Silence Broken: South Africa Journeys

By Kameelah Rasheed, June 20, 2008

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Column: Travels to South Africa challenge me to reflect on my privilege as an American "foreigner."

Next Tuesday, I will begin on my third trip to South Africa since 2005. I will start off in Detroit for the Allied Media Conference, where I will co-present on Media Access for Prisoners, then layover in Doha, Qatar, finally touching down in the place I have called my second home since my last visit in 2006. I managed to pack up all of my belongings in about four Chuck Taylor high top shoe boxes, aged thrift store bags and storage boxes I salvaged from the dumpster just 12 sleepless hours following my graduation.

My journeys to South Africa are akin to pilgrimages that begin with ambivalence, are punctuated by moments of sobering clarity and end with a sense of humility. South Africa is where I found kindred spirits as well as broken spirits. It is where I found a genuine sense of home. About forty days ago I wrote on my blog:

So there are like 50 days before I return to the land of sundry. Land of hesitant socialists, syncretic explorations, street food, Pritt Stick projects, Mandela Bridge muggings, part-time Rastas and full-time thinkers, hot chips (fries) with masala, chicken- flavored potato chips, Bunny Chow, hidden graffiti art, accidental street performers, BMW police cars, open sewage and thinly veiled xenophobia. Land of leftovers and tea with milk; land of fragments and broken class.

As I watched the news of foreigners violently beaten in the township of Alexandria and burned alive through "necklacing" -- throwbacks of punishments for blacks who were revolution apostates under Apartheid -- I reneged on my assertion of "thinly veiled xenophobia." I was filled with a similar sense of betrayal as many Zimbabweans and Mozambicans who recounted their governments' support of exiled South Africans, financial sacrifices, and solider trainings during the anti-Apartheid era.

Intellectually, Neville Alexander's An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa mothered my understanding of South Africa's political economy and the nature of a "negotiated revolution", the increasing poverty post-Apartheid and the consequences of particular nation building projects. As Kola Ibrahim his writes in A Critical Review of South African Xenophobic Attack, "[w]hat happens when dreams are deferred and social movements all offer a neo-liberal vision? For Kola Ibrahim, South Africa is the answer."

He continues, "According to reports, more than 50 persons were killed while hundreds were forced to flee their homes. Foreigners attacked included Nigerians, Zimbabweans, among others. But, the major rallying point of these desperate poor youth of Africa is that they need jobs, and the foreigners are taking the little jobs they have. These racist attacks in South Africa resemble the racist and far-right attacks on immigrants and other peoples in Europe and America. In as much as one cannot give any iota of support to this backward and reactionary act of a few, it is necessary to place the blame directly where it belongs."

And he places the blame on the current ANC government that has enthusiastically implemented structural adjustment programs like GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) and similar neo-liberal efforts rendering the poor under apartheid even poorer after apartheid. While xenophobia is fueled by poverty and anger, after I contacted folks in South Africa, I began to think about how this xenophobia is silently supported by regular people.

I immediately began text messaging and Facebook walling folks to figure out what was happening on the ground. One person was organizing a march and others were working at a refugee camp in the south of Johannesburg, where many kids had been separated from their families. I grew frustrated as I spoke with those who responded, "It's not in the suburbs, so we are safe" or it's "in the slums." I thought about how both the lingering (and at times fiercely defended) apartheid spatial organization in concert with the privilege to geographically displace oneself from the epicenter of crises perpetuates a ghettoization of South African problems.

I too, like these folks, have had the "privilege" of living away from the epicenter of crises in South Africa. In 2005, I lived in a mansion in Rondebosch, Cape Town with about 10 other Americans from the CIEE program.

In 2006, as a Fulbright Scholar I lived in a beautiful and well-secured international housing complex in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, with high-speed internet access. On this third visit, I am living in the suburb of Killarney in Johannesburg. More than that, I am a foreigner. However, I am an American foreigner -- my accent and demeanor does not carry the stigma that a Zimbabwean accent does.

While I have been able to find a sense of home in South Africa, I wonder how much this sense of home is influenced by my privilege as both an American foreigner (rather than a Zimbabwean) and as someone with just enough money to spend an extra R1000 (about $123) to live in a "nicer part of town," eat regularly and catch a cab to wherever I need to go.

As I embark on my third journey to South Africa, I wonder how to negotiate feeling at home in a place where so many have not been able to feel at home. I am struggling to figure out what it means to have American privilege abroad while still feeling a deep sense of disadvantage in America. Like all my journeys to South Africa, this one will surely begin with ambivalence, be punctuated by moments of sobering clarity and end with a sense of humility.

Kameelah Rasheed was raised on a harmonious, yet eclectic mix of Islam and old Gil Scott-Heron records. Currently, she is an Ed.M. candidate and teaches 12th grade Humanities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more of Kameelah's writing on her blog, KameelahWrites.