Africa is a Country

I try not to blog about what’s reported in South African media. After all the main rationale for this blog is what passes for media coverage of the African continent and its peoples, especially South Africa (since I am from there) in Western, mainly US media. But I can’t resist at times. Like the video report on the site of the Johannesburg newspaper, The Times. A group of white South Africans decided, in honor of Mandela’s birthday (he turns 90 on July 18), to go on a bus tour (organized by the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Fund) of all “the famous places Mandela is connected to in Johannesburg.” That included Alexandra, a working class (and lumpen) slum bordering on upmarket, mainly white, Sandton to the north of Johannesburg city center. At some point the reporter/narrator notes that some of the people on the bus have lived in South Africa for “many, many years” and never been to a township.
Here are some of the comments by those on the bus, who express surprisingly “amazement,” “disgust” and “shock” at how people live in Alex:
– “It upsets me … and yet they [Alexandra residents] look so happy … and all their clothes are always clean.”
– “… I just don’t think these people are taking their opportunity they’ve been given. I think they just sitting back waiting everybody else to do for them what they should be doing for themselves.”
– “[I liked how] the people smiled and waved, that was a nice thing.”
See the evidence here.

[It's of course a very interesting time to celebrate Mandela's 90th birthday. It's been 18 years since has released from prison and 14 years since he was first elected as President. And yes, in some ways South Africa today is unrecognizable from the country Mandela encountered in 1990 (it has a black government, growing black middle class, has democratic freedoms, and a free market economy), but some of the old inequalities persist (it is the most unequal country in the world by most measures and that inequality is very much defined by race, although inequality amongst blacks has also expanded).  In that way South Africa -- a country that revels in its "special" status -- is also becoming an ordinary country. So much so that Hugh Masekela, the musician who penned the song referenced in my title, expressed reluctance to perform at any Mandela birthday celebrations and some residents of economically depressed Kliptown in Soweto threatened to boycott events to be held in the township this week. A fellow native informant currently doing research South Africa, who just saw the clip, emailed me his impressions from Sandton and Pretoria: "... I'm exasperated by daily scenes of poverty rubbing shoulders with opulence and the good life. Yesterday saw long queues of black workers waiting for a taxi to go back to Alexandra after a day's work in Sandton. The taxi rank is in front of an Aston Martin shop where salesmen wear black suits ... [We're] sitting in a News Cafe in one of the scores of new malls springing up everywhere. Where we are sitting, [there used to be] a shack settlement but people were just evicted and moved out. We go on to sip our lattes like all the other fat people around us. In the mall all the shop windows are adorned with birthday wishes for Mandela.”]

Happy birthday Nelson Mandela!

UPDATE:
* Here are a few online sources dedicated to Mandela:
South African History Online.
“Mandela, the Freedom Fighter”
Video of 1961 Interview with Mandela
Radio Diaries (produces radio inserts for NPR’s “All Things Considered”)

Photo Credit.