – no matter how long or short – is “Ja, sure. Let's do it!”.

Once we drove from East London, via Johannesburg, to Maputo shortly after Christmas in my friend's long-suffering jalopy.

“Oh, there's something I should tell you about the car.”, he casually informed me when he picked me up from my parents' home. “There seems to be something wrong with the clutch, but the mechanic said I could drive it for another few thousand kilometres or so.”.

Piffle, I thought. He'd driven from Cape Town in it without incident. Such concerns, wholly academic by our measure, would not dismay us. Onward we travelled to Joburg to fetch our other travelling companion, and continued through the highveld, with its vast farmlands, into the wilderness of the lowveld and beyond. Caught up in what the road had to offer, the potential for mechanical trouble became a rumour, a myth. Such is the power of the roadtrip that, even in the face of expert warning, one can think of nothing else other than the promise of magnificent vistas as the scenery shifts, always revealing a little more of itself to the traveller.

We did our best to see as much of Mozambique as we could manage in a car that wasn't exactly equipped for the rugged terrain that is our neighbour's roads. On New Year's eve we found ourselves at a beach party in Xai Xai, dancing the night away on a dizzyingly patterned mosaic floor atop a sand dune. Psychedelic patterns in glass tile that echoed the strobing of the disco lights as fireworks erupted from the sands, competing all the while with the moon for our attention. A fitting end for a roadtrip to a country that had simultaneously beguiled and perplexed us with its contradictions.

We were happily on our way back to South Africa when the mechanic's words came back to haunt us. The long line of cars snaking some 20kms to the border was amusing at first. We joked about how typical it was of South Africans, most sporting Gauteng licenses, to stage a traffic jam in a foreign country. It was this traffic jam that brought the gravity of our situation into sharp focus. The incessant break-clutch-accelerate-break-clutch of our movement as the line slowly dragged us towards the border  proved too much for our poor chariot. Our gearbox gave in and our car died.

We were fortunate to have made a very valuable friend in Maputo - the very generous Donna Manuela Soeiro – who took us in for a few days and saw to it that our car was repaired. In the meantime, we were treated to sights that we had missed. We saw an inner city garden that Donna Manuela had created within the ruins of a semi-demolished apartment building. Here in the midst of the inner city's perpetually decaying buildings that have given in to the unrelenting humidity and the resultant mildew, were specimens of new life – small shallow pots housing indigenous shrubs fixed precipitously atop pillars of chopped tree trunks; flowering plants that look as though they may have grown all on their own, like weeds, scattered around what were once the reception rooms of an apartment building. I enquired about the tree trunks – there were just so many of them. She told me a very amusing story of how she had been driving to her Teatro Avenida one morning when she came across a group of workmen by the side of the road felling dead trees. She asked the foreman how she could go about acquiring the tree trunks. He replied that she would have to write a letter to the municipality, which she did. In this letter, she had offered to purchase the trunks. The response she received was a stern “no”. After weeks of driving past these same tree trunks lying unattended by the side of the same road, she went to the municipality and hired a tractor.

“Why do you need the tractor?”, asked the official.

“I'm moving some tree trunks.”, came the reply.

“Well, in that case, you'll need some workmen.”.

And so it was that, with the help of a handful of municipal workmen, and the payment of a nominal fee for the tractor, Donna Manuela had her tree trunks.

These are the memories that make roadtrips special for me. The drama and catastrophe from which one rises; the friendships made and strengthened; the sights, sounds and smells – all these combine to give us some of the joie de vivre we need to carry on for the rest of the year. While we plan where to allow the open road to lead us next summer...

(written sometime in late 2012 for VISI magazine's summer issue of that year.)

BLACK SKIN, WHITE ASS

The first time I ever heard of anal bleaching was in a seedy leather bar in the depths of inner-city Johannesburg. A place furnished with leather slings and lit by television monitors beaming porn like flashing strobes, with the smells of lubricant and cum commingling in a heavy, sweaty mix. There I was, on the outer reaches of conventional morality, without a clue as to what could be done to the inner reaches of the human body. My companion, the one who broke the news to me, was a handsome middle-aged white man with a tuft of grey fur poking proudly over an unbuttoned leather vest. He sported a studded leather jockstrap, of course, under which I guessed lay a cockring and what looked to be an impressive set of balls. He introduced himself as Paul, and told me I had a nice body. I thanked him politely, and carried on drinking my beer. He soldiered on with the small talk and I tried to deflect it. I was a little self-conscious.

I fixed my focus on a television screen and made quite a ceremony of watching the night’s episode ofGenerations, demurely avoiding the other screens, where assorted men indulged in more vigorous exertions than the inane batting of Queen Moroka’s eyelids. Paul was a persistent fellow. He bought me my next beer and sidled closer. I’m glad he did, because he turned out to be rather charming. I told him what I did for a living. He told me he was an investment banker from Sunninghill and an art collector. I was impressed by the fact that he collected works by young contemporary artists, whose names he carefully recited, taking care to pronounce the ones with Xhosa or Shona names just right.

“You speak so well. For a white guy, I mean,” I said to him. He got the joke.

Once my guard was lowered, we gravitated to more pressing matters. We discussed the aesthetics of sex. Preferences: cut or uncut, long and thin or long and thick, clean or hairy, top or bottom. You know, the usual. Then he asked me if I liked dark or light asses. I was completely taken aback. My eyes narrowed, and I took this as my cue to grind an axe for which I’d long sought a grindstone. I launched into a tirade on how as a black man in South Africa I had issues with dating white South African men. I told him how boring it was to look through profiles on dating sites that read “Caucasians only” and, as if it were any consolation, the condescending codicil “Sorry, just my preference.” But that wasn’t what he meant at all. He told me he preferred an even-toned ass – black, white, Asian, whatever, just even-toned. He pointed to a screen near us. And there I saw it: a flawless, clean-shaven, even-toned manhole. It fluoresced and glistened in that dank bar like a halo in the fog, and I felt my sleeping member stir.

“Like that,” Paul said approvingly. “There are creams you can use to get yours to look like that if you want.”

As an enthusiastic and long-standing homosexual, I have seen my fair share of asses, and yet I had never encountered this preference before. I’m not sure I even understood it. At the time, I had just started shaving my pubes, after impolite remarks from strangers as to whether I was vying for a world record for the largest man-made forest. (My reaction was usually to point out that that was an impossibility: Johannesburg currently held that title and as a size twenty-eight twink, I wasn’t unseating an entire city any time soon.) The words had their effect, however; eventually I got myself some hair-removal cream – and I have been as smooth as the day I was born ever since. It hasn’t been easy. The creams have had their effect as well, and I have painfully learnt that the cost of a smooth groin is constant itchiness and all sorts of ungainly bumps. What’s a man to do these days? It wasn’t enough that I had risked in-grown hair, all manner of infection, and death by toxic vapour in the quest for pubic beauty. No. Apparently I would now have to turn my ass into a pretty pattern that anyone but me could see.

We departed separately. Paul left me a note at the counter where my clothes had been deposited. It was his phone number and an invitation to dinner. He also enclosed a card for a spa he said was reputable and would do me for free if I mentioned his name. Ridiculous, I thought. And also, intriguing. As you have no doubt discerned, I am an impressionable fellow. I’ll try anything once. I plotted a course of action.

***

I first consulted close friends. I broke it to them over dinner.

“What’s that?” Jennifer asked with genuine innocence.

For a moment there was silence as we all tried to figure if she was being for real. Her earnest American-ness had tripped us up enough times before for us to be unsure of her seriousness. Turns out she was. It wasn’t just her – quite a few of my friends had never heard of this exotic ritual.

“It’s right up there with vajazzling in the stakes of weird things people do to their nethers. Should I get you a Groupon for it?” Sarah said. Jen struggled to keep up and we fell out of our chairs laughing

I told Jen what it was. She was genuinely puzzled, and asked more questions – how do they do it? Where do they do it? Is it safe? What’s in the cream? And more. These Americans can be insatiable in their need to know. Jen’s questions lit a tiny fire in me; I needed to know too. Sadly, I had lost the card Paul left for me, so when I arrived back at my flat after dinner that night, I went straight to Google. The first things to come up were YouTube videos of testimonials from female American porn stars. “Basically I wanna be like an albino – but just around my sphincter,” drawled a dark-haired beauty as she made a circling motion with her index finger. I tried localising my search to find South African stories. I found an article on one of our local news websites. Whoever wrote it had done her research thoroughly. She had quotes from dermatologists and local suppliers and concluded that the South African anal bleaching capital was Durban.

I was excited. I tried to track down the supplier mentioned in the piece. I quickly descended into a Google spiral as I fought to keep track of the information. I found a supplier, and I was determined to try it out. What harm could come of it? I had just listened to seasoned veterans of the procedure extol its virtues, and not once did I hear a word of caution. This was it: I was ready to ascend the next rung of sexual aesthetics. I had a vision of the new, improved me – a clean-shaven, even-toned, thirty-year-old twink. I would become the chosen one, just like Neo from the Matrix, the difference being that my kingdom of Zion would consist not so much of embattled, human revolutionaries as seedy Joburgers looking for casual gay sex on the underground scene. I didn’t bother to finish the reading the article and went to sleep a very happy homo.

In the morning I woke with a song in my heart and a spring in my step. I waited until a reasonable hour to call, and dialled the number. The phone rang a few times and a woman answered.

“Hello, I’m interested in your anal bleaching service. Can you please tell me more about it?”

“I’m sorry, what?” she said, sounding a little flustered.

“I’ve been reading up on anal bleaching and I came across an article where you were listed as the sole supplier of this product, so I was wondering if I could come in for a session. It says here that the first application is usua…”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” she said, cutting me off.

“Oh, but…”

“NO, sorry, I don’t know anything about that. Thank you. Bye.”

She hung up.

I was deflated. I thought of an article I had read a few years ago by the late John Matshikiza. In the article, he related the story of how a friend, after receiving one of the most memorable massages of his life from a parlour in Cyrildene (Johannesburg’s Chinatown) had asked the receptionist if he could introduce his friend, John, to the establishment’s expert ministrations. The initial response was an emphatic “Yes, yes, tell your friend to come anytime.” The Chinese parlour’s enthusiasm sustained until the friend, “who is Jewish, by the way, but passes for white” mentioned that John was black. “No, we can’t do that,” the receptionist lady said. “Sorry, can’t do black people.”

What else could I have done wrong but be black? The article clearly quoted the woman’s employers as the sole supplier of anal-bleaching cream. I had corroborated the claim by searching for the company that made the cream itself, and I looked up the names and contact details for suppliers in every conceivable corner of the world – which was incidentally how I found her number. Hold on, how did she even know I was black? I have one of those Model C accents, and growing up, kids in my township called me “umlung’omnyama” (‘coconut’ in common parlance). I did not mention my name when I made the call.

Or perhaps she was put off because I am a man. I have been gifted with a very deep baritone since about the age of ten, from which time onwards, there has been no mistaking me for a woman. Perhaps her company doesn’t administer this service to men; perhaps she was just embarrassed to be talking to one. That was more understandable, but only led to more questions. Where do all these white men have their go to get their manholes bleached then?

I went back to the article as I contemplated my next move. And then I saw a word that made my eyes pop out of their sockets: hydroquinone. That shit they have been putting in skin-lightening creams since our grandmothers’, mothers’ and aunts’ time. That Hitler-affirming-black-is-savage-go-on-and-hate-your-melanin crap that eventually gave them amashubaba. I finally knew what I was up against.

Take the singer Mshoza, who just a few months ago famously bleached her entire body. For her, hydroquinone was a way to make herself more beautiful and more desirable to her (ironically, now ex-) husband. According to Mshoza, she felt great because it made her skin “clear” and made her “look younger.” As far as self-gratification goes, I know this is true: everlasting youth and beauty is about as good as it gets. And I know that I’m not above seeking this gratification myself. I revel in the fact that at my advanced age I still occasionally get asked for ID at bars. I know that I would kill to permanently win my daily battle with acne. In many ways, I understand Mshoza. Sure, it’s unlikely that I will ever personally get to view the effects of bleach on my anus. But that’s not the point. Someone else will; maybe someone who appreciates it, holds it in high esteem and then proceeds to perform annilingus on me until I can’t control myself any more.

Still, I had to ask myself if any of this was reason enough to consider risking amashubaba in so precious a place as that. I remembered how my mother and other well-put-together ladies in her circle of friends would make fun of acquaintances who had fallen into the hydroquinine hole. The scars that these unfortunate women bore were more than just the sub-dermal effects of a dangerous chemical. They were the scars of attempting to be closer to whiteness – and failing. A punishment for attempting to be “more” beautiful and achieving the reverse.

I learned the medical term for amashubaba from one of the doctors quoted in the article on anal bleaching. In medicine, they call it ochronosis, which sounds both ominous and archaic. It’s an unfamiliar word among my set, but the underlying sentiment is widespread and well-known: for black people in South Africa, we know it as the quest to elevate to a different race and a better place. We know it as the indoctrination of black women – and more than a few black men. I hadn’t even begun my treatment for ultimate anal beauty and I was already feeling sick.

***

Nevertheless, I was still intrigued. I retraced my steps, and started at the very beginning. By this time I had moved to Cape Town, which provided the impetus for my renewed search. It is, after all, the Mother City, home to more gay people per square kilometre than any other city, town or village in the country – or so they say. If there was an anal bleaching scene anywhere in the country, wouldn’t it be here?

I found a salon catering exclusively to the grooming needs of men tucked away in a corner of Greenpoint (Cape Town’s gay village). It was called The Glasshouse, and it sounded promising. Moreover, a cursory trawl through the salon’s website confirmed that they stocked the American wonder cream that promised to deliver me a readily rimmable rectum. I called the salon, unsure of how I would broach the subject, smarting as I was from the rebuff I received during my first attempt. My call was picked up, and I was tongue-tied. For some reason, I said “Hi, I was wondering if you cut black hair.” Well, that was silly. Everyone knows that black men in South Africa do not have their hair cut in places that offer hot stone massages and facials.

“Why, yes we do,” came the cheerful response. That took me by surprise. I had come across a number of ‘white’ salons in the country that didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t offer their services to black clients. This lady’s warm, welcoming tone was a bit of a shock. I kept my true intentions hidden and stuck to the haircut story. I would sneak the question of bleaching in later. In person, maybe. I set up an appointment.

I’ll admit I was relieved that the lady who cut my hair turned out to be black. I cannot imagine how laborious it would have been otherwise to try and explain what a “German Cut” is. She knew what I wanted. For precisely ten times what my last hair cut cost me, I bought slightly more than a haircut. I bought control. I could spell out every single nuance I wanted, and she executed them perfectly. (My last haircut involved explaining the word ‘asymmetrical’ to a barber who did not understand any of the languages I speak). Emboldened by my perfect hair, and drawn together by the experience of having my hard-earned cash safely exchanged, I struck up an exploratory conversation with the woman who headed operations at the salon.

“I noticed your price list includes waxing of legs and chests, and then there’s mention of “intimate waxing”. What is that about?” I said casually.

“Oh, that’s just for when some of our clients request… uhm… let me get you the price list,” she said, awkwardly.

“So,” I said, scanning the list, “are these the most exotic treatments on offer? I’ve read about some crazy things people do, like anal bleaching.”

Her eyes widened slightly.

“Oh, no! We don’t do that,” she said with a nervous giggle. “But we do have skin-lightening treatments that are specifically for, uhm, sensitive areas. Like… come let me show you.”

She led me towards a display cabinet and showed me the product she was speaking of, the one for sensitive areas. It was to be shortly discontinued. The sole supplier in South Africa was getting out of the business and the new supplier had jacked up the price of the product, which meant she had to raise the price of each jar by two hundred rands. “Ludicrous,” she said. She was considering a replacement: a local product that was available at a fraction of the cost of the imported cream. Instead of hydroquinine, the South African cream contained something called “decabutin” and as many as four “peptides” which I can only presume was better than one or two or three. I tried half-heartedly to research decabutin, and didn’t get very far, except to establish that it advertised itself as a safer alternative to hydroquinone – though how, or why, wasn’t very clear. It also turned out that the retiring wholesale supplier was none other than the person I had earlier called, the curt lady on the phone. That woman did not run a salon and merely supplied salons with the product. Her abruptness had nothing to do with either my blackness or my maleness. I had simply knocked on the wrong door.

As it turns out, we’ve all been knocking on the wrong door, and I don’t mean just black South Africans. Across Latin America, Asia and, of course, Africa, skin-lightening is an absolutely booming business. Native shame may be the least charming colonial hangover of them all, but it works like a charm at the retail till. I even read reports of a certain ‘Clean and Dry Intimate Wash’ from India – because, after all, what Indian women need most is a way to lighten their dark vaginas – and the hangover turned into a splitting headache. In the course of my investigations, a friend of mine said, in jest, “Why don’t you use Lemon-Lite?” Lemon-lite was a famed skin-lightening product I last saw in my teens. I Googled it and found to my horror that it was still available, with an even wider range of products – including its flagship “vanishing” cream.

At the salon, I found out that the American anal bleaching cream is fairly popular. The demographics of its user base surprisingly span both white and non-white men. As to exactly which intimate areas of the body these men are bringing light to, however, no one officially knows. As for my own personal ambitions in this regard, I had none left. Never before had I spent so much time and energy researching a cosmetic procedure so strange and pointless, and frankly, I was just exhausted. My desire to own the best ass in town was finally thwarted by three things: decision fatigue, murky politics, and the disquieting possibility that I might not be the first black man in town with a white ass.

For now, I was the proud owner of an excellent and unique haircut, and it was enough.

(written over the course of several months in 2012 for the Power Money Sex reader at powermoneysex.org.za and edited most wonderfully by Achal Prabhala.)

On Common Utility - A Review of Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty

“On August 16, 2012, the South African police intervened in a labor conflict between workers at the Marikana platinum mine near Johannesburg and the mine’s owners: the stockholders of Lonmin, Inc., based in London.” To all South Africans, the poignancy of the opening to the first chapter of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century cannot be understated. It has taken nearly two years to resolve the impasse that led to the deaths of 44 people and as yet untold devastation to lives far beyond those on the Marikana hill that fateful day. No other event in our recent history more succinctly captures the perpetual struggle between those few fortunate enough to own vast reserves of capital and the great many whose wealth is almost exclusively limited to their labour; and the disastrous consequences of the lack of political will to correct the growing distance between the two.

This is a voluminous 577-page treatise on the evolution of the concentration of capital since the 18th century, which has already famously been dissected by a barrage of reviewers – including Chris Giles of The Financial Times, which prompted a swift “calm yourself and have a seat” response from Paul Krugman, a Nobel-winner. There has not been so public a spat between economists of opposing traditions in recent history - a testament to the immeasurable importance of this work by Piketty.

For anyone with a second year economics pass, the first part of this gargantuan tome can at times be excruciating as he goes through a tortuous explanation of the main concepts and actors in his analysis. He makes up for this by using charming references to the novels of Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac; where the trials, tribulations and triumphs of their heroes and villains (and much of the supporting cast) are used to illustrate the “orders of magnitude” of the wealth (and lack thereof) of the period. This is a device he regularly returns to throughout the book, which helps the reader maintain perspective on the unimaginable and perhaps sterile measures of concentrated wealth that Piketty deals with in his analysis.

It is true to say that a lot of his analysis contains what many historians and other social science scholars have been saying, possibly since the advent of free-market capitalism. These scholars have often been met with cold mathematical models and economic theory as a counterargument from economists, who were often infrequently required to back these arguments up with empirical evidence. For some proponents of economic science, the elegance and logic of economic models sufficed. Thanks to the paucity of data throughout the history of capitalism, any small sample of data that had been collected has easily been manipulated to conform to those elegant models and assertions of logic. This is something Piketty takes to task by applying the wealth of data that he has collected over nearly two decades to these elegant models and logic. The result is what has become one of the most popular books on political economy of all time.

The book itself is deceitfully named; Capital in the 21st Century does not quite offer a look into the evolution of capital for the next 86 years. What it certainly is, however, is a complete empirical study of the history of capital, at least as far as it pertains to those nations and territories for which the appropriate data exists. This particular limitation is of no real consequence to his analysis; the conclusions he draws and the recommendations he makes pertain to the US, UK, France, Germany and Sweden – countries representing, for the most part, the origins of the system of capital accumulation that informs prevailing perceptions about capital. He does make a valiant attempt to include the Middle Eastern oil producing countries, as well as China and other emerging economies - an attempt that can barely live up to expectations due to the general opacity of the data pertaining to these territories.

“His data is dodgy!”, the neocons cry. This complaint is slightly amusing, mainly because I have been a data analyst in the “efficient” private sector, in various incarnations, for more than a decade. The data is always dodgy. The art is in piecing it together and making something useful of it the best way you can; and to do so with as much transparency as can be mustered. It’s not easy, it’s certainly not absolutely accurate, but it gives tractability to observable phenomena that need explanations or require justifications. In this respect, Piketty is a consummate master and an objective observer who makes use of data from independent sources in order to verify his findings. It would drive even the most patient of salaried analysts to distraction to have to deal with the gaps in the data spanning the temporal and spatial expanses that Piketty dares to explore.

The reader, however, is repeatedly reminded not to  “make a fetish” the numbers presented; to merely treat them “as orders of magnitude, useful only for focusing one’s thoughts”. Nevertheless, this has not stopped other scholars – rivals and allies alike – from tearing apart his source data and, consequently, his treatment thereof. Piketty, ever magnanimous in his pursuit of rigorous discourse that advances knowledge and society as a whole, welcomes these challenges with one reservation: that the debate does not degenerate into a game of technical one-upmanship where scholars seek to assert their place in the terrain without adequately addressing the question of growing wealth and income inequality, the presence of which there is no doubt.

Thomas Piketty is inarguably a venerable scholar. The professor of economics at L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Social (EHSS) and the Paris School of Economics, of which he is a founder and current associate chair, is somewhat of an overachiever. He attained his PhD in economics at the age of 22, whereupon he took up the position of associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, made extensive use of Piketty’s work in his 2012 bestselling book, The Price of Inequality, which was an extension of an article he had penned for Vanity Fair magazine entitled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” that sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement.

One may be tempted to approach the book as I did with the hope (or apprehension) that it may somehow lead to a revival of Marxism as a viable solution to capitalism. One is quickly disabused of this notion within the early chapters of the book. Piketty is a fervent supporter of capitalism, and to a certain extent, also of inequality. At least insofar as the latter arises “on common utility”, as denoted by the quote from the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that heads the introduction. This may also hold the clue to the book’s popularity. The reality of wealth inequality is not new to anyone, so what is new in this book, one may wonder. What stands out the most is the debunking of old and trusted axioms regarding the shrinkage of inequality mainly in the US during the Baby Boom years. The conclusion he draws is that what may have seemed like a reversal of fortunes that resulted in the creation of a “patrimonial middle class” during this period was in fact the result of reconstructionist economics in the wake of the two world wars and no real permanent feature on the economic landscape. A conclusion that is sure to shake the foundations of many an advocate of the theory of “trickle-down economics” so favoured by one of our former presidents. The solution he proposes – a global tax on wealth - is so pragmatic in nature that it is almost sobering in it’s lack of the kind of idealist posturing that is prevalent in economic theory.

Whatever the flaws in his data, the manipulation thereof, his analysis, the arguments presented, conclusions drawn and final recommendations there is one thing I believe we all can agree on: there needs to be a more determined commitment to the collection and storage of economic data. This is one of the major justifications for his call for a progressive wealth tax, which he imagines could be set at a level so low as to merely act as a fee for the registration of wealth – if such is the decision a nation or region reaches through democratic processes.

The lack of reliable data to measure the volume and growth, as well as the concentration of capital is one of the reasons why the tension between those with the wherewithal to acquire capital and those without persists. Two years ago, 44 people lost their lives because Lonmin mineworkers demanded a monthly wage of R12 500 – a sum they assumed their employers could well afford, which their employers insisted they could not. One can’t help but wonder: had there been a tradition of making data available in a transparent way, as Piketty argues, would this standard wage dispute have reached a different conclusion perhaps? 

(edited beautifully by Mary Corrigall. a version of this review appeared in the Sunday Independent of the 10th of August 2014)

transcript of the gmail chat with Athi-Patra Ruga for "the thud of a snowflake"

athi-patra:  cool , i can now on g chat, desktop is mine.

Sent at 10:03 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  shoot!

me:  oh, ok, cool...

let's start with the questions i sent... your name - Athi-Patra - please explain the origins
Sent at 10:04 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  Id rather not, it will spoil the mystery.

me:  hahahaha ok, so if i make stuff up about an obsession with the great dames of history - particularly controversial ones, e.g brenda, v-mash etc will i be on the right track?

Sent at 10:06 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  nah...but yeah. but dancehall queen Patra would be warmer.

me:  is it the sexuality that she exudes in her work that draws you to her? your work is very sexual or rather deals with themes around sexuality a lot

Sent at 10:08 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  well for she is from that longline of bad gals who messed with gender prescriptions , by using her sexuality.

and in a way this does lnk with my work , it revolves around the reclamation of the body from dictum/dicti
athi-patra:  for example my work deals with the animal that is a man. an how his body thru many reasons has been made to feel foreign to him.
patriachy, and religiopus references to the body ,

Sent at 10:13 AM on Tuesday

me:  now that you mention the substance of your work, i was reading the transcript of your interview with Ed Young, and in it you seem to imply that your performance work is purely self-indulgent and perhaps has no substance but is merely controversial (or camp as you put it) just so you can move the tapestries... am i correct in that understanding? or were you merely being facetious in that interview?

Sent at 10:15 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  yes the tone of the interview was very irreverent and there are moments that I ask myself "what is it for".

it's thankless work this art thang.
however , i think it is clear that irrverence is a tool in my work and that includes camp. these tend to get to the point more...the point being an accessible one...
me:  that Trojan Horse thing your talk about? hit them with that Will Ferrel "No one knows what it means. It's provocative! It' gets the people going." to facilitate the conversation?

Sent at 10:21 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  provocation works if you are gonna be dealing with a wall made up of staid notions of art.

i am highly aware of that.
Sent at 10:22 AM on Tuesday

me:  next question: who or what influences you and why?

Sent at 10:24 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  well TV is the ultimate inspiration. and also just physical expression from fashion to performance.

Sent at 10:27 AM on Tuesday

me:  you've been compared to Stephen Cohen, what are your thoughts on the obsession of the media and the public with comparing artists?

Sent at 10:29 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  stephen Cohen is an influence in my work , the first performance i ever saw in 2002 was Cohens chandalier in newtown. the comparison is an honor...however...

me:  however???

athi-patra:  sorry mali is late for his elle shoot...pandemone.

me:  oh dear... ok... you wanna take a break?

Sent at 10:36 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  however it is an exercise in lazy journalism to make such a basic copmarioson without engaging with the work and the longline of performance

artist dealing with the same issues.
francko b, leigh bowery , ron athey etc.
am back...
Sent at 10:41 AM on Tuesday

me:  do you think perhaps in your case it's because a lot of journo's find it difficult to review your work, so they resort to simple comparisons? or is it because the south african performance art scene is a little thin and so leads to simple comparisons to those most prominent?

Sent at 10:42 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  a bit of everything above . I am ambivalent of the "reviewer" , as it is reportage more than it is about engagement with the artwork. that could lead one to simpleness

athi-patra:  also, i do not think of the art scene as a local thing , i play in the international field along with many artists who are from south africa. And this requires our journos to think broader.

Sent at 10:47 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  is it tough to review my work? Then if so let it be about your experience and no convoluted qualifications on the work. do you get

Sent at 10:48 AM on Tuesday

me:  ok, next question: black families are notoriously conservative, your work is very provocative, what is your family's take on your work?

Sent at 10:50 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  My dad is really proud of the work . I do not find this surprising. when i was groing up I used to see my dad wearing my moms dressing gown. My mom use English Blazer at some point. they were very provocative lol...My family is like any other south africa family , we have this flabbagasting addiction to shock.

and also they think" As long as hes employed , askhathali."
me:  hahahahaha love it!

athi-patra:  but there's also something to be said about how they "come out" everytime a friend of theirs is exposed to the work.

me:  do you ever discuss your work in detail with your dad? besides being proud, does he have any criticisms or objections? i'm thinking particularly of Ilulwane - it's a very controversial subject amongst Xhosa men

Sent at 10:56 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  No , he's not concerned about the semantics or the language of art...Its another world to him. I have spoken around the table about the various projects and Ilulwane because of how it affected my family and still does , is seen a a necesarry thing to do by my folk.

i think that my dad equates artmaking with activism some times.
that puts presssure on me.
but the funny thing is after he started hearing and seeing my work...he still is expecting an album launch soon from his"performance artist son."
me:  kwaaaaaaaaa hahahahahahahaha well with the work you did with Spoek, who knows? you might find yourself in the studio one day... perhaps a compilation album from Uncle's Touch?

athi-patra:  hehehe , from your lips to gods ears...hehe.

why not
Sent at 11:04 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  however , the next instalment of ilulwane will continue the singing journey Im on.

me:  but back to your dad equating making art with activism: is your work not some form of activism? by your own admission your mission is to subvert the axioms of not only identity, but also the art world in itself? would you say this was influenced by your dad's take on your chosen field? or did you arrive at it independently?

Sent at 11:06 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  i grew up in a very conscientised time , politics have to be part of ones lifes work. The fight started a long time ago , and it continues with the art establishment and imagemaking in general.

everything i do is politikal.
me:  i thought you weren't in the habit of answering polotikal questions?

athi-patra:  well ... some can be very boring.

solicit the Jlo out of me...
ha
me:  would you say this is why you abandoned your fashion career in favour of creating art? i know the two can be interchangeable, but fashion has a more limited scope, wouldn't you say? or has that part of you not been abandoned entirely and we can hope to see a resurfacing of Just Nje?

Sent at 11:12 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  well all that happened was that I grew very frustrated with the transient apolitical nature of the industry ...this results in a narrow view that doesnt allow for one to interrogate real issue that are other than consumption...

Sent at 11:13 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  also I took fashion with me as a medium in my work...it's still a big influence. as for just nje. it was a great stepping stone to achieving this conversation about perception and how the history of image making and its effects have directed society to bot the good and the bad maybe...

me:  next question: would you say "fearless and intrepid" are apt descriptors of yourself and your work? you've done some daring things in places where the consequences could have been, and at times have been, dire? i'm talking now of your work in Dakar, Kinshasa, and Cape Town (i forget the character's name - but the Universal Church incident, and being at the Station taxi rank in a leotard at night)... or are you oblivious to those consequences when you execute your performances?

Sent at 11:19 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  the first and most important aspect of my performances are the character construct and the narative to be performaed. I like to think of describing myself as those words to take away from the fact that the context and how it translates into an image demand such actions.

beiruth
i used to not think of the consequences of my work , until Beiruth happened .
Sent at 11:24 AM on Tuesday

me:  has the Beiruth incident made you rethink performing in such public spaces, where you don't have the safety of the gallery and it's, assumedly, understanding attendees?

athi-patra:  i'll never stop performing in public...that's the politics around my core performance intervention , accessibility. How ever now there is this theatrical/scale dynamic that is very demanding ie: Ilulwane.

Sent at 11:27 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  where a public space becomes a stage and starts a story about . inclusion and exclusion. get me?

me:  yes, galleries can be a little foreboding to those who don't have previous experience attending them

speaking of scale: your performances get bigger and more ambitious, do you feel pressure to continue on that trajectory? is it sustainable?
athi-patra:  what? Growing Bigger?

me:  yes

athi-patra:  it's a non debate. i want to recreate and insert myself into these fantasy. and this requires scale.

...my dream work would probably be people coming into a stadium with pyrotechs and lights and a golden circle.
me:  like the rockstar that you are?

athi-patra:  the scale is maybe me soliciting a bigger audience , not based on academic art critisicm but a pure visual delight...that's a bit haunting.

like Arena Rock
no like the rockstar Ilulwane expects to be.
Sent at 11:40 AM on Tuesday

me:  i understand each of your characters is a kind of alter ego for you, and each one is "birthed", it lives and is then "killed off" - do they ever haunt you? or is there no afterlife for them? once it's dead, it's dead and can never be returned to life in another incarnation?

Sent at 11:42 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  one day I will show them . Funny Iluwane the performance is about that ascnsion to the other world. Ilulwane comes close to owning its own destiny by taking that task of killing characters...I think they exist all in the after life...like 

ilulwanes ancestors or stuff like.

it would be nice to have them in conversation...that idea haunts alot of late.
Miss Congo
Injibhabha
Beiruth
Ilulwane
me:  interesting... more of that grand ambition again... it really would be fascinating to see...

athi-patra:  ...it's a band actualy...sorry am flowing like.

hehehe
me:  hehehehehe i like the idea, and i cannot imagine how but i know you're the only person capable of pulling it off
you're very prolific for one so young, do you ever take a break?
or are you like a BEE artist, always thinking of the next tender even on holiday?
athi-patra:  the latter
also I just like what I do...it seeps into every aspect of my life , and that requires a lot of putting out.
me:  next question (penultimate): who is your greatest critic? i know you're ambivalent to "reviewers" but is there any opinion that shakes you?

athi-patra:  my partner for the spirit of my work and commercially my curator Ashleigh Mclean.

may regret that answer...

athi-patra:  on the crics vibe: Zolitha ...coz she has such lucidity and respect in her approach, and a coupla swear words. also I have found a great mentor in Jay Patha especially with the Ilulwane series...the first one was performed in a under his curatorship...the treadmill heels ilulwane

he midwifes and nurtures Ilulwane along with I like to think.
and Roselee Goldberg
me:  should i strike it?

athi-patra:  let's see.

we'll get back to it.
me:  cool
last question: what's next? i know you're taking Ilulwane to the arts fest, and then another performance in PE. what come after? or are you not there yet?
Sent at 11:53 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  pe is gonna be a cool large scale performance, with Ilulwane sans the swimmers but yet another kind of team. also taking stock of the growth so i am prepared to create another epic ,"The future white women of Azania."

Sent at 11:56 AM on Tuesday

me:  Future white women, is there a new character being developed for that? will you be making collectable work for that one?

athi-patra:  the whole thing is about consumption and aspiration and the demise of such .  So I am designing the project to shape shift into the different media that i am responsible for. Of course it's performance-based. but to be accessible to it will need these diff translations to reach erryone , so a print , video ,craft series etc.

me:  still dealing with body/sexuality politics or is there a shift this time?

Sent at 12:02 PM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  Oh yes! more with intimacy...It is set on a prison island .

companionship is the right word.
me:  hehehehehehe it's gonna ruffle feathers... can't wait!