Today was pretty warm (reaching up to 85 degrees Fahrenheit), although I can tell that summer is slowly ending because the mornings and evenings have started to grow slightly cooler. After a long day of work with M, I returned to my apartment and felt really lucky to have access to my landlady's swimming pool. By 5pm I was splashing around in the water, staring at the plumeria tree above me and grateful for one of those moments where I wasn't aware of thinking about anything specifically.
M and I spent much of our morning in the Victoria Street Market area of the city buying fabric, beads, and thread for the workshop that we depart for on Saturday. We hopped a minibus taxi from near the office to get there - within the city it's 3 Rand to get around town and they usually cram as many riders in as they can. Most of them have brightly colored lettering and sometimes images on the outside with the name or motif of the cab (some names for cabs I have seen include "Jesus Saves," "Durban Poison," "The Arabs," "Tupac Live or Die," and "Tsotsi"). They also blare techno or hip-hop music so that you have to shout loudly when you want to get off - today we were subjected to an extended remix of a Nelly Furtado song.
We had to finish our purchases before 1pm, as most stores in that area are owned or managed by Muslims and at that time each Monday through Thursday (it's at noon on Fridays), nearly all shops close for half an hour for worship at the nearby Juma Masjid Mosque (it's the largest mosque in the Southern hemisphere!). A few weeks ago M and I passed by the mosque during the midday worship time and I was amazed how Grey Street transformed into a parking lot. One of the street's major cities shuts down for a half an hour to accommodate the thousands of people and their cars who come to worship. We walked back to the office even though it was quite a distance so we could stop at a store to add internet time onto the portable modem we use at the office and pick up some takeaway for lunch (my favorite bunny shop hadn't received their bread delivery today because of the electricity shortage so I had to settle for mutton curry on rice). M and I ate back at the office while we worked on emails and plans for this week.
The first picture I have posted below shows the materials that go into making a finished cloth during our craft workshops. I'm interested that these materials that may be considered "pre-political" or part of the personal/private/everyday sphere enter a democratic sphere as political participation largely because of the recognition these cloths will receive by the Parliament and during their exhibition in a museum space. The cloths produced in the workshop materially depict the crafter's conception of what democracy means at this particular moment and their location in South Africa's republic. The second picture depicts more shweshwe I purchased today for myself - including a meter of De Gama Textile's "Madiba" Print: an indigo shweshwe with a border print of Nelson Mandela. This is a really salient (and hugely popular) example of a material expression of national identity produced by a company with the permission of Nelson Mandela but explicitly outside of direct governmental intervention. It reminded me of the textiles featured in the recent exhibition, Wearing Propaganda, that positioned mass-produced American and Japanese World War II fabrics as examples of "unofficial propaganda" that "reflect commitment to their country's rhetoric of war" (Jacqueline M. Atkins, curator). The exhibition suggests that a nexus of constrained yet creative relationships exists between the textile, the "Home Front" consumer, the government, and the private textile and clothing manufacturers. Through the consumption and display of the "war" textiles, the consumer can actively support his or her government and its rhetoric of war - they can display their "good citizenshipness." I am interested in how the "Madiba" shweshwe print functions here and if I can draw similar connections of its purchase/use to performances of citizenship. 
Do they broadcast the daily call to prayer there? I remember when we were staying in Indonesia, we were near a local mosque, and every morning at five the loudspeaker kicked in with the call to prayer. It happened again every few hours throughout the day. It was kind of a strange way to wake up every morning!
Posted by: Mark | March 10, 2008 at 02:49 PM
Impressive blog! -Arron
Posted by: rc helicopter | December 21, 2011 at 06:15 AM