(d)urban(a)

Zenzi Update

It has been a little while since I have checked in here to write:  I returned from Cape Town early last Saturday morning after an amazing time studying and traveling across parts of South Africa that were both beautiful and dramatic (including the "Little Karoo" and "Garden Route" of the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces).  Although I feel as though my computer has been physically attached to me since my return to Durban, most of my writing time has been set aside for personal emails, Create Africa South projects, and for my dissertation. 

I will be back in Illinois in twenty-one days - it's hard for me to believe how quickly time has passed since I arrived here on February 7th.  The time here has given way to lots of changes:  M gave birth to her first child a son, on March 12th in Durban.  Unfortunately R and I had already left for Cape Town so I won't be able to see her or meet the new addition until the 15th, when she returns from the Free State where she has been staying with her mom (it seems to be customary for South African women to take a month of leave to spend with their mothers at the family home if possible).  Also, Zenzi has fully recovered from her doggy leg-paw amputation and has now been adopted by J's mother upon her last visit.  The picture here was taken on the 14th of March - less than a week after her operation she was already strong enough to tussle with J's giant Rhodesian ridgeback Kayla.  In the weeks to come I will remain buried in writing and research before I leave, but hope to look up long enough to have an observation or comment to make on here about life in Durban.

the Zuma Decision

Earlier today, South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority announced that the corruption charges against Jacob Zuma (the ANC's candidate for President in the upcoming April 22nd elections) would be dropped because of the political agenda that motivated the charges.  The opposition party and other major parties have spoken out against the decision - many saying that the reasons given and evidence used to prove the political motivation of the charges still don't erase the question of whether or not Jacob Zuma received a bribe in the now infamous South African arms deal:  a multi-million dollar deal to purchase arms in 1999 when South Africa had no discernible threats or enemies against it.  This deal has been described in popular media outlets as the deal that tarnished the post-apartheid democratic South Africa's innocence - a sign that the former freedom fighters turned politicians had lost connection with the people whose integrity and equality they were fighting for.

Many critics - Xolela Mangcu being one of the most articulate and outspoken I have read recently - have suggested Zuma should have bowed out of presidential consideration last year because of the charges circulating about him, but also because of his divisive presence within the ANC party (Mangcu's recent book, To the Brink, lays out a really interesting social history of Black intellectualism and democracy as well as commenting on the recent Zuma situation).  Instead of stepping back for greater party unity, Jacob Zuma has pushed on and continues to mystify and frustrate me with his actions.  Most recently, his decision last week to curry favor from the Afrikaans voting community by proclaiming to them that "Of all the white groups that are in South Africa, it is only the Afrikaners that are truly South Africans in the true sense of the word."  This position is puzzling - besides interrogating his double "trues" - considering it was Afrikaner nationalism that contributed most to developing apartheid policies and also that Zuma comes from KwaZula-Natal, the only province in South Africa that has a primarily ethnic English white population.

the Dung Beetle

"The dog jumped on to his back and snapped at the black curls, till, finding that no notice was taken, he walked off to play with a black beetle. The beetle was hard at work trying to roll home a great ball of dung it had been collecting all the morning: but Doss broke the ball, and ate the beetle's hind legs, and then bit off its head. And it was all play, and no one could tell what it had lived and worked for. A striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing."

- Olive Schreiner; The Story of An African Farm (1883)