T.I.A. Moment #2

Most South African license plates end with a provincial abbreviation for the car's registration. The license plates from Johannesburg, which is located in Gauteng Province, thus end in "GP."

But due to the exceedingly high crime rates in Joburg, many refer to the GP as "Gangsta Paradise."

Elections and Emigration

South Africa's fourth round of "all race" national elections since the end of apartheid will take place on April 22 -- less than a month from now. Election news dominates the newspapers and television broadcasts, and the daily news cycle reveals a new scandal within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party by the hour.

I had the opportunity to hear Jacob Zuma, the ANC's candidate for president, speak in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha in late February. Zuma revealed himself to be a charming figure -- singing a song and performing his trademark dance. But aside from his gimmicks, his candidacy poses real problems for the ANC and the future of South African democracy at large. No other political party can directly challenge the ANC's rule. (The ANC took nearly 70 per cent of the vote in 2005.) The ANC holds enough seats (a two-thirds majority) in the national parliament to amend the Constitution without the say of the opposition. Zuma's own allegations of rape and corruption do not assuage concerns.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party with broad based support from whites and coloureds, frequently takes to comparing ANC rule of South Africa to Robert Mugabe's 29 year (and counting) control of Zimbabwe. The DA intends for the comparison to frighten voters, but most South Africans dismiss the allegation as a simple scare tactic in the heart of an election campaign.

When I talk to a white South African, I am constantly asked where I come from in the States. Massive white emigration, a fact of life in post-apartheid South Africa, leaves middle-aged and retired whites in South Africa and their children and grandchildren scattered around the world. The whites I speak to simply want to know if their family members or friends live near me. The friendly Jewish Studies Librarian is flying to Australia for Pesach to have seder with her daughter. The proper Rhodesian lady I met at the mall speaks to her daughter daily in St. Louis. Everyone knows South Africans living in the U.S., the UK, Australia, New Zealand or Israel. South Africa's Jewish population alone has fallen from a high of 120,000 in 1970 to 70,000 today. And the consequent rise in Australia's Jewish population nearly matches South Africa's decline.

White South Africans are voting with their feet -- and they do not see a future here. Even though white South Africans give up a tremendously comfortable life (large homes, domestic labour, cheap cost of living, strong communities and generations of family roots) to begin afresh overseas, they feel that the opportunity abroad is worth the risk. South African law makes transferring money abroad nearly impossible, so the whites surrender vast sums of assets to emigrate. Of course, the global recession has prompted a return of some South Africans from overseas, but the general out-migration trend seems unlikely to end.

Even the white students my age at UCT speak of their imminent departures after graduation to the UK or other destinations in the English-speaking world. Students feel guilty about abandoning their parents and grandparents here, but many parents themselves encourage their children to leave -- especially students from the Johannesburg area.

The Rhythms of Life in Cape Town

Each morning, I pass UCT's Baxter Theatre Center en route to the Jammie Shuttle bus stop at Tugwell Hall. The Baxter Theatre hosts visiting primary school groups on a daily basis, constantly reminding me of the diversity of people who live in Cape Town. I see little Malay children with their teachers dressed in headscarves walking single-file from their bus into the theatre. Or Indian children, coloured children, East Asian children, Jewish children and more. The diversity of field trips taken to the Baxter Theatre each week represents the spectrum of South African society -- especially in such a cosmopolitan province as the Western Cape. The province is now home to some 4.8 million, making it neither South Africa's most populated or least populated province.

I feel a sense of disconnect in Cape Town and the Western Cape from events happening in the rest of the country. Hundreds of miles of desert and semi-arid land separate Cape Town from the Highveld, home to the economic and political hubs of Johannesburg and Pretoria. Most Capetonians express perfect content to remain out of the national circle; they have wine vineyards to visit, mountains to climb, live jazz music to enjoy and unspoiled beaches on which to eat a picnic. Why think about the rampant motor vehicle theft, the endless sprawl, the pollution, the traffic and the growing insecurity about the future that defines Johannesburg today? Capetonians do not envy those problems.

But Cape Town is not without its fair share of problems. The summer months just passed brought extensive wildfire damage due to both natural causes and arson. Unfortunately, a surprising source of wildfire arson in the Western Cape includes the firefighters themselves. The firefighter pay structure pays firefighters based on the number of hours worked. Emergency fire conditions permit firefighters many hours of lucrative overtime pay, tempting firefighters to start their own fires in order to earn more pay when work is slow. What would the honest fire station Dalmatian think?

The Beginner's Tournament

The Township Debate League (TDL) event ran very smoothly and even resembled debate tournaments from back home – namely a lengthy awards ceremony and too much downtime in between rounds. I suppose debate tournaments share characteristics all over the globe. My learners from Thandokhulu High School even won a round at the Sunday beginner’s tournament. They will describe the weekend experience to the rest of the team at Thursday’s training session.

I realised that TDL and its sponsors reimburse the learners for their public transport costs en route to and from the tournament, as well as provide a sandwich, juice and fruit for lunch. Without this generous assistance, the learners simply would not be able to compete. (Don’t worry: the volunteer adjudicators also got lunch.)

The structure of a debate round consists of two teams of five learners – one takes a proposition (“for”) side and the other argues the opposition (“against”) side. The speakers alternative, and each speaker must present different elements of the team’s overall position. The winning team is chosen as the sum of all its efforts – not based on an individual speaker.

After a few rounds, the quality of debate drastically improved. The learners were speaking for their full time allotment (and not just 45 seconds), engaging each other and using better examples and clearer words. With barely six hours of formal training during the past four weeks, the students remarkably demonstrated how a little training and investment goes a long way to improving confidence, speaking abilities and logical reasoning. I shared in the palpable excitement that lit up the otherwise worn and gray tournament venue.

While the other volunteers and I waited for our bus to fetch us, the tournament organizer read aloud the additional comments recorded on the learner feedback surveys. Overwhelmingly, the learners thanked the volunteers “for being so nice to us.” As the organizer asked, why wouldn’t we be kind to the students? Common decency may not be so common in the lives of the students. The surveys revealed that the debaters enjoyed themselves very much – and wish they could attend a tournament every weekend. One survey even said, “I want to be perfect at debate just like the adjudicators!”

The surveys also made us laugh, especially the comment, “The food was very good, but I’d like another pear.” Or, “The adjudicators were staring at us too much and it made me nervous.” The students put so much passion and energy into everything they do, and it continues to inspire me every week.

At Home in the Kaplan Centre Library

I visited the Jewish Studies Library at the UCT Kaplan Centre on Upper Campus this afternoon. I am writing a paper on South African Jewish identity both before and after the 1994 transition, so I headed to this quaint and comfortable library halfway around the world. The Kaplan Centre also houses the kosher food canteen on campus -- the same venue where I first ate the deeply unsatisfying South African hamentashen two weeks ago.

Now in the library, I found a helpful and friendly librarian writing a book on South African Yiddish Theatre who spent several years studying at Columbia/JTS in New York. I browsed the generous collection of volumes -- about a dozen fully stocked rows -- and spotted some magnificent finds (for my paper, and for pleasure). Would you believe that a book exists on the Jewish community of Zambia/N. Rhodesia? Sure enough, a title called "Zion in Africa: The Jews of Zambia" caught my eye. And the personal account of a South African Jew's aliyah to Israel during the apartheid era in Let Me Create a Paradise also struck an interest.

I saw so many familiar titles and book covers -- from my personal library in Raleigh and elsewhere -- on Israel and the American Jewish community in particular. But the library's hidden treasure (at least for me) remains the volumes dedicated to little known Jewish communities that few American Jews ever dreamed existed. Only exceedingly resourceful European Jews arranged immigration to such far away lands as Northern Rhodesia, German South West Africa and Angola -- but enough families populated the capital cities of those colonies (from roughly 1900 to the 1950s) to build synagogues, dedicate Jewish cemeteries and arrange for kosher slaughter.

The tale of African Jewry makes the millions who sailed to New York sound ordinary and trite! Lusaka, Zambia, was no Lower East Side.

The Feedback Post

I hope that my blog can serve as a dialogue in addition to this one-way direction of updates. Are you out there in cyberspace and enjoying this? Please leave comments!

Quick Updates

Happy autumn wishes from South Africa!

1. The Emory Wheel has resumed publishing after the spring break vacation. My latest article, "Serving the Students, Literally," was published on Friday.

2. I am spending my entire Sunday judging the beginner's tournament at the Township Debate League. I won't be able to judge my own group of learners from Thandokhulu High School due to glaring conflicts of interest, but I do hope to observe them in action.

3. Kim and Rachel are joining the other Princeton students for a field research trip to the Eastern Cape Province from Tuesday-Thursday, leaving me all alone in Rondebosch for a few days. The Princeton students work on an independent task force related to their public policy program at the Woodrow Wilson School.

4. Rachel carved yellow watermelon for us on Friday night! Yellow watermelon is a new tropical delicacy for me -- and I highly recommend it.