One month later

After being back in the states for a month now South Africa is starting to be categorized into broad memories, the details are hard to remember. I’m very glad I have video from so much of it. I’m combing through it right now trying to pick out parts to string together into some sort of common theme. When I watch the video the days come flying back and it feels like I haven’t even left. Sadly some of the speakers imprint on my records were diminished by sporadic battery failures. For some of the days that had two speakers the later of the two met this fate. I should have done a better job noting when this occurred so I don’t spend hours trying to find a clip that doesn’t exist but alas, I left all the work for back home.

 

The video in question is proving very challenging. I’ve never had so much voice over to record, so much footage to work with, and so little time to cut it all together. Most videos I’ve produced take 3-4 months to make. I’ve never edited a video longer than 12 minutes either. This project needs to be completed in 3 weeks and will probably clock out at 25 minutes in length. My thesis, that the process of reconciliation we were studying in South Africa contains similarities to the process of studying abroad that we engaged in a CU students. Reconciliation thus has something to teach future study abroad students. The thesis is broken down into three main categories; truth telling; group identity; and transition evaluation. Truth telling for South Africa is it’s history and the TRC. For our group it was the act of me documenting our trip. The group identity issue is one that was brought up in our reading. Groups involved with a conflict have to redefine how they view themselves and their former adversary in order to move forward. In our group it was how we internally identified, first as Norlin Scholars, and then as our own micro community that exists outside of the class. The final point, the evaluation stage, is what we were directly studying, how effective the TRC and reconciliation has been for South Africa. For our group this will be how we received the information from the class and the culture of South Africa. We talked extensively about how we felt as we went along and personal interviews with participants will be used for this section.

 

Outside of my project, I keep seeing concepts of reconciliation creep up on me. With personal relationships, political commentary, everyone seems to be trying to reconcile. It’s quite nice in some regards but the timing of all of these outside interactions feels like fate after focusing on the subject so much. I’m reacting to these personal encounters and calls for reconciliation in my work and personal life with what I’ve learned from the class in mind in order to try and actively engage in conflict resolution personally.

 

I’ve also been trying to keep up with African news. I feel a much more personal connection to the country and region now that I have friends there to think about as I see weather reports and political commentary. It doesn’t feel as far away anymore and the world in general just feels smaller. I hope to stay engaged in this subject not simply through the summer but through my college career and beyond. Reconciliation for South Africa is far from over and while I talk about the TRC using a past tense, I recognize it is a very long process for South Africa to find racial balance and equity. The United States continues to struggle with it as I think every country does. We consider South Africa far behind us so much of the time, but on this they may be outpacing the world, addressing racial issues head on in the hopes that their history will reflect the greatest 180 degree turn in history. Going from the antithesis of the contact hypothesis to total integration is something that seems unbelievable, and there is a great deal of work to do. But next year, when the world cup is hosted by South Africa, black will be cheering next to white, will be cheering next to colored and however many thousands of other categorizations you can think of… it should be glorious.

Pictures

All pictures are now online at

http://phaedrusphotos.shutterfly.com/

Enjoy

Reflecting Back

I spent a week in England after South Africa and the very first TV commercial I saw was broadcast by southafrica.net, a tourist website. In the video a National Geographic reporter talked about all the improvements she’s seen in the townships over the last ten years, children going to school, clean drinking water, lots of sports and games. It was a very strange thing to witness since none of the shots included the glass filled ground, the piles of trash on fire, dead sheep heads, or dozens of women huddled around a single water drain. The 30 second spot may as well have had a Disney soundtrack playing in the background it was so one sided.

And while the commercial bothered me because it is not an example of truth telling, I believe it’s a means to an end. The purpose of the commercial is to increase tourist travel to South Africa leading up to the Soccer World Cup. If this campaign is met with success then the economic benefit of having large numbers of international tourists present may trickle down and help the impoverished of the country. This seems like a stretch though. The true attitude of the commercial was less about exciting and more about dispelling fear. Perhaps westerners still perceive Africa as unwelcoming or too underdeveloped to travel to. This commercial then would focus on an image of even the least hospitable locations in Africa having laughing children playing soccer to make people feel comfortable.

This leads into the main discussion that I’ve been having with people as I tell them about my trip. The main thing that changed for me during the trip was my perception of the importance of good governing in development. I volunteer for a political action group that works on poverty legislation. In that, the government of each individual nation is a variable that isn’t very helpful to talk about. Since our work lobbies the national government, not the governments of other states, it’s important to focus development assistance on the areas that we have control over such as NGO’s and on the ground groups. These can be very powerful tools in helping the people in the most desperate areas of the world. In South Africa though I saw how the suppression of a group of people by denying them a good education passes through the generations and translates into a 40% unemployment rate. The effect of one piece of legislation can make any progress by non-government groups disappear. So how do you tackle something so staggering? The answer cannot be just a non-government approach which I had adhered to in the past. The South African government has to be the main driving force behind social improvement. The issues that plague poor South Africa ranges from lack of clean water to a poor health care infrastructure. All of these factors work together to bring down quality of life and in many cases the poverty is so bad that the government, even if it devoted it’s entire budget and personnel to helping just one of these factors, would be unable to fix it.

This leaves me dealing with the same statement that I used when we did the mindfulness exercise. The statement I wrote down was that, “Poverty in unavoidable in the world.” My reactions were identified and a mix of frustration and angst. The reason for that is because I don’t believe that is true. I believe the purpose of human existence is to improve the quality of life for all of its members so that each person is at a minimum, secure in shelter and basic resources with fair access to education and the tools to succeed. That doesn’t mean poverty doesn’t exist. It means there are no societal barriers to getting out of poverty and there is a strong enough social welfare system to provide people a way out of such circumstances. That would be the closest thing to a utopian society I can imagine and I believe human history is the record of our attempt to get closer to such an existence. So this creates an internal struggle where I cannot accept the conditions that I saw in the shantytowns, but I also can’t see anyway for either the government or any NGO to make a significant improvement.

So I go back to my earlier thought from the beginning of the trip. I stated that I thought the only true thing that would cause reconciliation in South Africa was the passage of time and generations of people. Perhaps poverty in these extreme cases is something that cannot be solved overnight, but has to be done gradually. It’s a language tool I use when talking about increasing funding levels for programs but in my heart, if it were up to me these changes would occur overnight. That’s not how humans seem to work though. Hopefully this compromising point will be sufficient for development efforts to succeed. I know the South African government and people are doing the best they can and maybe focusing on the good is what the country needs right now. Hopefully the World Cup shines a bright light on the progress and issues the country faces and the exchange helps the bottom line raise up a little. It’s the best step I can think of.

Looking Back

I’ve been in South Africa for 3 weeks now. It’s the longest amount of time I’ve spent outside of the country. I think it has been a very valuable experience and I’d like to reflect on some of my thoughts looking back at the trip.

The purpose of the class was to study reconciliation in South Africa. We focused on post-apartheid race relations as a measure of the effectiveness of reconciliation and what that process entailed for South Africa. The rest of my summer will be spent applying this information to a project at a local level.

The main thing I’ve noticed through conversations with individuals is that reconciliation has occurred to different degrees for different people. The macro-level adjustment to post-apartheid relations is independent of each individuals progress of coming to understanding. Aretha, the Afrikaner who I talked with on the plane believed people naturally segregate themselves, which is why nothing is better for her now and in fact sees the country as sliding backward now that white influence has retreated slightly. Her view had some credibility added to it when Don Foster pointed out that contact isn’t happening between different racial groups with the volume necessary to create an integrated society.

Last night though we attended a book signing event that one of our lecturers invited us to and the audience was mixed 50/50 black and white with discussions taking place between the two groups and no evidence of “natural segregation” to be seen. Attendees were openly talking about racial issues as well as gender and sexuality discrimination. It was hard to imagine, looking at the crowd, that these people could not legally gather like this twenty years ago.

I think the primary difference between these totally opposing viewpoints is the level of engagement the individual had with the process. For the folks at the book signing event it seemed that many of them had been active in the anti-apartheid movement, were progressive on social issues, and pursued equality with every action of their daily lives. For Aretha, she was raised in apartheid and was unaware about it’s existence until it fell. Afterward, she sees her place of living become something completely different than what she grew up to. She attributes high crime rates to racial tendencies instead of socio-economic conditions; shanty town living to an African culture of village living instead of lack of access to basic resources and jobs; and sees the black population dominating the unskilled labor force as natural instead of the product of oppressing the education of several generations.

I believe much of this can be attributed to the conditions upon which contact hypothesis operates. These are as follows…

Equal Status, both groups taken into an equal status relationship,

Cooperative Activity, both groups work on a problem/task and share this as a common goal, sometimes called a superordinate goal,

Personal Interaction, the task must be structured so that individual members of both groups are interdependent on each other to achieve this common goal,

Social Norms, some authority that both groups acknowledge and define social norms that support the contact and interactions between the groups and members.

I believe that the individuals who were advocating for equal rights and were aware of the inequality before South Africa became a democracy had all of these conditions meet. They therefore came in contact to work on the common cause of bringing down apartheid and became friends and equals in the process. Don Foster said when he returned to South Africa after studying in London, he worked with political groups acting against apartheid and said he had some of the best experiences of his life and formed the strongest friendships. These types of personal interactions seem necessary for individual reconciliation. The collective reconciliation that then results from the accumulation of all these individual interactions allows for societal healing at large.

This distinction between the macro and micro level reconciliations is something that our group has dealt with extensively. My understanding at this point is that individual reconciliation may occur through a variety of processes including forgiveness, justice, reparations, apology, mindfulness, and contact. It is not the job of the government to make these interactions occur, but to provide a safe space for them to take place. This was the purpose of the TRC. For some, who felt that justice of reparations were necessary for their personal reconciliation, the TRC fell short. Others felt that the purpose was to provide a venue for truth telling, in which it partially succeeded. The final viewpoint I see regarding the TRC is that it was there to form a common history, something I believe it succeeded in. Every tour guide and lecturer have common aspects of South Africa’s history they consider important and while each one knows different smaller details. The academic and tourist industries seem to be on basically the same page when it comes to history.

So I leave South Africa optimistic. The complexity and sheer number of issues the country faces seems daunting, but the frank manner in which they are addressing them signals promise. Perhaps it’s a similar mentality that we should be adopting with our conflict mediation in our community at home. We’ve heard some people say that since the US has gone through the struggles of becoming a democracy sooner it should be South Africa learning from our experiences. This trip has proved both countries have wisdom to bring to the table and that the long walk to freedom is one that knows many bends and dips, not all of which can be conveniently charted out. It has been an exceptional experience to be able to learn from a new culture and a different history. I will continue to blog throughout the summer as I compile the many hours of video and audio I’ve recorded into a succinct project. Thank you very much for following this blog while I’ve been abroad and safe travels to my peers.

Mandela's Autobiography

I finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography a couple days ago. I thought the book was excellent, that the man is rightly the face of the liberation struggle and that he was the right person for the right time. It’s inspiring to see such a success story through all the struggles he endured.

The only thing I feel it left out were certain aspects of his personal life. The autobiography seemed to be about his political life more than anything else, especially in the later years. Perhaps this reflects how his life was focused and also didn’t feel this venue was an appropriate place to talk about it. I was just surprised that the separation with Winnie only took up two pages when it seems like that would be a pretty important part of his life. The emotional insight into these events usually came through citing the speeches or letters he wrote at the time, which was a good insight into how he felt, though it still seemed there was more in the background. Perhaps the section heading, “The Struggle is my Life” explains this allocation of time.

The other main theme we talked about was the model of leadership Mandela used throughout his life. From his early days as a boy he watched as the head of the town held a meeting in which everyone was given a chance to speak and would be heard without interruption. Mandela carried that mentality through his political career. Despite being very strong willed, he would carry out what the majority voted to do in the ANC executive committee. He recognized that he was there as a representative of all the people in the struggle. This brings on a sense of humility for the man. Granted that could be his writing style, and the book is intended to further an image, but this trait seems to be significant to how he tries to lead. He describes his leadership style as guiding a heard from behind. This styles seems very effective and makes him personable to the people.

We have recently seen a similar leadership style here in the US, from President Obama during the campaign season. Obama would use the word “we” instead of the word “I.” He pressed upon his values being raised with modest means and constantly referred to the desire for change as a societal movement. As a result, people described him as “personable” and “down to earth.” The conciliatory stance he’s taken on tense relationships with the arab world and for a sense of humility on the part of the nation as a whole has increased the popularity of his policies abroad. Many of our speakers on this trip have stated their appreciation that Obama is our President because of his foreign policy rhetoric.

I think that because this leadership style has seen such effectiveness it becomes clear that humility and group mentality are important characteristics for leaders. Mandela took this philosophy to every level as he worked to develop relationships with the warders at Robben Island. These traits make leaders personable and it’s those types of interactions that slowly generate change.

Capitalizing Race

My previous blog entry included references to another topic that deserves a discussion by itself, that of racial categorization. I noticed while I was typing the previous blog, in the sentence, “We have Black and Chinese sections of town…” I originally did not capitalize black, and Word automatically capitalized Chinese for me. I thought this was somewhat strange and asked Denise if it would then be appropriate to capitalize “black” as well and we agreed it would be. However doing so legitimizes the category as a representing a certain population. This would then support the concept of race in general which was something Professor Don Foster also questioned today. He asked us if race was real? Is it?

Skin tones have infinite shades. It’s more than simply taking some non existent color called “skin” on a color graph and adjusting the luminosity of it; there are so many variations that there is no way to objectively categorize people based on skin color. Yet we do so constantly. We do it for other characteristics too, like hair and eye color, which can be just as unique as skin color. All are products of our genetic makeup. Yet because of the way we evolved as humans we somehow decided that this variable, skin color, would determine so much of our lives compared to the other, equally variable characteristics we have.

The issue then really isn’t that we notice race, but how we use it. It’s necessary for identification purposes to record hair color, height, eye color, skin tone, weight and so on. These aspects of an individual should not be any determiner of admittance into a job or school in an ideal world. And without getting into an affirmative action discussion at the moment, it’s important to note that we are taught that race is a more important indicator of an individual, it does not come naturally.

I remember learning about the civil rights movement for the first time in 5^th grade. We were watching some video and then afterward had a discussion about how all people were equal and this was important to keep in mind. I remember thinking that such a concept was obvious, that we already were acting as such and by being taught about this part of history made me feel strange for even noticing the race of my peers. I was friends with a student who had one black and one white parent. I didn’t think much of it before that day and thought that teaching about how racism is bad may have negative implications because such a concept should be natural to a child. Anyhow, this is not to say I believe my education should have occurred differently, teaching about such history is very important and I would never advocate removing lessons about racism from course material. The issue is that recognizing others placed priority on this personal characteristic creates a chain reaction, causing our generation to deal with the consequences of this in a way that continues to focus on this factor, even though the purpose is to make it more neutral.

So by capitalizing racial titles we raise the significance of that form of categorizing over the other equally unimportant human traits which we leave in lower case. I’m going to attempt therefore, for at least the remainder of this blog to avoid capitalizing racial titles of racial groups in an attempt to show the insignificance of such classification.

Contact Hypothesis

Today we spoke with Don Foster, a graduate of Cambridge and the London School of Economics who currently teaches at UCT about the statistical data on the success of reconciliation. I was obviously very excited by this. I once read a quote that you are really a compassionate person if you can be moved by statistics. Martin Sheen, playing Jed Bartlet in the show The West Wing said something to a similar effect - that statistics are what put the meat in a subject. Today’s discussion provided evidence of what we’ve seen by physically being in South Africa and confirmed many of our observations. It also opened up the South Africa to be looked at in a way that is relevant to the US and human behavior at large.

So to dive in, the main concept that the discussion revolved around was the Contact Hypothesis. This is a new theory for me and from a quick look on the internet and the discussion today I summarize it to be that when certain criteria are met, interpersonal contact between members of opposing groups tend to humanize the other person and therefore reduce their prejudice for the other group as a whole. After hearing it I took it as common sense. Before volunteering with the homeless population my perception of them was stereotyped to criminals with little education. I did not think I would be able to relate so well or have such a respect for many of those individuals in the way that I do now. The same could be said for politicians, which the media portrays as quick to corrupt individuals putting words before action. Yet every politician that I’ve met I have a huge respect for. Every one showed caring for the issues that affected their constituents and the district or state they represented. So the contact hypothesis is more than an academic buzz word, it has earthly application.

The connection to South Africa is somewhat obvious. Now that apartheid is over and the process of reconciliation is still underway how to you help improve race relations that, 20 years ago, were on the brink of civil war? The answer for our speaker today was through interpersonal contact with the other race. Apartheid was essentially the perfect antithesis to the contact hypothesis, claiming that inter-race relations cause tension and therefore should be avoided by having segregating legislation. Since this idea was rejected and ultimately failed, it seems natural that for peace to prevail people would be willing to adopt the contact hypothesis. This is where the issues arise though, for the effort to make contact with other races is not happening on the whole.

This phenomenon is not unique to South Africa and can be observed nearly everywhere in the world. Look in a cafeteria, on a bus, or on a beach; in all these public areas you will see a subconscious organization of the masses in a way that places races into there own groups. Our lecturer called these groups silos, or for the beach example, umbrellas. We have Black and Chinese sections of town, certain groups of students who always sit together, and so on. The underlying implication being that natural segregation occurs and that certain ethnic or racial groups feel more comfortable with members of the same group. To bring it back to my earlier example, I would not naturally associate with members of the homeless population before volunteering in that area. We are conditioned to avoid that population because of the perception that they are dangerous. What psychologists have found is that this happens with nearly every group, that we form aversions to anyone that does not seem similar to ourselves. The possible reasons for this that we touched on include status’s associated with different races, stereotypes about groups, and fears about how mixing with other groups would affect one’s image.

So how do we reconcile the need for contact and the natural reluctance for contact? (Pun intended) A few days ago the question was asked during discussion, “what would it take you to forgive the nationalists if you were a Black African?” I wrote down, “integrated living, public apologies, public recognitions, financial reparations, and memorials.” The integrated living aspect of it was an idea I was tossing around in my head during that discussion even before our lecture today about contact, because it is our personal encounters that have the biggest influence on our opinion. The issue is that because of the Group Areas Act and forced removals, South Africa is heavily divided by region. People wouldn’t want to move to a strange new neighborhood for the sake of government policy, but what if you included financial incentive? For moving to an area that has a smaller portion of your previous racial categorization the government would partially subsidize the purchase? This obviously would be fraught with issues, the main one being such a subsidy program would reinforce categories that the post-apartheid regime is trying to dismantle. If we set that aside though there could be significant benefits to guiding the patterns of settling that occur from this point forward so that mixed neighborhoods start forming. We keep hearing that schools are becoming mixed rapidly, but this integration doesn’t translate into lifestyle changes because when students go home they play with the same children of their neighborhood, not school, and even while at school the anti-contact aspect of human behavior forms those racial silos anyway. So at this point, I consider the proximity of people of different backgrounds the key component to making the contact hypothesis succeed. Having an incentive program seems like the most practical method for this to occur despite it’s imperfection, though I’m sure there could be many other strategies as well.