Brazen daylight robberies!

Over the Memorial Holiday weekend, I was struck to read about a spree of daylight robberies, all in northern neighborhoods near my Seattle home. According to the article in the Seattle Times, in three separate incidents (it would later grow to five related attacks), individual women were attacked in their driveways, perhaps after being followed home from stores. In each case the women had their shopping bags and/or purses stolen, and at least two of the victims were stun-gunned during the robbery.

Part of what struck me was how relatively minor the reaction to this news story was, especially in comparison to how accounts of a similar incident during my time in Cape Town affected the neighborhood where it occurred. The story that was related to me at a dinner party told of a resident of one of the nicer northern suburbs being followed home from the store and then robbed in her driveway. As a result, families all over the neighborhood had changed their routines; they were diligently watching their rear view mirrors, planning errands for daylight hours, and implementing other precautionary measures. This story had instilled a definite fear of victimization, and the threat seemed quite real. We, a gathering of expatriates, all shook our heads, tsk-tsked, and added another entry to our ever-growing list of "ways one can be a crime victim in Cape Town." A very different response than I feel myself having to this considerably dangerous crime spree happening literally mere blocks from my house.

In hindsight, I realize that if my dinner host had the details of where and when this crime had occurred, I did not get them, nor did I see then (or could I find now) a news story about this particular incident. That is not to say that the crime did not happen or that the story is apocryphal, for driveway attacks certainly have and do occur in Cape Town and elsewhere in South Africa (a quick search yielded two accounts of such crimes, from May and September of 2008; I also found an announcement for an ADT "Anti-hijacking/driveway robbery workshop," also from 2008 - "Snacks will be served"!). Rather, I recognize - even more now than before when I was living in the midst of it - just how influential the narrative of vulnerability to an omnipresent and escalating crime threat is in Cape Town, and perhaps throughout South Africa. It is a powerful psychological force that has a disturbing effect on people's daily lives, and, in a place where nearly everyone who can afford to lives in an alarm-equipped home behind walls, gates, and barred windows, shows in our response to the driveway robbery story.

Crime rates in South Africa are certainly high, but I am struck by how important of a role our perceptions and expectations play in how relatively vulnerable or safe we feel in particular places and situations.

Three weeks back, feels like I never left

So, I've heard from a few people in now about failing to update the blog. Sorry about that, and thanks for letting me know that you've been checking! It certainly hasn't been for lack of material, but it turns out that a weekend between getting home and starting back to school was not enough time to...well, to do anything much more than try to get my body adjusted to the 9 hour time shift. It's been great to be back at Northwest. The school community has been wonderfully warm and enthusiastic in welcoming me back into its comforting and familiar fold. At the same time, it has felt jarring to just abandon all of the routines and relationships that I established in Cape Town. For example, I have to admit (sheepishly) that I've hardly checked the news sources that were my daily diet during my stay. Did the ANC discipline Jacob Zuma beyond a slap on the wrist? Have there been more school protests? Has the World Cup squad been announced? Who made the team? Clearly, I need to spend some time on the Cape Times and Mail & Guardian websites!

As far as processing and synthesizing my South African experience, I have submitted an article to the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa's Bulletin on the multi-school work party model, and a fellow Fulbright awardee and I have proposed a session on our experiences for the regional private school association conference in October. Beyond that, I still have a lot of notes and impressions to sort through. I may get a chance to present at a global education conference in July. If so, that will be a good target for organizing a coherent summary of my research.

For now, however, a very patient group of students deserves to have their exams graded!

Updates (in progress)

Based on subsequent events, and on looking through the newspaper clippings I've saved and the notes I've written, here are a few updates to previous posts:

On corruption in the ANC and its effect on the current conflict between Malema and the party leadership (President Zuma et al): "The extent to which the ANC has lost its hold over its own core principles is astonishing... If corruption, verbal or monetary, is not dealt with the moment it manifests itself, the corrosion will spread. The more it spreads the harder it becomes to stop... It all on boils down to a question of leadership. Good leaders lead by example. Uphold your principles and the rest will follow. Condone and cover-up and things fall apart." (Cape Times editorial column by Allister Sparks - journalist, author, and political analyst; 14 April 2010)

Amid letters on... (uh oh! can't find the rest of this file...)

to be continued

One word...

Eyafjallajokull !

(Saturday, April 24th: Actually, my flight from Cape Town through Amsterdam went off as if the aforementioned Icelandic volcano were still dormant. There weren't even masses of stranded travellers in the Schiphol Airport. Duped by media hype again! The only jarring part of the trip home was the superfluous stopover in Minneapolis. With all due respect - and one branch of my family has roots in the region, it felt like I'd been dropped onto the set of the movie Fargo. I won't elaborate except to say that I clearly was NOT in Cape Town anymore.)

Wrapping up my stay (draft)

I am trying to take full advantage of my final days here. That has meant fitting in some excursions, such as a summit of 1000m Devil's Peak (got there this morning on the second try! The first one ended with driving my hiking partner to the ER, but that's another story...) and a great mountain bike ride (followed by a dip in a reservoir!) on the backside of Table Mountain. On the work front, I have been quite busy getting in my last visits to schools - mostly by bicycle (after getting the car collision damage repaired, but that too is another story). I did join the photography intern here from Seattle U for an epic pilgrimage by mini-taxi back out to Hector Peterson School for a last visit there.

A huge highlight was organizing what turned out to be a quite successful multi-school environmental service project yesterday. Thirty learners from seven different schools turned out to do some invasive plant clearing at a conservation area (co-located with an active horse racing track! We would pause to watch the races go by.). I was thrilled with the turn-out!

tbc

Zuma in the US; SA social fabric continues to fray

As I assume the US media covered, President Zuma was in Washington DC for the summit on nuclear security, at which South Africa was proudly singled out and praised by President Obama for being the first country to abandon a nuclear weapons programme. According to allAfrica.com, "South Africa gave up its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 1993 making it the first and only country to start abandoning a weapons programme voluntarily." Zuma also met with President Obama as part of the trip. Although the picture only appeared on page 5. I find it interesting to see the difference between the image chosen for publication here (above) and those published in other sources, such as below (from IOL) where JZ looks oddly deferential to a stern-looking Obama. IOL reports that the meeting "covered a number of bilateral issues, including strengthening co-operation on areas like agriculture and HIV and Aids. They also discussed the promotion of African peace and security within the ambit of the African Union and United Nations." (Ambit means "sphere or scope"; I had to look it up.) One has to wonder what was going through Obama's mind about some of the issues they didn't talk about (lifestyle audits, polygamy, etc.).

In other news, questions of race relations are still in the forefront of the public conversation, as are growing concerns that the World Cup may not be the economic boon and boost for the country that its promoters have been promising. An editorial in today's paper (Cape Times) encouraged South Africans to skip the games and instead to donate an equivalent amount to education or other needs. Coincidentally, the front page story this morning was of pupils going on a rampage in Malmesbury (a town about 45 minute north of Cape Town) to protest their over-crowded school. As legitimate as their concerns are (over 60 pupils in some classes), there is something disconcerting about students resorting to torching portables to make their point and about the incident escalating to police shooting kids with rubber bullets. In the melee, a "criminal element" apparently exploited the chaos to rob and vandalize some shops owned by "foreigners" and to beat the shopkeepers. In a related story, municipal workers all over the country went on strike Monday in response to a lack of progress in on-going labor negotiations. The images of the march were celebratory for the solidarity and resolve that they showed, but they were also menacing for the anger some workers expressed and for the vandalism engaged in by some of the protesters, particularly the gleeful overturning of rubbish bins onto the streets and the damaging of other municipal property (see Cape Town strike video here). According to the Cape Town mayor's office, for every three rand spent on upgrading municipal infrastructure, two more rand are spent protecting and repairing it due to rampant vandalism and theft. A lot of resources are being devoted to containing these festering problems in the run-up to the World Cup. Whether or not those efforts can be sustained or victorious in the long-term is an open question.

My advice: come to the World Cup if you can, but all bets are off for what happens in its wake.

Anniversaries & commemorations (*updated)

Largely overshadowed in the current media storms was the anniversary on Saturday of the assassination of Chris Hani. On 10 April, 1993, Hani was killed by right-wing extremists as he returned home to racially mixed suburb of Johannesburg. Hani was active in the apartheid resistance from the early 1960's on, and he was, among other roles, a popular leader of the South African Communist Party. Hani's death is widely viewed as a critical loss to the nation's leadership cadre right when the new nation was being forged. His killers were caught and convicted, and the TRC determined that his killers, who are still imprisoned for the crime, were not acting as part of a right-wing conspiracy (although some of his family and other supporters still appeal for a full disclosure of the circumstances of his death). In an ironic twist, the new constitution that they surely opposed spared Hani's killers from death sentences. Here are links to an overview of Chris Hani's life and to Nelson Mandela's speech at Hani's funeral. Many prominent South Africans have paid tribute to Chris Hani, including Blade Nzimande, Jeremy Cronin, and Tokyo Sexwale. These are easily found on the web.


Another tragedy being commemorated in April, also in Africa and from the same era but of an incomprehensible scale, is the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Starting on the night of April 6th, after the shooting down of a small plane which had the presidents of both Rwanda and neighboring Burundi on board, a mass slaughter began that would claim the lives of over 800,000 people (10% of the nation's population) in a mere 100 days. The details of this horror are numbing, and its roots and reverberations are complex. It was, as the title of an episode of PBS's Frontline declared "A Triumph of Evil," a near total moral collapse of an entire society. It was also a shameful abdication of responsibility on the part of members of the international community (including the US and the UN) who had the necessary information and means to have intervened to stop the bloodshed. (The Frontline website is an excellent resource to learn more.)

Here at UCT, the East African Student Society held a sober commemoration of the genocide. There were speakers, including officials from the Rwandan consulate, the reading of testimonies from survivors, and the screening of a documentary, "When Good Men do Nothing" (The BBC Panorama version of the Frontline program). Both titles come from words attributed to Edmund Burke:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

The professor of the course I took also spoke. He was typically eloquent as he warned us in the audience to remember "how quickly we humans succumb to base and low instinct" during these "extraordinary examples or barbarism." He also exhorted us to apply the privilege of our university educations to the meaningful work of "expanding the boundaries of inclusion." His conviction is powerful when he speaks, and it makes sense that he has been appointed to the position of deputy vice-chancellor, responsible for, among other things, the institution's transformation strategy. (The UCT website has published a nice profile of him.)

One more April commemoration is the upcoming 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence. While the holiday in Zimbabwe is this Sunday, 18 April, UCT's active and numerous Zimbabwean student group is hosting a retrospective lecture presentation this Thursday evening. South Africa has absorbed a large population of refugees from its troubled neighbor (related article and slide show), and, despite continuing support for Robert Mugabe from the ANC government, South Africa has recently taken a more active role in helping bring peace and order to Zimbabwe after years of conflict and unrest. (See post from March 20th.) I look forward to attending that event.