A place on this earth to call home

This would have been a more reflective piece, but my energies are currently diverted. Busy working on plans D through G. I’ve come across a few people (relatives mostly) who ask me why I left ‘abroad’ to return to Africa. I was starting to ask myself the same question when I came across (while re-organizing earthly possessions – working on emulating one JKE who once blogged that he had lived out of two bags for 18 months) a notebook with my musings while I was ‘abroad’. I returned for one simple reason: my heart pestered me. And as I always try to explain to people, in my experience, there’s a certain psychological comfort about being among people who look and talk like you. Xenophobic attacks notwithstanding. I would have added “people who think like you”, but I’m still mulling over that one. Think this continent should now be divided, not along ethnic or national lines, but along the lines of your thought process. But I’m sure we’d all claim that we were progressive.

As I was thinking “whither Africa?” I came across a fabulous blog. As always, the beauty of blogging is in the comments, and the insults and charged words leveled at one Sarah Britten have been very helpful to my thought process about a place on this earth that I can call home. It’s not that any of the ideas there are new, it’s just that the discussion explored the issue around being part of ‘the traveling circus’ quite well. My favorite parts:

I warned you that the longer you’re away, the weirder SA will appear to have grown until it has “transformed” into such depth of weirdness that going back would be more bizarre than moving to Kazakhstan to be Borat’s love-slave.

If you chose to leave then look forward and feel nostalgia, not guilt. Guilt it’s at people while nostalgia reminds you of where you came from and what your choices actually mean. Guilt really is a fruitless emotion that will only aid you in making irrational decisions.

… the private armies of the rich will protect the people in sandton and bryanston and houghton long before the national army will. the people living there know this. the national army knows this. and, more importantly, the people in the townships know this. why do you think it was joburg cbd that got the brunt of urban destruction and not sandton cbd?

I get your point about having options. Everyone in the world wants MORE options…and you establishing a life in any other country, whether it be Oz or somewhere in Africa or the Americas, gives you MORE options.

Granted, S.A has its problem’s, lots of them. What we need is positive energy (collectively) in order overcome them.

Either this is your country or it isn’t. Either you feel you belong or you don’t.

Migration of all sorts is as old as homo sapiens!!! Patriotism is a dated concept, over romanticised, exploited throughout the centuries by politicians. Rarely used for positive good.

Does it occur to you that there are many of us who would leave if we could but are constrained by age, passport, finances, etc.

…These three options, i think, contains more integrity than the supposed Nirvana of endless options open to the atomic individual with money or scarce skills in his or her pocket. Remember that world conditions are such that the material cookie of safe havens like Australia may also crumble in the medium term. There are valuable human and survival skills to be gained on the more jumpy rides offered in middle countries, especially if it is your own.

And of course Sarah chimes in towards the end:

I think I’m going to include a chapter of insults directed at me in the next South African Insult book. It’s only fair and besides, I’d hate to waste all of this wonderful material.

Someone once likened blogs to toilet wall graffiti. I’ve always found toilet wall graffiti mostly thought provoking and now, very useful in crystallizing thoughts

Developments over the past week:

• Leaflets circulated in a part of Pretoria with a healthy foreign student population. Giving them notice to vacate before June 11. Well, at least they’ve been given notice?

• Al Jazeera has a clip showing somali refugees who give an emotional indictment of South Africa and Thabo.

• As is usual in displacement situations, there are reports of ‘the foreigners’ in the camps assaulting and abusing each other. Supposedly illustrating why it made sense for these wild sub-human people should be ejected from this wonderful and civilized country.

• A Zimbabwean tells me they’ve heard the Kenyan embassy is evacuating Kenyans, giving them air tickets to leave.

• It may be quiet on the surface, but everyone’s scared. Even the professionals, ’cause they all know what nonsense we (humans) speak when we imagine we’re in a position of power and are justified in our evil thoughts (sure Kenyan offices are brimming with such nonsense).

• Government’s not going the refugee camp route, they’re talking of re-integrating the foreigners back into the community.

• Listened to radio a couple of days ago, debate about: should the burning man have been on the front page of the newspaper? concerned (suburban) parents call in to say that the newspapers should just have put as a headline, “disturbing pictures, see inside”. This, according to them, would sell more papers – the intrigue, you see – and it would mean that parents wouldn’t have to explain to 4 year olds that it was a real man engulfed in flames, and why he’d been burnt to death.

• Other topic was: crime statistics (in suburbs especially) have gone down the past fortnight. Might this mean that ‘the people’ were right? that the criminals were the foreigners after all? Let’s forget, for a moment, that if you were going to count the pogroms as ‘crime’, that rate would have skyrocketed in the past fortnight. Maybe someone should remind us all the dictionary definition of ‘crime’?

• Radio stations carry a message about “stop the xenophobic violence”. There’s a TV ad that features celebs (mostly… hmm… if not all female) saying that ‘we should love our brothers and sisters from Africa’.

• There are unconfirmed reports that the Nigerian government will demand compensation, on behalf of its citizens, from the South African government. Nigerian president is on his first state visit to South Africa this week

It does cross my mind that we really should all return to our countries to improve them. But ah, you know the human animal: we just love to travel, and the next place on this continent that’s marked ‘open for business’, or ‘opportunity lives here’, will be the next destination. If I were the government of such a country, I’d already be poaching professionals and corporate hqs/offices from SA (while sorting out immigration procedures for them). Yes, many professionals are now Africa-shy, but there are enough of us that remain hopelessly enamored of this continent. We’re beyond disappointed, crushed, upset at all the total and absolute nonsense we constantly witness, but we have a death grip on a lethal(?) combination of love and hope for this continent, and refuse to leave it; though we’re happy to leave the bits of it that show a particularly virulent strain of self-righteous-itis.

One thing I’m still trying to get my head around is how all these ’skirmishes’ are sitting with ‘the ancestors’. if you’ve visited this vast nation of SA, you’ll notice, quite early on (if you interact with the Africans here) that they really believe in culture, tradition, and the ancestors. An African religion (ZCC) has a huge congregation all over the country, even spilling over into neighboring countries. Their annual pilgrimage to Moria (Limpopo) over the easter period, is a huge deal in terms of human and vehicle traffic. most people are proud of their culture, their language (Ngugi is always particularly popular among those wanting to push indigenous language as media for instruction… why can’t we first just get the knowledge out, in whatever language, before we agitate for learning in all 11 official languages? – thinks my clearly warped and colonized mind). There’s a lot of muti, wichcraft, etc. If someone gets one of these ‘modern’ ailments like depression, bipolarity, etc., it’s because the ancestors are not at ease, and something must be done to seek their favor and mercy.

Given that context, who was it that indicated these actions were favored by the ancestors? And if they were indeed favored, what manner of ancestors are these that send their descendants to be disdained by an entire continent of their ‘brothers and sisters’? And assuming, for a minute, that you had such ancestors that were happy to send you to your death (spiritual and reputation), do you not have autonomy, can you not think for yourself, can you not see that it is your hands that are soiled, your soul that is troubled (unless you’re one of those monsters we watch on the crime channel)? Assuming that you’ve given up your autonomy, what threat or promise was used to make you put down your humanity, your ubuntu, and violently force thousands to flee?

South Africa: the karma you’ll have to work through? Priceless. (Let’s not discuss the rest of the continent’s payment).

Fortunately, not all are condemned. There are good and bad in every society. There is a story in one of the dailies about an old South African woman who went and donated money to help the displaced. R12 from her pension money. In these times of rising food prices, this is a significant sacrifice.