on baking

One of the other things I decided to learn to do in my financially strapped and car-less state was learn how to bake.  I was one of those spoilt white children who didn't learn how to cook until she was almost twenty, and even then, I only learned what I wanted to cook (This did result in someone from the EastCape Opera Company teaching me how to scramble eggs a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday).  So while I baked a few things when I was younger and I got into the habit of making banana bread and whole-wheat bread that crumbled when you cut it in my last year in Grahamstown, this year, I resolved to become awesome.

And awesome I have become.  (At least my friends and family tell me so.  Bless)  I must admit, this is probably not due to my precocious baking skills but more due to:

1.) my pedantic recipe following.  Learning how to cook late has ensured I follow every recipe slavishly as I have had (until recently) very little faith in my own ability to make a meal taste great.

2.) My mother's amazing recipe book.

This is called "The Blue Ribbon Book of Beautiful Baking" and was published just towards the end of apartheid.  I know this because there are pictures of the three women who contributed recipes in the front and two of them are white and one is black (rainbow nation, y'all).  The white women have perms and are wearing white lace blouses (a "blouse" is the only accurate description) and the black woman contributed, in particular, her knowledge of baking using Maize products.  I will say no more.

The design may be old-fashioned, but even that suits me because it means the portion sizes are just right (no super-sized cake slices in my kitchen!) and the icing on the cakes is modest, not a tower of added sugar that is my absolute downfall.  You won't miss the taste, though, because the actual cake has so much flavour and just the right texture.  The recipes are just wonderful  because they are like the ones your mother used (or at least, your mother would have used if you are around my age and you grew up in KwaZulu Natal. I have two friends whose mothers have the same book).  All the measurements are in cups and spoonfuls (none of this tricksy gram nonsense for which you need an actual kitchen scale) and they give you handy tips about how to measure margarine or what measurement exactly is a "pinch" of salt in the front.

I enjoyed my first foray into baking (Beer Bread: so brilliant all you need is flour, beer and some salt) but what really hooked me was standing in the kitchen in the slanting sunlight after a really hectic week of work with my hands in a pot of flour (we don't have bowls big enough to accomodate the buttermilk rusk recipe!), kneading the margarine in.  After a week of engaging with my computer and with abstract concepts, it is really therapeutic to work with my hands and enjoy making something tangible.  It is also gratifying to feel I am acquiring a useful skill.

It has also been absolute joy to give people things that I have made myself.  I have already blogged about how much I enjoy wrapping presents and making cards for people, and being able to fill a jar with biscuits I have made with my own hands and give them to friends feels like I am giving them a jar full of homely happiness.

Part of the reason I only wrote one blog last week was that I was baking up a storm.  I made

1.) scones (with jam and cream I whipped myself (sort-of with a blender))
2.) Peanut-butter biscuits
and
3.) marble cake.  In a ring tin nogal.

It even resulted in my first Zulu birthday card.  I have been trying to get around to learning Zulu for about a decade, so this is a big acheivement:

So, to you, dear readers: Nginifisela impilontle nempilonde*.


*Seriously hoping I got all my prepositions right...

Ebony and Ivory

The theme song of my boyfriend and mine is“Ebony and Ivory”. We usually sing the first few bits together (not in harmony, alas as my white ears are rather deficient at that skill*) and move our hands together in slow motion so that our hands meet and our fingers intertwine. For those not blessed with knowledge of this eighties optimistic kitsch, the words go like this:

"Ebony" (sung by Zwe, aforesaid boyfriend)

"And Ivory" (sung by me, rather ineptly)

"Live together in perfect harmony" (sung together, of course)

This is funny (to us, if no one else) because I am white and Zwe is black, though I always prefer to refer to myself as“faintly pink”. I mean, “white” isn’t even a colour (technically) and it makes me annoyed to have to tick the “white”box on forms rather than the box that says “other”. Maybe I have actually always wanted to be Gonzo from the incorrigible Muppet crew, who is known as a “whatever”. Which just goes to show that Muppet Shows and the latest excellent Muppets film (called, classically, The Muppets) actually has really intelligent things to say about everything.

Like these excellent (Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Concords (just had to throw that out there)) *rhyming* lyrics from the opening piece:

Life's a happy song,

When there's someone by your side to sing along.

Which, as this blog post attests, is just too true.

*Zwe to Clea on reading this bit: “Not all black people are good at music, you racist white”.

teaching about the blacks

I am a tutor and the other day I had a bit of a rave at my South African poetry students that I thought I should share with the world (or the part of the world that reads my blog). It was about how one talks about race in texts that reference older mindsets, and (because these things always spill over into real life from literature) how we use or refrain from using, the leftover prejudice language in everyday situations.

Me: What's with the blacks and the whites, folks? I feel like I am talking about playing cards or some alternate graphic novel universe with warring art-deco, mechanical mafia clans. Surely in this day and age (unless you are being ironic) one should talk about Black people and white people? It's like talking about the gays. How much more can one objectify a group of people? I mean, you wouldn't talk about the "Amy"s, you would talk about the tables.

I have clearly not made my point however, as some still talk about the "blacks" and "whites" in their essays, even when there is no such objectification (ironic or otherwise) in the text. They just put quotation marks around them. So I need to get it through to them a little better.

I got my other point about race across to everyone perfectly clearly. I'm sure it will remain crystalline in their minds. Some of my tutlings (they were writing about Herman Charles Bosman) wrote about the "kaffirs" (which are written just like that in the stories) but without quotation marks. If you are referencing an older, more conservative time directly, one needs to quote this word in context and acknowledge its inherent ugliness, but they just inserted quite happily in their arguments with barely a shudder. I was able to illustrate to them - using, I think, one of my more memorable illustrations of a point why (apart from the obvious) one would not use incendiary and prejudicial terms in formal arguments. It went something like this:

Me: I mean, you wouldn't talk about the motherfuckers in your test unless you were quoting directly from the text would you?
Class: scattered laughter and a one or two gasps. A few light-bulbs go on.
Me: (smiling serenely and thinking, "won't forget that one will you?")

So if anyone can think of a similarly pithy example of why one should not talk about the blacks and whites, I would be eternally grateful. Maybe I will inflict it on next year's batch...

on (English) white liberals

Near the beginning of last year, a Mail and Guardian journalist named Verashni Pillay wrote a column called "The Indian Cringe List". Many people wrote in to say how much they enjoyed the column and its comedy with a pointed purpose, many of them white people. Then, just a few weeks later, she wrote a column called "Stuff White Liberals Say and Do". The same people who congratulated her on writing about Indian people turned around and wrote what borders on hate speech because she had dared to criticise the great white. I didn't have a blog back then, so maybe I would have written this in support a lot earlier. As with my moon cup blog, I suppose it is better late than never.

Even the words "white liberal" make me twitch a little with distaste, even as I admit that I am one. I wear African print skirts and I went on a march or two about human rights and Zimbabwe. I continue to try (unsuccessfully) to learn Zulu and I am writing my thesis on South African literature. So far so liberal, but these harmless pursuits are not what makes my skin crawl about being associated with (English) white liberals.

Firstly, the white liberals I'm talking about are (English) precisely because we are liberal towards everyone except Afrikaners. And Christians. And everyone who can't speak English "properly". And orthodox Muslims ('cause all Muslims treat women really badly). And "Twilight" readers. And black people who call us racist (we're not racist! We have lots of black friends) or black people who take "our" jobs. And people who associate us with fake white liberals who are just hiding under a veneer of liberality. And "stupid" people, which is pretty much everyone except me and my coterie of friends. But apart from that we are, like, totally accepting.

Let's start with first things first: Afrikaners (also known as "Dutchmen" or "Rock Spiders"). We all had to learn Afrikaans at school (most of us learnt it badly) but we don't really care because it's just Afrikaans. There are much more important languages to know, like English and Zulu and...all those other African languages (but English is still the most important because it is an "international" language). Afrikaans people legislated Apartheid so they are automatically more responsible for all racism. All English people just watched helplessly as atrocities were carried out and were not complicit at all. Even worse, Afrikaans music is kitsch, and Afrikaans people are probably not so smart because they say things like "jean pant" and "I'm going to frow you wif a stone".

Ditto black people with black accents. Trevor Noah has already covered this topic really well in his show, Daywalker. Nevertheless, it must be said that if our black learners or our black leaders mispronounce words (in their second, third, fourth or fifth languages) they also must be stupid and incapable of learning what they are taught or leading our country (in which the number of native English speakers tie joint fifth out of eleven official languages). Obviously English is the language of business and politics in South Africa, so politicians and businessmen must learn to speak English properly (because there is definitely a proper English that all proper English people speak all over the world and it all sounds exactly the same). I mean, when French businessmen or politicians conduct business in English with French accents it isn't because they're stupid, they just have a different international language. So, French people with accents are smart, it's just that Zulu people or people who speak...all those other African languages who have one of their accents when they speak English aren't smart (? oh dear! Moving on...)

It's like Christians, you know? They all believe that evolution is a myth and that dinosaurs are a conspiracy to test faith (they didn't really exist). I mean, how stupid can they be? It's almost as bad as that Mormon woman churning out Vampire romances that aren't even about proper vampires, they glitter in the sunlight. I mean that's so gay (not that we're homophobic! It's just a word...)

And Muslims are almost as bad as Christians. I mean, at least they don't hound us to try and convert us, but we know they treat their women really badly and they have a tendency towards fanaticism and bombing buildings.

Don't even get us started on black people taking our jobs. It's so hard to get a job now, and they will probably just give it to some unqualified buffoon for window dressing. I mean, life is hard, hey (takes another sip of beer and takes out blackberry to check new messages. Pulls Diesel jacket a little closer).

But seriously: I know putting unqualified people in jobs is a problem: the millions of unspent money in the Government Health Department is proof of this. I would still nevertheless argue that it was easier for me to get a job in retail last year than it would have been for a black woman with a black accent. I may not have diesel jackets or a shmart cellphone, but my rounded English tones and non-threatening short, white body ensure that my life (certainly) is really not that hard. At the same time, I don't wish to trivialise people's problems. Many families - white and black and all the shades and cultures in between - are struggling in the recession.

What I am really talking about is - in part - my own personal journey of self-realisation. I have held many of the prejudices I write about and have been embarrassingly ignorant about the complexity and variety within cultures other than my own. One of my earliest memories (I must have been about five) is telling my mother how I knew black people were all dirty and all criminals. She quickly put my young mind straight, but it makes me realise that racist propaganda was being pumped into my ears somewhere: whether it was at my beloved pre-primary school or at the houses of friends. Maybe a peer or an adult had instilled this belief in me, but either way I rattled it off because it made me a part of a group to hold the same (misguided) beliefs.

Some English white people are past and beyond my level of investigation into the nature of my inherited prejudices. A (fortunate few) never held these beliefs. There are - however - still too many (English) white liberals who fall into the kind of reasoning I have detailed because their prejudice binds them together in an exclusionary group where they feel a sense of belonging and superiority over others. Perhaps I should say "our prejudice binds us together in an exclusionary group" because no doubt I will continue to find more slippery and subtle prejudices and superiority complexes residing in my own breast that I will need to root out.

What makes it so difficult to change these habits is perfectly put by Karen Armstrong: most people (and I'm not restricting this statement to English white liberals) would rather be "right" than compassionate. Admitting one is prejudiced means admitting that one is wrong, or at the very least clumsily judging others. Never mind getting a job, this is one of the really hard parts of life: to go through this painful process and come out the other side a little less superior. But then, the less superior you are, the less hard it will get. And that is something to look forward to.

Clea's do re mi of race relations

This blog was supposed to be about being white. My wife Natasja (she's my wife because we understand and support each other like married people should. But we also have boyfriends to whom we are devoted. Everyone should have an arrangement like us) wrote a blog recently about being coloured that is too brilliant (see http://tasjasthaiadventure.blogspot.com/). It is funny (in a Trevor Noah Daywalker, not a Trevor Noah Cell C kind of way) and sad and true. It made me think I should write about what it means to be white in South Africa. I wrestled with it for days, writing and re-writing it. So I am starting at the very beginning (a very good place to start).

I was in Grade 1 in 1994. I imagined elections happening in the equivalent of my private school grade 1 classroom: people would vote and ticks would be placed on a white board in a neat table next to the names of Nelson Mandela or...the other people (I wasn't exactly politically clued up back in the day). I was excited when Nelson Mandela won in 1994 and then when we won the Rugby World Cup in 1995. They were rainbow nation moments when everyone around me celebrated (including my pre-primary principle who danced around our living room with different coloured streamers piled on top of her head). I knew South Africa had mountains and oceans and deserts; wildlife beyond belief; a flag with all the colours of the Olympic rings (a sure sign of our diverse and yet bonded nationhood); and now a country where all people could live together happily and equally. We were a miracle nation, the best place in the world where we were all learning to see beyond colour and see only other human beings.

I learned Zulu throughout my primary school years and I told off a friend's mother because she said all black people were criminals (perhaps in less polite language). We had our first black head girl (never mind that she was the only one, perhaps before or since) and my head of house (Palmer) was black. I remember crying to her when I was ten and I had my first detention. I have always been fiercely patriotic and the thought of letting down my house mortified me.

Now it is the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. Eugene Terreblanche (rampant white racist Afrikaner) was brutally murdered on his farm at the beginning of last year by two of his black farm labourers. Julius Malema added fuel to the fire by reviving the old anti-apartheid song, "Kill the Boer". His millions of supporters continue to support him even more fervently even as Afrikaans hysteria reaches fever pitch. Singer Steve Hofmeyer ranted to the country about how black people are all violent and Afrikaans author Annelie Botes admits in an interview that the only thing she is afraid of is black people. White people everywhere (including book buyers in my sleepy little South Coast town) are thrilled that people are finally being "honest" about how "everyone" really feels about race.

It seems the current fashion is to throw all that 1994 reconciliation stuff out and to vent all one's racial prejudice and stir all the hatred that has been brewing for years. Afrikaans writer and journalist, Max du Preez was astute about the phenomenon. Declaring one's racism is a bit like being in a sex tape scandal or going through a messy celebrity divorce: it boosts sales enormously.

So this just has to be the extreme parts of the population, right? The rest of South Africa (the decent parts) have moved forward. Except that Glenwood Boys High School (prestigious rugby-playing government school in Durban) only just got their first black head boy. In 2011. There was a jubilant, celebratory article about it on the front page of the Mercury (a KZN newspaper) a few weeks ago. I felt more like crying. I am not an advocate of giving someone with no merit a position because of their colour, but surely in a country where the majority of people are black, there should have been more than one black kid who was head boy material in twenty years of mixed schooling.

It is not just the older people with the power that remain prejudiced, they have passed it down to their children. There are many young white people (younger than me) who still refer to the garden "boy" (that thirty-five year old man with a family of six to feed) or the "girl" who brings in the tea who is actually a grandmother.

Then there is a Scottish couple in my father's [...] club who were viciously attacked recently in their home. Their black attackers were not only robbers as they were filled with absolute hatred for the comparatively opulent white people they were attacking and robbing. The man was in hospital for almost a week and his wife is so traumatised she can barely function.

The already racist [...] club were furious. This couple were in the process of setting up a crisis centre at the local police station and were some of the most active members of charity and upliftment projects in the community. In the club's eyes, the "blacks" are just biting the hands that feed them. For them, it confirms Steve Hofmeyer's views that the "Blacks" (it's always the "blacks" the same way it is the "gays" or "them") are inherently violent.

What these white people conveniently forget is that South Africa has been a society of enforced violence almost since the Europeans arrived almost four hundred years ago, with black populations on the receiving end of enforced discrimination and savage oppression for almost all of that time. Just as racism is passed from parents to their children over the generations among white people, so it does among black people, with the added pressure of hundreds of years of repression and brutality.

It doesn't matter that this couple were doing their best for the community and weren't even in South Africa during apartheid. They are caught up in the wider currents of boiling violence and frustration of the millions of the poor, black oppressed. It is not right (it is awful), but it is - depressingly - unsurprising.

Poor black people in South Africa are still oppressed because their oppressors have just changed, they haven't gone away. A man I know has been in education in South Africa since the 1960s. He says education for the poor is worse now than it was under apartheid. Education for the poor was not good under apartheid. On the contrary, an old woman came up to me at the bank ATM one day with her bank card and pin number and asked me to withdraw the amount that was written down for her. She was illiterate, and unable to do it herself. Her powerlessness and vulnerability because of her lack of education epitomised much of what was wrong about apartheid and its legacy of dependent adults. That the education system is now worse makes my skin crawl.

Another man who has been in the meetings of the very top ANC people says that the ANC are happy to keep it that way. An uneducated people will keep believing propaganda. That was the original purpose of Bantu Education: keep the black people stupid and under control. Now it seems the new game plan is to keep the poor people stupid and under control.

And white people are taught by their parents - even many of the relatively liberal ones - that poor black people don't have to be noticed or seen, and that wealthy, educated black people in positions of power are to be feared or resented.

So race relations in South Africa are still extremely fraught. They are, however, intricately bound up with power struggles, class differences and the aftershocks of a brutal past: they are not exclusively about race. The ANC taking away the opportunities for education from the poor, black population is an evil scheme to keep power, not a race struggle. They play the race card to keep these people angry. When these poor black people serve white people in supermarkets or as domestic workers in white homes or send their children to formerly white schools, however, they cannot help but notice that not much has changed.

Some black families have managed to live better lives in the new South Africa. Their children have grown up to be good accountants, doctors, lawyers and businessmen or artists, able to live a good life. Money opens many doors between races, but for the most part, black and white people in South Africa still live separate lives. For poor black people - as I have said before - there has been little or no difference.

When I was in a certain part of Soweto two weeks ago, I was such a rare event that little children (they barely came up to my waist) gathered at the gate of the house I was visiting. I was there with two black men (my boyfriend and his friend). They therefore wanted to know if I had been bought. In other words, whether I was a prostitute.

The three of us had a good laugh: to be mistaken for a prostitute in Soweto was definitely something I can tell my grandchildren one day and laugh about. If I think of the real implications of the situation, however I am more inclined to feel sombre. It reminds me of when I went to Fort Hare University (Alice Campus) with fellow opera singers. I haven't often felt so scrutinised. It was clear that young white students (rather than the few old white lecturers at Fort Hare) were unheard of at this university. When Intervarsity expanded to include Fort Hare a little while ago, the Rhodes students set up an intervarsity party in Grahamstown rather than drive through to Fort Hare. I don't believe it was done with racist intentions, but perhaps those students wouldn't have found me such an oddity if the two universities had more to do with each other.

By the same token, Soweto is perhaps the most cosmopolitan township in the country. If - usually - a white woman only appears in parts of it when she is paid to do so, I can only imagine how little people from different races really do mingle outside of the few mixed race schools and the workplace. Few steps can be taken to erase inherited prejudices when people of different races spend little to no time in each other's company, as equals.




*A postscript: I have written about white people and black people simply because it is such a complex topic as it is that I have not space to include further complexities of Asian, Indian, Arab and Coloured/Mixed Race relations. There are more blogs to follow on this topic (this first one contains the bare musical notes so to speak), so perhaps one day I will remedy my omission.