In the open

Sometimes my view makes up for what this city lacks. 

Time is getting away from me and I don't know how to make the seconds tick more slowly. The past week people have taken pieces of me, have surrounded me with whatever has been going wrong in their lives, and that is what I am here for: I will listen, if that is what you need.

At times I wish someone would listen, to me, too. That what I say is not dismissed so easily by others, and by myself. Whilst walking with a friend today I told her about a confrontation (was considering conversation/debate/argument, but it was one-sided) I had with my father where the utterance 'fuck you' was thrown at my head more than once. A few weeks have passed, and I tell it like a story I was not part of. Her reaction made me realise again that the behaviour was not ok, that I needn't accept it, that being treated like that was not deserving.

What a thing, to talk about your own life as though it is not yours to live.

Je m'en fou

You are reading. Not speaking, not presenting, just repeating words I don't understand and pronouncing names I have never heard of.

Before, there was another you, tracing words on paper with your index finger, like a child learning to read, although your beard is salt 'n pepper and your hair getting there. Dark hair, dark jeans, dark long-sleeved T-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, everything is dark. You talk about the artist's book and heteroglossia and dialogism and Un coup de dès jamais n'abolira le hasard and synaesthesia and again, I don't understand what you want to say. Not even the French makes sense.

A third you follows, old and preachy, constantly scratching something behind your ear. An inability to go back a slide in Power Point makes me wonder who made the show. It is humorous and embarrassing, this inability to present what you should have prepared. Saying things like "Oi lurve dis gui", "dese old fuddyduddies" and "Aur fryend Nietzsche/Schiller/Schopehauer/Kant" (and, faux-pas, Hitler) whilst fumbling with the controls and the slides and the music makes you a figure of ridicule and not respect. I'd write 'weak' in red on your work with a permanent marker.

What is the point of conferences if all anyone does is out-quote another and aim to prove that they know more than the speaker. Networking and making new contacts is high on my hatred list because it is done not out of a genuine interest in meeting people, but out of an interest in personal profit. I watched my father network and skipping anyone who was of no gain to him. I watched the other diplomats do the same: "Oh, you are from (insert 3rd world country)? Excuse me, I have something to discuss with the American/French/Chinese ambassador". And today I watched the conference attendees to it, too. All this pretentious "it's who you know not what you know" stands diametrically opposed to a liberal, supportive, respectful exchange of information.    

Today was a spectacle of mutual ego-stroking, self-promotion and over-analysing art, not of Visual Dialogues: South Africa in conversation.


 

Telling

I was parking the car the other day in the swanky neighbourhood next to the university ( there is no parking nearer to campus where I do not get a parking ticket, so into suburbia we go). When I got out to grab my bag from the boot, there was a black gentleman in his 50s, impeccably dressed and looking very much like someone one would like to share a whisky with. He handed me the note in the photograph and asked if I did not have any work for him. 

Situations like these make me feel completely out of place. He called me "missis" ( for non-South Africans, this is similar to "madam". I think it is a sign of respect, but in my mind is more associated with the apartheid "master/madam" oppressive form than something one would say out of a general sense of social order). Missis is bad to me. I am no one's master. Call me miss, if you have to. Or just "you". I am a lot younger, a lot less experienced in the world, I should be the one of lesser rank. 

I promised that I would pass his info onto someone if I would hear of someone who needed work done. And walked away. He continued up the road, which is lined with arches of old trees and enormous mansions, behind whose high gates expensive German cars gleam in the sunlight. I wonder how that must feel: being desperate for work, wandering a rich suburb where the inhabitants probably earn more in a year than you would in a lifetime. 

When I got home, I read the note, and again was saddened. Why? The spelling. It is my belief that a good education, where traditional knowledge is not forced down on students, but rather where the environment is one which acknowledges different forms of learning and knowing, could change the world. And here, I blame my ancestors. If they had not been so blind and full of hatred, if they had not separated people on account of skin colour, many of the older generation could have had their minds unlocked to a fascinating world where your own thoughts matter as much as those you read in books and newspapers. 

If previous generations would already have had access to a good education, perhaps the youth of today would be able to value it more. At university, I see many people who just expect their parents or the government to pay for their studies, even if they do not attend class and fail subjects. It is a privilege to learn. It is a blessing to be able to sit in classes and be taught to think for yourself. 

So when I see this man, struggling to find basic manual labour in an area where money seems to grow on trees, it bothers me. When I see his terrible spelling, while he is walking through an area where a university, a primary school and numerous high schools are situated, it bothers me. When I then see students not valuing the education they are receiving, it infuriates me.  

 It is easy to judge the previous generations for their errors, because one tells oneself one would not have stood for injustice. One tells oneself that one would have fought for equality. One tells oneself that one could never have just accepted a black and white world instead of seeing colour. But I don't know. Depending on the ideology I was raised with and whether I would accept or reject it, I don't know if I could've been a apartheid-supporter or protester. 

But I can judge the youth of now, the decisions of now, the government of now. I am not saying South Africa is going under or we are becoming like Zimbabwe or whatever, but I am saying that young people need to get their act together. They need to demand knowledge. They need to stop supporting idiots like Malema and burning down buses and classrooms. You cannot advance a society through violence and ignorance. Accept that there is much to learn, from everyone. Everyone is an expert in some region. I know language. I know music videos. But I need to call my grandmother to make jam, or ask the gardener where would the basil-plant grow best ( well, my gran with her green thumb knows that as well).

All I am saying is respect everyone you meet. Even Malema. Know that they are not stupid, they are not less than you. Know that you need to open your mind and take responsibility for your own future.

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