District 9

26^th Feb, 2011

I spent the day in Ivory and Ebony Park yesterday, presenting the first Enterprise Powerhouse information session. W was the first to arrive early, and we had a great conversation about him and his business. His father left early on in his childhood and didn’t send him to school, and that is his big boulder on his shoulder, that he didn’t get an education and so can’t do his dream job, boilermaker. Boilermaker? Dream job? OK, if you say so. The guy has fabulous energy and is an entrepreneur. I asked a few questions around what he had gained by not going to school, the inquiry needed to go deeper but we made our way there. The Theory of Equilibration is such a great tool to reposition one's thinking.

Ivory Park is lovely, from a certain perspective. Its got  a great vibe, its like being in a rural area. Slow, rounded time with people everywhere. Being with J, much greeting and many introductions, we spent a really lovely afternoon putting up posters for the information session and letting people know about the project.

The day was marred by a massive traffic jam, so that it took me 3 hours to get home. At one point I got my laptop out of the boot and checked my email, and came across discussion on Facebook about a Spoek music video, that is quite dark and primal. The discussion started around how the gaze in the video was disturbing, and then it emerged that it was made by the same folks who made District 9, or “the loathsome” District 9, as the writer named it. I read on, as I enjoyed the film and thought it well made. And this is what was written on the discussion:

I don't think there is any subversion here looking at the credits of who made the video the usual suspects

The Gaze is coming from same place that produced our representations in the loathsome District 9. Its from a particular location in white South African's gaze and psyche and received perception which goes unperceived by them,uninformed, uninterrogated, unreconstructed and underlying the unrelinquised, innate and deeply comforting supremacy that cushions their existence in sunny SA, even the ones with "political " backgrounds or suss. Am still astounded how I have always been met with blank stares and "who is that?" when referencing Hall or Gilroy when talking representation issues. Happily, I have long abandoned educating the Other's Other. And so I stay sane.

I was very shocked that I hadn’t made a deeper inquiry into District 9, that I am in fact one of those white folks who hasn’t reflected past my current perception, and allowed the voo-doo-isation of black people to exist, so swept up was I in the horrific xenophobic attacks and the condemnation of South Africans’ actions against foreigners resident in SA. When it has all been too frightening and this group is herded into a mass of “the Other”, and when our unspoken feelings of exclusion and vulnerability seep up from our unconscious mind, it is this kind of thinking, this voodoo-isation, that creates the separation, like a mist that creeps in, a veil that wafts between black and white. I see this, the interpersonal dead-wall.

I am very disturbed that I so easily enjoyed District 9, a sci fi thriller about a space ship full of aliens that is stuck over Joburg, and when freed by the army, are kept in a fenced off area where Nigerians control the monopoly of cat food to which the aliens are addicted. The film represents aliens (illegal African immigrants) as such, and stereotypical Nigerians as vicious, slobbering predators, South Africans as negligent, careless observers, with a violent public service.  

This debate is what makes South Africa an incredibly important place for me to be in. Nowhere else would my thought be thus stretched. I have not encountered this level of debate around race in Australia, perhaps because I don’t move in the right circles. I don't see any evidence of a public debate on race there. This is also the discourse that runs in private conversations, black conversations, and which I would love to see go public. But then, I wasn’t here when District 9 was released, so I don’t know what was publically debated.

I am grateful to have my peers lay it on the table this vividly, so that I am moved forward by their experience and into more critical reflection of my interactions in this world.

Such dangerous stuff to write about, if I made it public I do believe I’d be making myself available for some rabid criticism. What comes from myself is what I fear coming from others – that I didn’t have these critical thoughts myself, that I am terminally white (no argument there), that I am dense, not insightful enough. Perhaps its all true, as I have been living my experience elsewhere. And this is how I learn about race and dynamics, to be here, and to see through the various filters we experience each other through, that the fear has created.

I find on Facebook some fairly vicious, if intelligent, comments about white people. I guess that’s because so many of us live here only focussed on our own wellbeing, protecting ourselves against whatever perceived threat. There are still maids and gardeners and people who raise other peoples’ children. Fat cats, beggars on streets, people walking, trudging, missioning everywhere.

What I love about being in Ivory Park is the humanity, just being there in a place of Africa, how ordinary it all is. I like the rounded edges, the softness in the air, the friendliness of the people. And I wish for other white south Africans that they could experience this too. I know they did with the rugby in Soweto. I don't mean that I'm having a quaint experience. There is tremendous hardship in Ivory Ebony Park, but what I see is a lot of white South Africa missing out on the positive qualities of black culture, because they exclude themselves from participating in it. 

Bismillah.