South Africa

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South Africas Apartheid

• Consequences and Cultural Responses

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Outline

• Apartheid (e.g. Cry Freedom)
• Response 1 Long Nights Journey into the Day
• Response 2 the poems about physical sufferings
  
• Response 3 about Race Relations and
  anti-Apartheid movements the other cultural
  examples
• Response 4 about Gender Relations
• Response 5 about tradition and individual vs.
  society The Prophetess
• Response 6 more indirect styles
• Response 7 musiccrossover style

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Apartheid

• a method of divide and rule to counteract the
  so-called "black danger" Afrikaner rulers saw
  Africans as threatening to overrun or engulf them
  by their sheer numbers.
• Brutal racism imprisonment, police killings and
  murder

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Apartheid

• Institutionalized racism examples of the laws --
  Population Registration Act Group Areas Act The
  Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents
  Act (? Sharpville Massacre) The Bantu
  Authorities Act (or Homeland Act)
• language education (? Soweto uprising, the
  beginning of the end)

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Soweto Student Uprising

• "It was a picture that got the worlds attention
  A frozen moment in time that showed 13-year-old
  Hector Peterson dying after being struck down by
  a policeman's bullet.  At his side was his
  17-year-old sister.  (source)

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Cry Freedom

• Opening The raid on Crossroads squatters camp
• Ending Soweto uprising
• Bikos ideas
• Black Consciousness
• his speech
• his self defense (naked racism)
• The visit to a black township
• Afrikaners version
• Last view of landscape

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Response 1 Long Nights Journey into the Day

• South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation
  Commission (TRC)
• Amy Biehl-- Amy Biehl, an American student in
  South Africa working with the ANC, was killed by
  four Black youths during political unrest in
  Guguletu township.
• Why they kill -- "Killing someone like her
  exposed both our anger and the conditions under
  which we lived. If we had been living reasonably,
  we would not have killed her."-- Easy Nofemela
  on the killing of Amy Biehl

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Long Nights Journey into the Day

• 2. "Cradock 4." Eric Taylor, a white person who
  had worked (and killed) to uphold the apartheid
  government and who now had a change of heart and
  was remorseful for his acts.
• His way of killing beat the four persons (who
  were supposed to be movement leaders, but one was
  actually unknown to them) to death and then burn
  them.
• (clips 1his belief, 2 his change )
• The widows refused to agree with amnesty.

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Long Nights Journey into the Day

• 3. Robert McBride-- an ANC activist
• "No one has apologized to me yet for either
  oppressing me directly or indirectly or happily
  benefitting from my oppression"-- Robert McBride
  on apology
• Is he a terrorist? Clip MaBride vs. a victims
  family

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Long Nights Journey into the Day

• 4. Guguletu 7--the story of seven young men who
  were killed in what now appears to have been a
  set-up designed to make the apartheid police look
  as if they had killed a group of dangerous
  terrorists.
• Mbelo as a black policeman
• the process of reconciliation

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Questions to ponder (1) What is justice?

• . . . Restorative justice. And this is the
  option that we have chosen. But there is justice.
  the perpetrators don't get off scot free. They
  have to confess publicly, in the full glare of
  television lights, that they did those ghastly
  things. And that's pretty, pretty tough."--
  Desmond Tutu on restorative versus retributive
  justice

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Questions to ponder (1) What is justice?

• An contrast The Washington Post June 8, 2000 -
  "The nation's war on drugs unfairly targets
  African Americans, who are far more likely to be
  imprisoned for drug offenses than whites, even
  though far more whites use illegal drugs than
  blacks,.... Overall, black men are sent to
  prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of
  white men.... Overall, one in 20(1/20) black men
  over the age of 18 is in a state or federal
  prison compared with one in 180 (1/180) white
  men."

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Questions (2) How to resolve large-scale
conflicts

• TRC dialogue and collaborative problem solving,
  arbitration, mediation,
• law enforcement, public policy,
• non-violent demonstrations,
• contracts, treaties
• use of force and imposed peace by the victor over
  the vanquished.

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Q (3) How do we face (collective) violence
survive trauma?

• to seek VENGEANCE, RETRIBUTION, or to FORGIVE?
• To face it through a certain ritual and with a
  group of people, or to face it alone. Example
  the journalist whose father was killed. 1, 2
• A related question what drive them to brutal
  killings? How do we avoid making errors we are
  induced to make by historic circumstances?

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Q (4) Who can forgive and how?

• Who should be empowered to grant forgiveness
  when a person is murdered? Can the family members
  ever forgive on behalf of the lost loved one, or
  can they only forgive with regard to their own
  loss?
• Is the TRC really engaged in offering forgiveness
  or only amnesty protection against prosecution?
• Can we forgive were we in the same boat? Do we
  dare to confess and apologize?
• 80 of those who applied for amnesty were black

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Responses 2 Poems Related to Physical Suffering

• Cultural Displacement

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Response 3 Stories re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

Bessie Head
Mbulelo Mzamane
Nadine Gordimer
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Response 3 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid
movements, Black Identity Race Relations

• Dumile Feni (1939-1991)

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Responses 3 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

• Ironic ad.

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Responses 4 Poems Related to Gender Relations

• Love Song. . .

Antjie Krog
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Responses 5 Indirect treatments

• Njabulo S. Ndebele Pay more attention to
  individual psychology and the influences of
  tradition.
• e.g. Prophetess

Mazisi Kunene The Final Supplication
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Responses 5 . Prophetess

• On what is the boys attention focused when he
  visits the prophetess? Are they signs of her
  spirituality?
• dog darkness, vine, doek (African headscarf,
  11) camphor (12) her coughing

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Prophetess

• 2. The people on the bus How do they relate to
  each other? And to the prophetess? How are they
  different from each other?
• -- the man with a balaclava (Woollen hat) the
  young man at the back, the young man with
  immaculate dress the big woman, the other women

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Prophetess

• 3. Compared with the peoples discussion, how
  does the boy relate to the prophetess? What
  breaks the spell the prophetess has on him? What
  does the ending mean?

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Response 6 Indirect treatments

• J. M. Coetzee Foe Historical revision or
  metafiction.

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Response 6 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

William Kentridge 
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Response 7 Paul Simons Graceland

• Township Jive this very up, very happy music
• a mixture of early rocknroll and African
• Traditional music.

• acapella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo
• General M.D. Shirinda and The Gaza Sisters
  Miriam Mekeba

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Response 7 Music --"crossover style"

• Enoch Sontonga's beautiful African hymn "Nkosi
  Sikilel'i Africa" (God Bless Africa 1897) an
  anthem and symbol of struggle to generations of
  Africans
• -- the influence of the missionary school music
  training
• the innovative a cappella vocal harmonies of
  mbube music, while the song itself would serve
  as. ? iscathamiya ("to walk on one's toes
  lightly"). e.g. Ladysmith Black Mambazo

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Ladysmith Black Mambazo

• ISICATHAMIYA (Is-Cot-A-Me-Ya) born in the mines
  of South Africa. Black workers were taken by rail
  to work far away from their homes and their
  families. Poorly housed and paid worse, they
  would entertain themselves after a six-day week
  by singing songs into the wee hours every Sunday
  morning. Cothoza Mfana they called themselves,
  "tip toe guys", referring to the dance steps
  choreographed so as to not disturb the camp
  security guards. When miners returned to the
  homelands, the tradition returned with them.
  (source http//www.mambazo.com/bio.html )
• Example 1

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HOMELESS (Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala)

• Emaweni webaba Silale maweni . . . Homeless,
  homeless Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
  Homeless, homeless Moonlight sleeping on a
  midnight lake . . .
• Strong wind destroy our home Many dead, tonight
  it could be you Strong wind, strong wind Many
  dead, tonight it could be you

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References

• LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY STUDY GUIDE
  http//www.newsreel.org/guides/longnight.htm
• LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO
• Homeless lyrics
• South African Music http//wus.africaonline.com/Af
  ricaOnline/music/Safrica.html