Review: Dancing The Death Drill

“AJI!” is the sound made by the men of the SS Mendi as they dance the death drill in Fred Khumalo’s latest novel. The scene is the chaos of the ship as it begins to sink. “AJI!” the men shout  in between the ship’s chaplain’s ferocious exhortations - “ASIKOYIKI SPORHO!" “AJI!” - the call and response of Anglican Catholicism turned on it’s head in this final eucharist, this moment of death’s arrival.

Fred Khumalo’s Dancing The Death Drill (Penguin Random House) comes on the centenary of the sinking of the Mendi off the coast of the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. With nearly 1000 men on board, it travelled for a month before losing 646 men when it crashed with the cargo steamship, the Darro, that fateful night in February of 1917. It is but one in a series of tragedies in Khumalo’s masterpiece of a tale - each one a subtle warning.

A story that begins with a scene of deceptive serenity: it’s a quiet day at the Tour d’Agent - the famous restaurant at 18 Quai de la Tournelle, with it’s panoramic views of the Seine, in Paris. The protagonist is staring out of the window, lost in his reverie as he reflects on the events of his life that have brought him to the point of his retirement. Khumalo’s protagonist is a man of many names. Yet he is a man who has succeeded in becoming no one, despite all the potential to be someone. Until, that is, that fateful afternoon in 1958. Within a few pages of setting the restaurant scene, two men are butchered in that same dining room - after one of them called the soon to be retired head waiter a “kaffir”.

It is a double murder that is as mind-boggling in its desperation as it is jarring within the context of all that precedes it. You’d need to be covered in teflon and vaseline to not be gripped at this point. From here on, the pace of story is unrelenting, as we are hurtled into the past at breakneck speed. Beginning first with the Anglo-Boer War and on to First World War before being brought rushing back to the point where the story begins.

For just over 280 pages Khumalo takes us on a journey through the history of South Africa. The story is told through a streetwise smart mouth self-exiled South African artist named Jerry Moloto (rhymes with Gerard Sekoto?) whose voice is almost immediately lost as the author gets down to the main business of the book. 

Into the gaps between the exclamation points and full stops of history, between short sharp bursts of heroism and villainy are the lives of ordinary people not often told. Dooming subsequent generations - ours included - to a lifetime of catching stompies around issues such as racial identity and land and nationalism. The nameless faceless heroes who perished on their way to fight a proxy war - for the return to their own nations some sense dignity and pride.

“The old lie: /Dulce at decorum est /pro patria mori” scoffs Wilfred Owen, in his 1917 poem about the same war. “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” but even a native of those cold European lands could see right through the lie the South African Native Corps were only so eager to die for.

Khumalo’s book comes at a time when traditional heroes are being revealed by history to be mere mortals. Where such homilies about nationalism as the title of Owen’s poem are laid bare for the lies they truly are. A time when the lie of Mandela’s Rainbow, now long evident, is joined by the lie of liberation as the structural realities of apartheid remain intact. Lies, which, according to Khumalo’s partially fictional retelling of the story, black South Africans wanted to believe even as far back as the First World War.

“Abelungu ngoswayini /basincitshitiye /basibize oswayini” the cadence of the axes of the men of the South African Native Corps (SANC) hacking away at the pines in the forests of Normandy. A land, the men of the SANC soon learn, of opposites. Where a black Lovedale educated sergeant is in charge (albeit, in a limited capacity) and where the white soldiers are the natives.

The chant is confirmation that the men of the Native corps have finally come to the realisation that no amount of ingratiating themselves to empire will ever return the dignity and humanity denied to them by colonisation. That no amount of respectability will bring equality with their white colonisers and oppressors. It is a sentiment that seems to echo in the hearts of the today’s young South Africans who look at the Rainbow Nation project and respond with “uit die blou van kwaMsunu”.

It is as Mqhayi writes in his ode to those hapless souls, when he says:

Thina, nto zaziyo, asothukanga nto

Sibona kamhlophe, sithi bekumele

Sitheth’engqondweni, sithi bekufanele

Xa bekungejalo bekungayi kulunga

And so, now that we know, now that we say it was meant to be, we can begin to waken from the fog of reconciliation and begin the necessary and difficult work of dismantling those systems and frameworks that continue to yoke us to the expectations of our colonial masters. The work of reclamation and reformation. The work of renaissance. To face the ghosts of the past and fearlessly shout "ASIKOYIKI SPORHO!”

Blackass - A Review

Somewhere out there, Rachel Dolezal is reading Igoni Barrett’s debut novel, Blackass, thinking “why do black people get to have all the fun?”. Although, one might suppose Ms Dolezal wouldn’t be much impressed with the direction of Furo Wariboko’s transition. After all, for decades, Ms Dolezal made this transition into a white woman daily in her alone, quiet moments, and occasionally to old friends and close family. To the rest of the world, and for all intents and purposes, she was a black woman. What Ms Dolezal might envy in Furo is the permanent state of his transition. A complete transformation into the coveted, the desired. But one would also wonder if Furo really wants to be a white man. (Just as it boggles the giblets of damn near any black person why someone white would volunteer themselves to experience first-hand the violence doled out by whiteness that black people experience on the daily, both overtly and covertly.)

Oh sure there are the obvious benefits: the coushy job for which Furo - apart from having the semblance of a white man - is nowhere near qualified for because, you see, Furo made things to his modules in university that made his degree to be done only just (which, if Nigerian Twitter is to be believed - and yes, yes it is - is less than abject failure in the eyes of Nigerian parents and the wider community). Also, he has never even read any of the books he’s supposed to be marketing  - wholesale - to accomplished Lagosian businessmen. Then there is Syreeta - a woman who is so far above Furo’s paygrade (even after being employed at a much higher position than he initially applied for - coz, white), that she ends up bankrolling their situationship thanks to the unknowing assistance of her blesser - a Grade A blesser at that, who is basically footing the bill for the flat that makes their lovenest in an upmarket surburb of Lagos (as well as Furo’s new work clothes). These are the benefits that come with the privilege of whiteness, to which Furo adopts a dala what you must approach to life coz now suddenly his (white) balls have descended and feels himself to be a man. Just now this guy was hiding in his room from his mother, afraid of her reaction to his sudden and extreme luminosity.

Even with these benefits from it, whiteness is still a curious thing in a city like Lagos with its population of anywhere between 8 million (according to the official 2006 census) and 21 million (a 2015 unofficial estimate) of mostly black people. Perhaps in all the continent, only in South Africa is it commonplace to encounter ypipo without wondering where they’re from, why they’re here and when they’re leaving. In fact, it has often been said by Africans from places not within the imaginary boundaries of South Africa, that one scarcely considers oneself black until one finds oneself immersed in the inescapable whiteness of South Africa.

‘“You this olofofo woman, I been think set you get sense, … You never see oyibo before?’”

But the black of Nigeria’s Lagos is that of black people whose determined blackness has caused them to universally and quite successfully break the Queen’s English. And then to put it together again in lyrical pidgin, resplendent with idioms that cause the hearts of every African logophile to sing. A syntax and a lexicon all of its own, which Barrett uses with delicious liberal relish in the dialogue of his most obstinate characters. For a lot of it, unless you are familiar with the bending of the over 500 Nigerian tongues from which the algorithm that forms Nigerian speech is derived, you will lose some of the meaning but the gist is carried in the music of the performance. Barrett puts you there without overwhelming you with a back story. After all, it’s not his fault you haven’t bothered to brush up on your Igbo/Yoruba history - didn’t everyone get warned about starving Biafran children whenever you didn't want to finish your supper?

“‘Dirty Yoruba rat!’”

“‘Old Igbo mumu.’”

“‘Bastard son of kobo-kobo ashewo!’”

“‘Useless illiterate woman.’”

Africa is full of pidgins, creoles and languages that have evolved from conflict and collaboration with the project of colonisation, from Swahilli in the East to Fanakalo and Afrikaans in the South - all languages that evolved out of servitude to empire. In Nigeria, it seems, it is not common to find an oyibo speaking this pidgin as fluently as Furo does, which not unexpectedly, raises eyebrows.

“‘Abeg, no vex, but you be albino?’”

In a moment of brazen risk taking, the author devises a way of inserting himself into the story. It’s a little jarring. It fits awkwardly and is managed by the author in a manner reminiscent of a Nollywood film plot - convenient and outrageously improbable. It’s a kind of subversive meta-pidgin of storytelling - where the conventional rules that inform acceptance of writing/film from the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom are twisted and bludgeoned the same way the Nigerian pidgin does the same to the language of the realm. It’s an experiment that doesn’t quite go as planned and the recovery is rather clumsy. For instance, there’s the denouement, a chapter titled “METAMORPHOSES” where the parallel between being transgendered and being transracial is made which derives directly from this point of self-insertion. It’s the novel’s lowest point for reasons that would detract greatly from the review of what is an otherwise triumph of decolonising the African novel.

On Mining and Labour

For many years now, since even during the economic “boom” years of the Mbeki administration with its promises of trickle down prosperity, mining has contributed increasing less and less to the nation’s gross domestic product (and yet, if UNCTAD reports are to be believed, has received the bulk of foreign direct investment flowing into South Africa, even with a 74% drop in total FDI between 2014 and 2015). In the ten years between 2005 and 2015 mining (and quarrying, as it is classified in SARB reports) has decreased by an average of 0.35% annually, continuing a steady trend downwards. A trend the origins of which can be traced back as far as 1993 when mining held the lion’s share of contributions to GDP at levels close to 20% before reaching 12% by 2015. 

For nearly 150 years, the men (and, lately, women) of this country have toiled underground, at great risk to their lives, to dig up ore of varying composition and quality. Gold, our most prized element - holding, as we do, the worlds largest known reserves of the stuff - comes out in such poor quality ore that one ton of earth must be excavated to yield a mere 5.6 grams of pure gold. That alone should have been enough to divert resources to unlocking the secret of the philosopher’s stone, were it not for the notion of “cheap labour” that we have become most famous for over these past few centuries. Today we have the curious situation where, as noted in a tweet by mining and labour analyst Mamokgethi Molopyane, “those who actually do (the) physical work to create the wealth of this country earn less than R5 000 on average”.

On August 16, 2012, 34 miners were ruthlessly gunned down by members of the South African Police Services’ Public Order Policing unit. Their crime: demanding an across the board minimum monthly salary of R12 500 - twelve comma five like the big bag of sugar/flour/mielie meal that gets many low income families going through the month. You would have to be blind to the everyday reality of thousands of households who depend on incomes as meagre as R4 500/month that some mine workers reported to be earning at the time - for some, unchanged since the 80s - to miss the poignant and poetic symbolism contained in demanding itwelf-koma-five. Even after the tragic event, even after the international outrage and national mourning that followed and continues even to this day, those miners are yet to realise their dream of earning what was then slightly less than the national average for the year. Every time there is any protest that seeks social justice involving anything to do with money, the reflex reaction from those appointed to mind the gates to the bountiful wealth of this country is to blame the economy for not being efficient enough to produce equitable outcomes - as though they themselves aren’t active agents in the working of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”. For mine workers on the platinum belt, the excuse was the financial meltdown of 2008 and the sluggish global recovery therefrom. 

Thomas Piketty, seemingly playing devil’s advocate and referring directly to the tragedy at Marikana, argued in Capital in the 21st Century that perhaps the best way to proceed would be full disclosure on the financial state of the mine, using the example of Rhenish capitalism as a lesson in how to reconcile competing interests in industry (profit maximising vs maximising the price for which individuals trade leisure for labour, according to the neoclassical model). But full disclosure is not a thing one can trust South African mining houses with, as evidenced by the tasking of the Davis Tax Committee by the National Assembly to look into transfer pricing. For the uninitiated, transfer pricing is the commonplace act of moving profits from the operational organisation to a separate but related organisation, usually one registered in a tax haven, in order to “avoid” (and evade) taxes in the land where the profits were first earned. The committee, comprised of some of South Africa’s sharpest economic and legal minds including experts on inequality like Prof. Ingrid Woolard, have gone on record citing the many challenges they face in determining when such pricing is indeed avoidance (which is legal) and what is evasion (which is illegal). Such challenges also include the lack of capacity within the state revenue agency, SARS, to investigate and bring offenders to justice. What chance then do mineworkers have - many of whom are barely literate, -against such sophisticated obfuscation that confounds even those who profess to be experts in their field?

On March 22, 2016, Sikhosiphi Bazooka Rhadebe was murdered in his home, while his family watched helplessly. For him, this was a culmination of a long fight against the awarding of rights to a foreign multinational behemoth to mine the pristine and picturesque sands of Xolobeni - a stretch of virtually untouched beach on the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. It is not known definitively who killed Bazooka, or who, if indeed at all, ordered his assassination. What is known is that there is a large Australian mining company interested in the titanium that lies, ripe for the picking, in the sands of those beaches. Politics of the stomach have given rise to an internecine conflict within the community represented by AmaDiba of Xolobeni. Sluggish economic growth, growing unemployment all serve to create a powder keg of conditions within the community with those who see the job opportunities presented by potential mine operations pitting themselves against those who wish to retain the community’s control of the land. It is not the intention of this article to put intentions in the minds of this latter group, but instead to outline a perspective on the history of mining and the notion of citizens acting merely as labour for the enrichment of foreign interests.

Mining is clearly on the decline and, as also astutely observed by Molopyane in another tweet, South Africa needs to prepare for a life after mining. South Africa should have started preparing for such a reality when mining first lost first place to financial services with regards to contribution to GDP nearly a decade ago. Currently in third place (if we disregard government services), there doesn’t seem to be any hope of a resurgence, especially considering the fact that mining by definition deals in non-renewable resources. The only way in which mining could re-emerge as the champion of economic growth is through the discovery of new mineral deposits such as those at Xolobeni. However, the idea that the community residing in the area - a community that faces great upheaval should mining go ahead, including the disruption of burial grounds - should serve only to as a source of cheap labour to mine the wealth of the land of their ancestors to expatriate to the asset portfolios of foreigners is beyond insulting. Knowing what we know about the exploitation of South African mine workers, we cannot, in all good conscience, stand by and allow the repetition of the mistakes of yore, which all but brought the economy of this country to its knees. 

It cannot be denied that the people of Xolobeni are sitting on a proverbial gold mine. For them to not realise, in real monetary terms, the wealth contained in those sands while trying to keep the wolf of poverty at bay would be a great tragedy. Add to this the very real possibility that strong lobby groups paid for with Australian dollars may eventually manage to sway the government to force the community to accede to the pressure, and the tragedy takes on the aspects of dark comedic farce. A combination of Rhenish capitalism, cooperative mining and public-private partnerships where the community retains complete equity on mining operations and merely pays fees (regulated by government to ensure fairness) to the mining houses and related operators for the management and operations of the mine seems like the best option. From this the community may follow the path of nations like Saudi Arabia and Norway who have built vast sovereign funds from their natural resource endowments and are now able to diversify away from these as they move into a future that is not threatened by the declining reserves of non-renewables.

[Originally published in the Comment & Analysis section of the Mail & Guardian's 02 June 2016 edition. Also available here.]

The Blues of Being a Stay-At-Home Gay

“I don’t know when love became so elusive /all I know is no one I know has it”, Beyoncé says as I contemplate my own love life on board a flight from Johannesburg to East London. I was trying to stir up the FOMO of the lady seated next to me by watching Lemonade during the flight and instead found myself deep in my own feels. I think I know when love became elusive for me - it was the day I discovered internet dating sites and apps. The first time I realised the internet could be used to find love, as a young freshman at Fort Hare, I soon realised that they only really worked in the big cities. They worked even better overseas. But doesn’t everything though? (Don’t answer that.)

Returning home last year to become a part-time stay-at- home gay while figuring this funemployment thing out, my sex life abruptly became the no life of my younger days. It used to be that when you returned from “the mountain”, your parents bought you a new bedroom suite and built you a backroom where you could live out your manhood to its fullness. The backroom is a rite of passage in and of itself. It’s the aspiration of many a young boy growing up in a township home. For a time, I did have a backroom at home but I relinquished it for economic migration to the big city (and the promise of busier Manhunt and Grindr pages) before I could really put it to optimal use. Without an established pattern of behaviour (and without the requisite knack for the age-old tradition of ukungenisa) I returned an old dog reluctant to learn new tricks and settled for an inside-house room where the wifi signal is stronger.

When I was in the big city, I wasn’t quite as shumanekile as I am now. My experience of some 20 years as a practicing homosexual has led me to some of the darkest parts of male sexuality. Not least of which is evinced in the unrelenting fuckboism that is Grindr (or indeed any of the many dating/hookup platforms available to same-sex loving men). The greatest of which comes neatly packaged as a set of “preferences” most commonly hurled at you by various headless torsos and other NSFW avatars. “NO FATS!” “NO FEMMES!” “NO BLACK!” “NO ASIANS!” are by far the most popular. One may rightfully argue that this is indeed a simple matter of preference. A favourite aunt of mine would say “de gustibus non disputandum est” - there’s just no disputing taste (aphorisms always seem to hold more weight when expressed in a foreign and/or dead language spoken only to sound like a pompous git). We all have preferences - for example I prefer Chicken Licken hot wings with the hot sauce to Nando’s any kind of wings. What I don’t do, however, is stand in the middle of the food court at The Mall of Africa and shout that out at the top of my voice. My analogy is simplistic and borderline egregious, but it serves my argument well in that, by extension, what civilised people are expected to do is to wait to be offered the undesired wings before politely declining without even mentioning a preference for wings that aren’t Portuguese. It’s humiliating and dehumanising to Portuguese chickens.

With a population of 267 000 (if Wikipedia is to be believed), after making the necessary adjustments for demographics (locating the sweet spot in the male population between Ben10 and half-past blesser), eligibility, queer-drain (like brain-drain, but with queers) and so on, the only people left are the four other gay men in my East London circle of friends. The worst thing is at my age, even as an openly out homo, I am starting to get the “when are you getting married” question a lot at family gatherings (damn you Constitution of South Africa!) Soon one of my siblings will be getting married and I need to be prepared. So my mission between now and then is to find someone to be my date to the wedding, so that when I get asked that question I can deflect and point to him on some “mbuze, nanku”. That ought to buy me some time I think. Or get me chose. Either way, I win.

[Originally published in the Friday section of the 6 May 2016 edition of the Mail & Guardian.]

Passing The Bhokhwe

A little while ago I was sitting at my workstation at home minding my own business, as one does. The radio, which I wasn’t really paying attention to, was tuned into uMhlobo Wenene FM - the midmorning weekday show, Khanya Gqiyazana, was on. The show normally deals with issues around gender, “with a bias towards women issues”. I sat down at my work station to begin the day’s work when just then the host announced what the following segment on the show would be about. 

There’s something about being other that makes you acutely aware of when the temperature in the room changes and you sense that what will follow will leave you feeling naked and exposed. The host began by explaining how as Xhosa people we practice our customs with a certain pageantry that relies heavily on the gender binary as an anchor. Suddenly the room got cold. Her question to her listeners that morning was how did those she described as “amadoda athandana namanye amadoda” (men who love other men) handle those situations.

Ever since the very public traditional wedding in KwaDukuza between two men in 2013 that went viral across the world (ending in a zealously instagrammed divorce two years later), the topic of marrying tradition to constitutional freedoms has been a recurring one, mostly on social media networks. I consider myself a traditionalist, because that’s just how I was raised. In the same way that someone thinks themselves to be Jewish or Muslim, I consider myself to be umXhosa. I also just happen to be indoda ethandana namanye amadoda.

The radio show host invited calls exclusively from men who self-identified as such.  Knowing they were likely to attract trolls, they spared no effort in screening the calls. When the first caller eventually got through he took the host completely by surprise. He spoke with a bass in his voice that sounded like it had the power to shake the foundation of a heteronormative home. His Xhosa was uninflected, radiating a mixture of Model C twang lying just under the surface of his down home country boy charm. “Bhuti uthandana namanye amadoda phofu?”, she asked a little suspiciously, like he’d slipped through her carefully constructed firewall. “Ewe, ndithandana namanye amadoda”, he boomed proudly out of the radio speakers. 

The call ended at that point and the signature music came on. You could almost sense the host’s disappointment at so uneventful and far from titillating conversation. A little while later, the host returned to announce that she had just been informed that there are what are termed “butch” men who love other men. God bless her producer for trying to educate her but it was all such a mess. The show was not going as she had hoped and she was starting to fray at the edges. A few other callers came on and in the end she found one caller who managed fit her narrow fetishism of queer men who don’t “pass”.

As someone who easily switches between masculine and feminine expression, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had to “pass” when around family, especially extended family. It’s just easier for me - it may not be for someone else. When you’re black, being a family is a lot of work. Even the word for the things that bring us together as family and friends “imisebenzi” - literally “works”. For me, passing is the path of least resistance.

I’ve seen others pass too. I’ve also seen others who don’t. I’ve also encountered feminine men who self-identify as straight. It’s really not that linear. 

I remember once my mother asked me how I was going to have children. Her concern was how I was going to carry on the family name. A fair question, now that I look back - I wasn’t so magnanimous when it was asked though. That’s the advantage people who enjoy the company of the opposite sex have over people like me - this sort of built-in feature to make more people. I do envy that. Being a “thoroughbred” homo, as it were, I feel I’m far too long in the tooth to experiment with the most widely practiced method to procreate. I’m too broke for a surrogate (also, ethical questions and such). So things aren’t looking up for me in the making my own people department and preserving the family line. Which I’ve learned not to mind really, particularly now. Especially now. For all my life, I’ve only had sisters up until two weeks ago when I discovered that my late father had made a spare. So we may yet save this branch of the family tree.

[This is an unedited version of a piece that appeared in the 1 April 2016 edition of Mail & Guardian's Friday under the title "On code switching and men who love other men". I had hoped the edited version would be available online so I can link it here. In the absence of the link, I have taken a pic of the article as it appeared in the paper and pasted it below. I hope it's readable.]

Look How Far We’ve Come

Twenty years ago I knew of only one gay person. Apart, of course, from rare characters on the tv screen, who caused me great unease and consternation whenever they appeared during family viewing. They were always white tho - except that one time Sophie Ndaba’s husband lampooned an experience that wasn’t his to perform, of the black amab (assigned male at birth) fem in the hair salon. But at the time I didn’t know things like that. I just knew of this one guy.

The Eastern Cape queer community was thin in numbers - or rather, thin in number of people living full unhidden lives. I remember overhearing a conversation my mother was having with a friend of hers some time when I was in high school. They were talking about a mutual friend of theirs home they knew to be gay who had moved from Johannesburg back to her rural home in the Transkei somewhere. “Yhuuu!”, my mother’s friend exclaimed. “Uzotabaneka nabani ke apho?”. I don’t know if she knew how profound that question is. Having no one to tabaneka with I think is the loneliest experience.

A year later, in my first year at the University of Fort Hare, I came out to a friend, who also happened to be the first out lesbian I had ever met. There were two other guys on campus, she informed me. But they were rarely sighted on account of the fact that they were always in Port Elizabeth, where the social scene was less unwelcoming of queer bodies. Although, my friend didn’t appear to have this problem - but that’s maybe because she bested the dudes at basketball and they had mad respect for her or something. 

Anyway, later she introduced me to that one guy I had known of. He was widely popular in Mdantsane where I grew up, having held the title of Mr Ciskei at some point in the 80s. He was possibly equally notorious for a number of reasons related to his sexuality. His house was like a French salon for those of us who ached to be among others like us, others who felt like us, people to tabaneka with.

We were a small clique of boys and men of varying ages, and as far as we knew, we were the only self-identifying gay men in town. We also knew all the lesbians. We spoke a local dialect of Gayle - the Cape gay slang - peppered with words borrowed from its Zulu equivalent, isiNgqumo. I never did become fluent in either - frankly, my isiNgqumo vocab is non-existent, I only know to recognise the language when it’s spoken in my presence. I know a bit of Gayle, just enough to know in which direction to “kala the vas beulah bag next to Alice”. [Translation: check the hot guy next to “Alice” - Alice is a place holder and can be anything really, depending on the context.]

Over the years this small clique grew and splintered and eventually dissipated as we got older and moved on. I joined the nomadic economic migrant hoards and left for the big city, coming back for iBig Dayz like the rest of them, to find that I knew fewer and fewer of the queer people I was meeting. Many of my friends from that period were felled by the HIV wave that seems to have peaked in the early 2000s.

Today I watch with a little envy as my social media timeline floods with young people from East London and elsewhere in the Eastern Cape, expressing their queerness openly, fearlessly. Expressing thoughts and desires that we only ever mentioned in the safety of the salon - hair or otherwise - or in Gayle when in mixed company. I feel an inescapable surge of pride every time a new video from Moshe drops on the interwebs. 

We have also come a mighty long way from when I knew the names of every out black gay man in East London, and we still have a way to go. Killings of queer women and effeminate gay men in particular are still a fixture of our reality. But man what a time it is to be alive. To live in a time where the mood is decolonisation and everything in its way must fall, is to live in a time where we begin to decolonise the many varied queer experiences lived by millions of Africans also. 

[This is the unedited version of a column that appeared in the Mail & Guardian of 11 March 2016 under the headline "Queer How Far We've Come". The edited published version does not differ significantly from this one.]

"Don't buy City Press! Don't buy!"

Yesterday’s City Press (23 August 2015) is the perfect expression of everything I cannot stand with the current state of journalism in South Africa and why I believe print media will continue its slow, torturous and somewhat deserved spiral into the abyss of forgotten things. The lead story, about Mbuso Mandela’s latest scandal, lies prominently across its front page, accompanied only by a speculatory insert on who leads the running to act in the national police commissioner’s place when she is inevitably suspended sometime later this week (I’ll give you a hint: it’s not not her 2.I.C) and who else is also in the running (another hint: every other deputy commissioner).

Of course, no edition of this once proud people’s paper could be complete without an episode of Who Wants To Be President? The weekly telenovella about which palace stooge is likely to succeed the incumbent Chief Jester-In-Chief, aka #1, aka Showerhead, aka The Worst Idea Anyone Has Ever Had. Almost one and a half pages dedicated to such asininities as hypothesized presidential scenarios, which include a Gwede Mantashe/Jeff Radebe (and vice versa) presidency.

Apart from the half page MTN ad on page 5, there’s also a small piece about DA financial mismanagement in the Western Cape (running out of money is financial mismanagement finish and klaar!). And also buried into a corner of insignificance on page 6 is a really important story about a young man named Speech and the significance of his victory in Ward 30 of the Nelson Mandela Metro.

Let’s begin with the Mandela story. Oh, but where to begin with that tho?

How about rape culture? Yes, let’s start there. Now, far be it for me to dictate to women and to exercise my privilege as a man to tell women what to speak up about and against. To stand here and lecture women on what is acceptable reportage when telling stories that affect other women would be a gross violation of the trust I hope to engender as an ally. So I won’t do that. I believe that my job as an ally is to share information and ideas about what it is we as men are doing that makes life harder for our fellow humans, and to present alternative ways of engagement with women especially, and with us all in general, that are non-threatening and foster trust and congenial relations between man and woman, and between man and man. So it makes my job that much harder when the front page of one of the most popular Sunday papers leads with a story on a rape accusation with the following sub-header:

“Madiba’s troubled grandson says sex was consensual. Club staff say (sic) the two behaved like lovers”

Now I have the utmost respect for Ferial Haffajee. No, I lie. I have the utmost respect for what she represents: a woman of colour in a position of power. I don’t think I have much respect for her as a person. I have never met her, so I cannot conclusively say I don’t respect her at all. There may be some baseline qualities about her that I may yet come to respect were I to meet her in person, but as a public figure she does not inspire much more than indifference from me. I do, however, find myself disheartened and disappointed to find that a woman editor would sign off on a story on rape written by a woman journalist that proudly perpetuates such elements of rape culture as those espoused in the sub-header. There is more in the story that offends me, but I will not dwell on those. I do not wish to say more about the actual incident itself as I wish to reserve my comment until after the dust settles. Whenever that may be.

No really, but who wants to be president of this shithole tho?

Look, I love this country. I love this continent. I just hate what it’s all become. (Although I remain hopeful of what it yet may be.) But must we be subjected, week after week, to speculation and conjecture from anonymous sources and wild inferences from trigger-happy journos over who may or may not be the next president of the republic? Is this a bukkake circle jerk and are we the piggy in the middle?

Does anyone actually even really care at this point? Were ANC acolytes and sycophants not at pains to reassure us that they don’t vote for the president but for the party, so what difference does it make to us, the general public, who the president of the ANC is if it’s going to be the same party in power anyway? We hear of which faction is backing which candidate but has anyone ever found out why? I mean, apart from the assumed tribalistic and pseudo-idelogical grounds (like, referring to the SACP as communists is irony and oxymoron wrapped up in ALL OF THE LOLZ!) You know what I would like to know about all these candidates? What are their policy positions? What discussion documents have they written for circulation in the ANC? Where do they stand on the issues that really matter? But, I know, ain’t nobody got time for that? Amirite?

I mean it’s pretty damn ironic that the ANC once led a chant of “Don’t buy City Press! Don’t buy!” when the City Press is doing a bang up job of advertising their succession plan and feeling out the mood of ANC members on the list of possible candidates for the top job. Hell, I think at this point the ANC ought to start paying City Press a fee for campaign management services and sundry.

And the DA should pay them for sweeping their misdeeds quietly under the carpet – like a dinner guest dropping unwanted food under the table while retaining a cool visage. Such softly-softly language they use – “cash squeeze”. Andisiwe Makinana is a great journalist and her integrity comes shining through in the first paragraph of her piece on how the Western Cape government is basically working public servants like slaves. You’d never think the DA in that part of the country would ever have to apply austerity measures. Aren’t they the ones always gaaning aan about how wonderful they are with the numbers and how prosperous all the places they are in charge of have become in the last 20 years? I really wanted to know more about this story. As a data analyst, I like to see numbers and comparisons and trends and things when I read. I think readers would benefit greatly from even the most rudimentary quantitative analysis about things like a “cash squeeze”. And I think South Africans, and indeed all people the world over, should demand more of such analyses when it pertains to public finances especially. But the amount of space allocated this story was enough for only one number of any real import: R68 000. No other numbers are provided to compare with this single, lone figure. Which detracts from the consequence of the story and frankly leaves it performing the part of space-filler – which is an insult to the talents of a journalist of Makinana’s stature. But with the mood of the entire paper being intrigue and speculation, it falls on the reader to ask questions that I’m pretty sure the reporter did ask, but the answers to which could not fit the small space allocated. Space taken up by a gigantic picture of Jeff Radebe, ironically gesturing with his hands to indicate size. It’s the second image of #1’s BFF in as many pages. Surely we could have done without seeing his face twice?

On the next page, the repetitive use of an image of the same person is done with such poetic dexterity.  But to get to that, you have to go through a long column headlined “The playlists of SA’s top leaders”. A column inspired by the recent publication on social media of Barack Obama’s Spotify playlist. None of “SA’s top leaders” were interviewed of course, and the entire thing is pure supposition (not even hearsay). But it’s news. But I digress…

The repeated image I alluded to is actually a single picture of Mandla Faltein (affectionately known in KwaMagxaki and Veeplaas, in Port Elizabeth as Speech) standing in front of a UDM campaign vehicle, his smiling face proudly prominent on the poster and the t-shirt he has on, both announcing his candidacy for the 19 August by-election in Ward 30. Speech did what was once unthinkable this past weekend and wrested the ward encompassing those two townships from the clutches of the ANC. His win is of course significant for a number of reasons, chief of which is the following quote from the man himself:

“We beat the ANC at their own game. They no longer conduct door-to-doors which is what made the difference for us in this election. All they do is motorcades, driving around in fancy cars in front of poor people, speaking on loudhailers and chanting slogans, hoping people will come and vote. But little did they know that time is gone. People want substance and tangible objectives.”

The profundity in the statement is self-evident. It is an allegory of the macrocosm, which the City Press would distract us from with talk of succession and the tabloidization of the very real societal pox that is rape. That is, unless you make it to page 6. I’m impressed I did, seething as I already was with frustration. But I could go no further.