Does anyone else find it really creepy that a car rental place would call itself imperial? In Africa no less? Like really, what the fuck. See things like that are so sneaky, people don't even think twice, after all, its just a car rental company, who cares what it's called. I also saw a billboard for some business called Anglo.But what I really want to talk about is how disturbing I find it that so many black South Africans identify so strongly with black American culture. Ok, so inherently I don't think there's anything wrong with identifying with other cultures or trying to draw parallels or find similarities between different situations, in fact I think people should do that more often. But what I'm talking about is mistaken identifications, or really I guess identificiations that just promote capitalism and deny the reality of situations.
Yesterday we went on a bike tour of the Soweto township outside of Johannesburg, SA. My friend asked one of the tour guide dudes what exactly defines a township, and basically he said he didn't know. This is something that we've come across quite often, South Africans not knowing what a township is or how to define it. But as far as I'm concerned (and please call me out if I'm being presumptuous) a township is a place that was designated as an area for black people to live under the Apartheid government, specifically with the 1953 Group Areas Act that divided every part of the country into white, coloured, and black areas. Townships were for what would be the urban black population, people that worked in cities, and homelands were like Native American reservation type places for black people in rural areas. I feel like I'm being a jerk, but I really don't think this is a complicated thing to understand. When she asked the guy though, he was at a loss for an explanation and responded "well how do you define a ghetto" as if the parallel with US ghettos could possibly shed light on the situation in South Africa. I feel like I shouldn't have to get into why this is a ridiculous comparison, because in modern US cities people were never forcefully put into ghettos for being black, and now ghettos are a socioeconomic phenomenon I think way more than a racial one. (If he had compared townships to the Black Belt in turn of the century Chicago that'd be a different story, but he didn't). By making this comparison though, it seems as if this guy is limiting his own understanding of the uniqueness of the township (not to mention his explanation to tourists) by the false comparison with his perception of American ghettos, which I feel quite comes from mainstream American hiphop/rap music (like Akon's song "ghetto", which has been in my head since that conversation...funny how he's from Senegal?). Speaking of ghetto...there were so many people with BMW's there, it was ridiculous.
Another thing I've been meaning to write about was how I went into this informal house in the township I'm writing my JP on and these kids were watching Barbershop, and it was just the weirdest weirdest thing to me, mostly cuz I dont understand why anyone would watch that in the first place, but I guess it was also fascinating that apparently these black South Africans living in pretty shit conditions could identify with black Americans. Oh, and plus, all the kids we tutor have pictures of Beyonce all over their notebooks and g-unit written everywhere...while they're in 5th grade trying to do long division. It's really depressing, and basically I think it's American cultural imperialism and I don't like it.
4 comments:
Hi. So yes, I agree with American cultural imperialism.
However, on the township thing, it's coming across as though you are limiting a general understanding of townships to their legal origins, which I think is true to an extent, but most probably does not explain everything. I am sure there are social and cultural reasons for the growth of townships and their existence through the years as a choice place to live for black south africans, rich and poor alike. In fact, I would think that there may even be more of a tendency to re-claim the townships and thereby distance them from their historical (ghettoized) origins, so maybe that's why the tour guide didnt bring it up.
I mean, I think you know this, but I'm sure that the simple historical explanation of what defines a township isn't necessarily what defines a township in the present day. Granted, though, the tour guide should have something more substantive to say about them, and should not compare them to ghettos in the US. That being said, the fact that he does compare them to ghettos in the US says a lot about how Americans (black and white) present the phenomena of ghettos to the rest of the world and how people interpellate that meaning within their local contexts.
I got a little anthro with that last sentence, haha. But basically I think there must be a deeper cultural understanding of what the townships are, why people live in them by choice now, rather than by force, and how their meaning within the black community has changed over the years. I just dont know the answer to all this.
Um, and imperial car rental? that's nonsense. But there's a lot of stuff like that around, and I think its this weird fiction that people maintain that there are no imperial remnants in Africa, because they are all over the place, all the time. Its especially bad in british strongholds like ghana and kenya, and I'm sure its bad in SA. Like at this gold course in Kenya they made my dad wear knee high colonist socks and I FREAKED out when he came home.
ok. there's my 2 cents
oops. Gold course = Golf course.
sorry
ok, so i see what you're saying, but theres a few things:
1. I'd argue that the vast majority of people who currently live in townships (including their informal slum areas) aren't doing so by complete choice, but rather that that's where their families live and they (at least in cape town) have limited access to other housing areas for financial reasons.
2. soweto is kind of an anomoly, at least from what ive seen, because its where nelson mandela and desmond tutu lived and where a ton of ANC and PAC leaders lived, so it has a very unique political history. But rich people are the minority in townships, and even if there are some areas with nice houses (with really high walls), that's def not the norm.
3. so really the only thing that distinguishes a township from a suburb is its history, and the all the complexities that have come out of that history.
3. also, a few of the guys we met in soweto were in the music industry, and basically said that being from soweto is like our equivalent of being from the hood/having street cred or whatever, so this one guy (who's actually mozambican) moved from the suburbs back to the township to show that he was down/sell a certain image of himself. In that sense it's kind of like a ghetto as a place to claim legitimacy in the music industry, but i still think people are equating that image thing with what a township physically and socially is.
but yeah, i see your point, and there's still a lot I don't know about the reasons people continue to live in townships and claim them as theirs, though cynically i think a huge part of it is cuz right now there really isnt any housing alternative.
ooh, i forgot to mention this before, but in cape town at this fancy hotel there's a restaurant called "cape colony" (what cape town used to be called in colonial times). the most disturbing thing about it is that im pretty sure that there would be coloured people working there and that theres a good chance their ancestors were slaves in the cape colony back in the day. so really, couldnt they at least be a little more creative with the name?
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