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... and Returns Xolani Mthembu
Judge: Why do you people call yourselves black? You look more brown than black.
Steve Biko: Why do you call yourselves white? You look more pink than white.
My trip to South Africa occurred from September 12 to October 1, 2006.
From September 21-30, I attended a “learning journey” hosted by the
Pioneers of Change, an international network of social entrepreneurs.
The learning journey is a short trip through a particular landscape
taking in specific experiences around a theme. Approximately twenty
people from seven nations came to Johannesburg for this event, the
fourth in a series of Pioneers journeys called “Arts for Social
Change.” Our time together focused on Johannesburg and its immediate
surroundings, and had the theme of ‘Arts in the context of the new
democracy, including a look at the role the arts played in the struggle
against Apartheid.’
Almost half the group was native South African, mostly from Durban, a
southeastern coastal town. We toured some sites and projects relevant
to the Struggle, meeting their founders, and hearing their stories. We
ate at local restaurants, chosen either for their historicity or the
relevance in the local scene today. We met people, both famous and
not, working for peace and racial equality in various ways. Wherever
we went, whatever we ate, and in each breath – was the history and
continuing impact of decades of Apartheid and centuries of
colonization. The feeling in the air there was one of great promise
mixed with torrents of blood with the overtones of deep grief and
incalculable loss. The grief was so omnipresent that it was not
readily visible. Penetrating everything, it did not stand out. The
more my new friendships developed with the South Africans, the more I
felt into their childhoods in the last and bloodiest years of the
Struggle.
The first thing I did upon arriving was to go to the Apartheid Museum.
The Museum traced the history of Apartheid from the arrival of the
first colonists to the beginning of the new democracy, so in three or
four hours, one can get a pretty thorough overview. The enormity of
the Struggle cannot possibly dawn on one, however, until one
participates in the lives of the people who lived it.
Our hosts took us through many diverse landscapes, seeing different
initiatives, meeting people of all colors and backgrounds working for
social justice and racial harmony. Everyone we met was working
specifically with arts as a healing medium – music, theater, visual
art, writing, and dance. Music, and especially song, played an
enormously important role in holding communities together during
decades of violent, system-wide oppression and dehumanization. We were
taken into the lingering traces of the Struggle and the continuing
energies of rebirth through the arts.
During our daily exchanges, our singing together, our drumming, our
making art, and our listening to each other and to those we met, I
would feel how similar we are in our aspirations, in our love of
humanity, in our desires to meet and know each other – and yet, I
reflected, how our suffering has differed. The grief etched in the
faces of my new friends alternated with profound expressions of truth,
freedom, and joy – a freedom of expression I can only say must be
African! So these contrasts are so much more on the surface, so much
more apparent and vibrant. The same grief and fear also lives in the
black/white relations in the United States. The same, but different:
in South Africa, part and parcel of every day social reality – for
everyone. In the United States, after centuries of race negotiations,
some violent and some subtle – certainly more alive for the blacks,
many of whom are made conscious of their color every day, than the
whites, who in general live without daily awareness of their skin color
and its conflicted meaning in most of the world. No white in South
Africa is unaware of what whiteness has meant in his or her culture.
What it would look like, I wondered, for Americans to be as conscious
of race and the more profound issues of racial integration as everyone
in South Africa is.
Prompted by thoughts like these, I began to speak with my friends about
life in America. They were surprised to hear that what they see in
magazines and television are not pictures of reality in the United
States, but instead, images designed for other purposes entirely.
We’re subjected to the same crap, I told them, like beautiful ladies
poolside drinking martinis (referring to an American magazine that had
found its way to our table), violent TV programs (the American show
that happened to be on showed black men shooting at each other) -
visual propaganda, essentially. I ventured to offer something I
gradually gleaned from my education, which is critical media awareness
and the liberating power of cultural critique. Look carefully at these
images, I told them; they are sending messages. Their meaning is not
that life is really like this for anyone, in America or elsewhere.
Instead, we are being told how to think, how to desire, how to be. We
are being shown black men killing each other – why? These
advertisements – laundry detergents that promise “unbeatable whiteness”
– what is the message about whiteness – that it is unbeatable? Pay
attention, I said. There were some powerful nods.
All around us we see people in each of our countries living lives in
the image of what they absorb in the popular culture. Even we
ourselves allow the media images to impact us more deeply than we
realize. Gradually, we realized that we social artists face a common
challenge: to move through our personal transformation into critical
and creative participation in the unfolding global culture. This began
to emerge as a calling for us as social artists as our days together
came to an end.
The whole context of learning was saturated with the profundity of the
souls gathered. They shared their joys, their grief, their questions,
which they are living every day. I added some difference, some ideas,
at times, some outside voice. The interplay among the variations was
rich and human. We learned much from each other, they from me and I
from them. This exchange made us recognize each other as peers and
brothers and sisters.
Ultimately, we asked ourselves: as artists, how can we benefit our
communities when faced with such overwhelming challenges as racism and
materialism? Our answers: through self-knowledge, criticality,
creativity, and devoted service from a higher place. At some level,
the transformation of grief came naturally to the edges of
conversation, but posed a difficult threshold. The grief is still too
new, too fresh, I think, for most. Maybe most people can’t yet talk
about their experiences without reliving the tremendous suffering they
endured. This grieved me, and led me to ask myself, ‘how can I help my
friends become who they are meant to be?’ They are certainly helping
me, if only by allowing me into their lives and realities. I am
transformed.
We left each other fast friends and future collaborators. I aim to
return to South Africa and to deepen the work of transformation through
the arts – and doing whatever I can to help all those striving to
become social artists in service of the human whole. People interested
in this subject are invited to contact me.
Jeff Barnum, a.k.a., Xolani Mthembu – Xolani being the name given to me by my friends in South Africa!
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