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Langa: ‘These are the realities of us as a country’

Langa township, South Africa. July 27, 2010.

I’ve never been so aware of being white, and American and female, as I do sitting with a circle of local men in a tiny wooden shack set off the street in the township of Langa, just past the old nuclear cooling towers outside Cape Town’s city center.

It doesn’t help that I have a microphone in one hand, a notebook in the other and a camera slung over my shoulder. After living and working in the heart of Cape Town for the past two months, I’m here to see what life is like in those misshapen, tin-roofed homes off the highway.

I simply want to see South Africa after the World Cup gees has gone back to work, but I’ve come weighted down with equipment and looking like I’m recording a radio documentary. Truthfully, though, I gave up a long time ago the notion of blending in. Just ask me to say “boerewors” and you’ll instantly know I’m not from around here.

Instead, I’ve spent my two months here wide-eyed and full of questions. I leave Saturday to go back to the U.S.

But on this day, I let loose my “hows” and “whys” on Lizo “MC” Mgobozi, a Langa local who runs a walking tour of his hometown, the first black suburb in the Western Cape settled in the early 1920s. It was originally designed for 35,000 families, says MC, but at last count there are 62,000 families in the predominantly Xhosa-speaking community.

Our guide Lizo “MC” Mgobozi.

The vast majority of MC’s clients are from outside South Africa, but it was a desire to share Langa with his own country’s people that inspired MC to start the tours.

“All the biggest conflicts that we have as country are because we don’t really understand each other, so this for me was an opportunity to give South Africans an opportunity to really interact and get to know each other,” he says.

It’s Tuesday, mid-morning and we’re standing outside Tiger’s Place, a popular butcher shop and braai. The braai has come to be one of my favorite things about South Africa.

MC says if you’ve been to Mzoli’s in Gugulethu, Chippa’s in Paarl and Tiger’s Place, you’ve been to the best braais. Although it’s still quite and only one fire burns in the stove at Tiger’s, I can now proudly say I have officially been to all three. I want the braai to come to America more than you know. We love to barbecue but there’s nothing like a braai in the U.S.

Outside, MC looks up the road and points at a large, air-conditioned tour bus passing by.

“That,” he says, “is what you call an artificial tour.”

Admittedly, going on a township tour made me nervous. In some ways it feels like gawking at and also pitying black poverty, all the while snapping pictures. MC understands my uneasiness. It’s another reason he takes visitors through Langa on foot.

“In the old days, when we started the tour around 1998, a lot of the big tour companies when they sell the township tour, they’ll sell it on the last day. Langa happens to be on the road to the airport. They’ll go on the bus just taking pictures. It gets to the point where it’s like a zoo and people in the community feel very offended.

“Since then, we started the walking tours. Where people get the first-hand, the real experience, nothing artificial. I like that question about the zoo, because people really did feel offended. We’re human beings we can interact with other people and they can get so much from us.”

I feel better, but still awkward, with my camera slung over my shoulder.

As we walk through Langa, MC talks with sincerity about the area’s history and social dynamics. We talk about sports and art, health and poverty, crime and safety and the negative connotation the word “township” has over “suburb.”

He laughs as kids call me “mlungu” or “white person.” I see him slip 10 or 20 rand to the people we visit in their homes, to the woman cooking a “smiley”, and to the traditional healer surrounded by dusty bottles and animal skins.

At one point, after we step out of the Langa hostels, cramped apartheid-era housing built for migrant workers where cooking and washing is communal, he stops and says: “These are the realities of us as a country.”

Langa hostels.

It isn’t a statement of bitterness or as a lament, he says. It just is.

Traditional African beer house.

One of our last stops is at an African traditional beer house. We file into the wooden shack and sit down with the men in there. MC places R20 on the ground and takes a sip from the large bucket of the sour, homemade sorghum beer.

He then passes it to me and it continues around the circle as we say good-bye.

What American Accent?

tequila, it's a hell of a drug

I went out for after-work drinks with a couple of my co-workers and some other local bohemians last night. It was one of my most fun nights in Cape Town.

I’d been hoping to meet up with some South African Burning Man folks while I’m here but last night’s rum- and tequila-fuelled conversations were probably even better than the same ’ol playa talk.

Before catching a cab home, we wound our way into talking about: travel, journalism, Biko (and Denzel Washington’s poor accent at Biko), art, race, Los Angeles men vs. Cape Town men (we each think the other city’s men are hotter), soccer, foreign accents, politics, Joburg, apartheid (albeit briefly) and Barack Obama (at length).

And by the end of the night, my co-worker Neo told me, although it may have been the alcohol talking, that Obama and I were her favourite Americans. I’ll take that.

Oh yeah, I was also informed that the name of this blog is a little dated. No one really uses the term “hectic” anymore. Shame. I suppose my next blog should be called One Lekker Summer.

I was told to swtich to b&w, for artistic reasons

so many sugary rum drinks later

Notes About News

Looking back at the eight weeks at my internship at the Weekend Argus, which comes to an end on Wednesday, I suppose I didn’t realize how different and how very much the same the newsroom environment would be between the places I’ve worked in the U.S. and here in Cape Town.

During these two months, I’ve often sent myself emails with short notes about the things I find different or endearing, funny or frustrating about working at a newspaper in Cape Town:

• The multitude of accents are hard to understand. Really hard. Especially on the phone. And it never got easier.

• There are nearly the exact same grumbles from reporters about their editors — the usual stuff: too much work, too little time; feeling underappreciated; a lack of communication and organization — as my co-workers and I had about ours back at my former paper. That, I imagine, is universal.

• At the Weekend Argus – perhaps all the papers in the Newspaper House – there isn’t a copy desk, per say, and the reporters are responsible for writing their own subheads and photo cutlines. This is very similar to my first daily newspaper job, where all the reporters were also copy editors and page designers, not to mention occasional photographers and I typed up my fair share of birth announcements and obituaries.

• One of the biggest things to get used to is we do NOT HAVE VOICE MAIL. And this doesn’t seem to bother anyone. When I asked about voice mail a couple weeks ago, a reporter looked at me and said, a bit sarcastically, “Were you expecting a call?”

I was, in fact. I was hoping the people I’d called looking for quotes for a story had called me back and in the event that I’d missed their call perhaps there was some sort of electronic mailbox that would record their voice message.

Is that weird?

Yet, somehow the paper still manages to come out each week, so I’ll take this as a lesson in learning that maybe those things we believe we can’t live without, we can, in fact, live without. Still, I want voice mail.

• In the actual paper, there’s a lot of self-referencing and first person reporting, such as “The Weekend Argus has learned,” or “this reporter was told” or “in documents provided to the Weekend Argus.” It’s kind of fun to write and makes everything sound like an exclusive, which is probably the point.

• There’s a focus on celebrity and the rich and famous, at least in the Weekend Argus and particularly during the World Cup when we had to track each soccer team’s players’ WAGs (wives and girlfriends). Not coincidently, WAGs is now one of my favorite acronyms.

• OK, this is a really small thing, but for the first few weeks it really threw me off when people would tell me a phone number, such as 488 4768, and they would say: four-double-eight-4-7-6-8. Double eight! You’re laughing, I know, but it really is weird when you’re not expecting it.

• I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll say it again: I love the super broad sheet. You look much fancier when a six-column photo accompanies your story.

• Speaking of photos, I still haven’t figured out how to properly coordinate with the photographers. (There’s one photo staff that shoots for all three papers, which is weird in itself.) However, some of my favorite days have been going out on assignment with photographer Gareth Smith. He’s a young photog with tons of questions about U.S. vs. South Africa journalism, and just about everything else. I’ll miss him, but not his daredevil driving.

• The noon gun, people should really warn you about that.

• We do not have voicemail.

The End Is Not Near for South African Newspapers

As I’ve mentioned, there are three newspapers operating out of the fourth floor of the Newspaper House (and that doesn’t count the Cape Community Papers that are somewhere in the back).

Everyday when I come in, the Cape Times, the morning daily, sits in a stack on a desk I pass by on my way to my desk. It’s now a morning ritual to check my work email (which is usually empty) and then read through the paper. By time I finish it, the afternoon daily the Cape Argus is now waiting to be read.

I can’t remember when I’ve spent so much time reading the newspaper. It’s a pastime I miss and have enjoyed getting back into. And it’s an activity that’s encouraged here. I often can’t see my news editor’s face behind that day’s newspapers.

South Africa’s newspaper industry, at least in Cape Town, doesn’t seem to be experiencing the same kind of freak-out that American print papers are. I’ve been told that the Internet is affecting the Newspaper House, just not to the same extent as papers in other countries. (Here’s an interesting story about price wars among a couple of Joburg papers.)

According to a report titled “The future of news and the Internet” from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the average daily paid newspaper circulation between 2000 and 2008 grew by 34 percent in South Africa.

This past weekend I was telling photographer Gareth Smith — he’s a college-age photog who’s been learning photojournalism on the job for several years now— that it’s been fun to be a newspaper that isn’t constantly in crisis mode and where the staff generally seems to like their jobs.

Several reporters just left my former paper, as well as the managing editor who’s going to law school, and right now contract negotiations are not going well. I hear folks are looking at having their hours trimmed to a 35-hour workweek and to expect more furloughs throughout the year. Sigh.

So while my internship hasn’t been everything I could have hoped for — in hindsight I should have tried something I’ve never done before, radio for example — it has been nice to be reminded that newspapers, at least in the global perspective, are not completely going away anytime soon.

Cape Town Abides

Back home I watch “The Big Lebowski” at least once a month. As if the film itself isn’t great enough, this past spring I went to my first Lebowski Fest, which completely confirmed that Lebowski people are my people.

And what Lebowski people do is quote “The Big Lebowski” – endlessly.

So it was, that two nights ago some of my USC friends and I were sitting in the Kimberley Hotel bar, a smoky hipster dive kitty-corner to our Cape Town apartment building. There, above the bar is flat screen TV, which was playing music videos that night. Maybe it was a glitch, or maybe a joke, but for some reason the damn thing kept playing the Eagles’ live version of “Hotel California.”

I had, in fact, had a rough day. And, as any Lebowski fan would do, I looked up and muttered: “I’ve had a rough night and I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man.”

My friends smiled. Several drinks and Lebowski quotes later, it was decided that the following night the guys – Michael, Kevin and Shotgun – would cram the 16 of us in their flat for our own mini Lebowski Fest.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been growing more and more homesick. It’s funny the things you miss when you’re so far from home. Besides the obvious – my family, boyfriend, friends – I’ve been majorly missing decent Mexican food, the summer sun and my monthly viewing of “The Big Lebowski.”

The guys volunteered to make a home cooked spaghetti meal and despite my complete skepticism, actually found a video store in Cape Town that had “The Big Lebowski” to rent.

Around 7:30 last night we started gathering in their apartment and making ourselves our own concocted South African version of White Russians: cane, Amarula and milk. We decided to call them the rather un-politically-correct name of Afrikaners.

Careful man, there's a beverage here.

Daniel is quite pleased with his first Afrikaner.

Hooray for spaghetti dinners.

What's German for "Dude"?

OK, so I FUCKING LOVE THIS MOVIE. I am bias. It blows my mind when people don’t like this movie, but I get it. There’s a lot of swearing and it’s trademark Coen Brothers, in that they’re the perfect pair to think up a stoner-comedy-mystery-bowling flick backed by a killer soundtrack. That’s why it was so awesome to look at our group half way through and see everyone laughing.

Most of us have been going through a bit of post-World Cup blues as well as irritability that comes from two months of close living quarters. We needed a little Lebowski to lift our spirits.

We all love this movie now!

Not surprisingly, it was my job to come up with the drinking game to play along with the film. One of the items I picked as a designation to drink was any reference to Los Angeles – In and Out Burger, Ralphs grocery story, Malibu.

This seemed a popular choice, if only if it was to have some obscure way to cheers to the things back home we are missing.

Of course, that’s just like my opinion, man.

You Feelin’ Me? It Is Here: Hip Hop in South Africa

For the second year, the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown added a hip hop component to its traditional lineup of theater, dance and music performances, exhibitions and lectures.

“It’s obvious to a certain extent … If you offer something called a National Arts Festival it should speak to a range of people,” says Adam Haupt of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies, as well as the author of “Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion.”

“You’re validating a newer former of black Africa expression that a festival like this, on this scale, had never paid any attention to,” says Haupt, adding, though, that it’s not an exclusively black art form.

Last year, Haupt introduced hip hop to the festival and this year he organized a two-day lecture series with talks dissecting South African hip hop’s influence, relevance, identity, message and activism.

Drawing a large crowd to his talk was rapper Tumi Molekane, a poet, musician and MC who leads the group Tumi and the Volume.

In his talk title “Rappers R In Danger,” Tumi explored the issues surrounding and the limitations of being labeled a “conscious rapper,” as well as what’s often called the “burden of blackness” – the expectation that you somehow speak as the representative of all black people.

“When you take a position in your music to be socially mindful and acutely cognisant to the inequalities in your world, you are usually branded – all together now – conscious. Ordinarily, I would agree and even embrace this label, conscious just means awake.

The problem comes in when the title is used to describe what it is you can’t do as a conscious s rapper, or b-boy or DJ or even graph(ic) artist. It imposes limitations of the scope of the conscious artist’s work. You can’t do a party song, you can’t do that type of choreography … I want to be able to tell stories not from the super-cool, super-hero rapper perspective, but from the human being who goes to the park with his kid like everyone else, but who rhymes good, real good.”

click for audio slideshow