Inequality, thy name is Alexandra!
Power hates the poor. South Africans are as screwed by Black Enrichment as they were by Afrikaans Apartheid and British Colonialism.
“Your life is in my hands.”
My foreign readers will shudder when watching a drunk gangster lead Timmy Karter through the Alexandra township of Johannesburg, South Africa.
The conditions there are inhuman, and in painful contrast to next door Sandton which is the richest area in the province (a.k.a. state).
My only trip to Alexandra was circa 1999. I was the only white person I saw. It was memorable for having to leave a bar or be killed, and then meeting a bunch of people who were so happy to see my skin that they insisted on beers and laughs. That mimics my life of facing crime, but with most folk being nice.
Power hates the poor, and being the same colour doesn’t make people equal.
Unfortunately, time doesn’t heal in our neoliberal world, and it doesn’t matter that Nelson Mandela and Hugh Masekela were once residents of Alexandra. The only counting is that money = apathy, and no money = violence.
Poverty and early death is guaranteed for most South Africans. They are as screwed by Black Enrichment as they were by Afrikaans Apartheid and British Colonialism. Different names for exploitation don’t change reality. Power hates the poor, and being the same colour doesn’t make people equal. Consequently, Alexandra’s living conditions have sunk since I was there.
“You go outside, there’s rotten water. People cooking there, throwing chicken feet there on the floor there, or the rats running inside the courts. The state is disastrous there.” - EWN
Ask yourself what crime would you commit if your life or your family’s depended on it? Consider how easy it is to see those who have more as the enemy.
I fear the nation’s desperation will ultimately rise into collective destruction (354 corpses giving us a smell of it in 2021).
But I hope you marvel at the beauty of spirit which doubles as a survival tool. That’s a lesson to those of us who are struggling but have more.
JOURNEY INTO ALEXANDRA
CAPTAIN IBRAHIM TRAORE
I’ve hardly been online but used that time to follow war.
Less Gaza headlines the past month has no correlation with everyday mass murder.
I’m going to deliver you an article on Ukraine on June 1. Yeah, I’m going to fulfil my intention to do less but better.
In the meanwhile, keep yourself busy with more of our ‘Dark Continent’.
I encourage you to look up the most under-and-misreported topic in Western news, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. He’s the leader of Burkina Faso that’s making waves by thumbing his nose at Western bankers.
For regional backdrop, read my earlier piece, ‘Is the Cold War Heating Up Africa?’. Here’s a recent introduction to Traoré, and you can listen to last week’s interview with him in Russia. For a deeper dive, there’s this opinion on why the US military has labelled him a criminal, and why African leaders are silent.
You should visit my MIM site and watch the trailer for ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’. That’s the best documentary I’ve seen on post colonialism, and its delivery is unique. You’d be doing your education a favour by watching everything I suggest there. It’s not me that’s good, instead “THANK YOU” to documentarians!
May you ban skim reading and fast forwarding to follow those links over the next couple of weeks instead of now. Consider it an inhalation minus the usual gaseous particles of the latest manager of the USA.
Good article, Mike!
Well said, Mike!
I spent a few years in an online photo group, which had a couple of sweet and brilliant white South African members, and I remember being astonished at the visual telltales they could not help but show. The juxtaposition of stunning beauty and barbed wire was outright creepy – and the proliferation of almost medieval looking defenses for otherwise normal houses made me sad for those on both sides of that divide of having and of violence. Free play between cultures is a fantastic bounty (and I never take that fortune for granted, though Toronto is, for all its faults, especially good at bringing many together).
I’m a bit weird for being a poor kid in a rich country, and doing better over time, but never losing my immediate awareness of the way things work for those on the bottom (which you captured perfectly). Power indeed despises those who can neither threaten nor bribe it! And policy splits between citizens the powerful do fear and care about, versus those who are functionally rendered untermenschen, have not been so starkly revealed here, in the better part of a century. (They made me add “Well meaning psychopath”) to my collection of definitions of malign “Libtards” (who have always pissed me off, even just for betraying once precious classical liberalism – to which we all owe so damn much).
Of course Toronto is a world away from that level of desperation and tension – but I saw a funny story today which reminded me of the complete ignorance of the powerful, when it comes to those they rule.
The provincial government is about to pass a law that allows them to give certain classes of “special constables” who do official government security in many settings, but are not full police officers, weapons, when this is deemed appropriate. Opposition parties are screaming –and of course pointing out the examples which make this sound silliest (solving campus high-jinx does not need a Glock).
But when I saw the special constables for government housing projects on the list, I understood immediately that the law was needed and sensible, and why. Years ago we had a high-murder summer which was widely called “The Summer of the Gun.” Baffled City, Provincial and even Federal politicians weighed-in on the question, with solemn faces and pious bullshit in heaping quantities. But no one had anything useful to say, or any insight whatsoever into what caused the problem.
But I stay in touch with poor people, so I understood that the “Summer of the Gun”came FROM THE ACTIONS OF THOSE STUPID POLITICIANS. Specifically, the city set aside hundreds of millions to redevelop one of the most violent gang-filled public housing project downtown (Regent Park) –and instead of thinking about the actual culture they were dealing with (rival gangs) they sent families from that project, directly into projects which were entirely controlled by hostile gangs (instead of allies).
So what we had was a blood feud gang war created by government “Helping and charity”policy (with a big helping of dopey idealism instead of specific awareness of realities and relationships, on the side).
Of course South Africa has far more entrenched problems on every level, especially competition for resources one class is used to stealing (and feeling it their right), and another huge class badly needs, but the more I read your stuff, the more I suspect one common element for the“Elites” who are driving all of us nuts in common with their combination of confidence and incompetence, is the refusal to engage with reality in a full sense, and an insistence instead on twisting and denying it, to reify dogma.
Cheers man!