Making Rhinos out of Fiction: for Ronny and Willie and Addy*

*my childhood nickname


“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster” Nietzsche

Fiction on Long Street and the Rhino pub in Tarkastad have little in common. Fiction at first appears genuinely alternative, but a second glance confirms its place in the ideological mainstream. It simmers with Cape Town’s homogenous, post-punk trendoids, who place the city’s ‘underground’ scene firmly at ground level. Fiction’s women’s day posters of tomb-raideresque, bikini girls, illustrate its support of the general status quo.

By contrast, the Rhino pub of Tarkastad (between Queenstown and Cradock) opts for art-deco retro fascism: its pub theme not being Irish cosiness or sporting heroism, but Apartheid. Pictures of pin-up boys Paul Kruger and Hendrik Verwoerd line the walls, poets can enjoy the flowing libretto of ‘Die Stem’ displayed behind the bar, while those with a keen eye for aesthetic panache can scan the ceiling’s South African Sistine 5m X 5m Vierkleur old South African flag.

For me, these contrasting watering holes are connected due to consecutive week ends in August, when I succeeded, at 27 years of age, in making my fisticuffs debut at these two venues. First, with Ronald Suresh Roberts at Fiction and then with Willie Liebenberg, owner of the Rhino.

I (Addy), confronted Monsieur Roberts (Ronny), telling him that his ‘native intelligence of Thabo Mbeki’ and support for the dismissal of the Deputy minister of health offended my left leaning sensibilities. He unexpectedly punched me, I rugby tackled him. I was escorted from Fiction. Monsieur Liebenberg (Willie), initially suspicious when myself and 5 friends entered the Rhino, then conceded that he would add Mandela to his wall of pinups if we donated the portrait. But when Addy in drunken bravado, tore down 1 of the 5 or so old South African flags, Willie went to retrieve his baseball bat, from when, I assume, the Tarkastad Tornados had major league status. I survived, this is the tale.

I had hoped this piece (an attempt to resolve my little quarter life duelling crisis) would unpack the ‘who exists for whom’ in the uncanny smorgasbord that is South African multi-culturalism: Is Ronny the product of Willie’s racism? Are Willie and his bar the result of Afrikaner alienation due to Addy and Ronny’s self-righteousness? Is Addy the middle-class, DSTV watching pseudo-Lefty, authenticated by Willie’s conservativism and Ronny’s new black elitism?

Let’s rather twist the Rubik’s to expose one of its shadowed facades. Addy and Ronny and Willie represent certain forms of brittle South African masculinities whose honour is uncertain and shame easily aggravated. Cross-cultural masculinity’s most common characteristic is honour or respect, something which is never attained and is always contested and desired. To add to this notion of honour, violent exchanges almost always involve the threat of shame. These issues of honour and shame are pertinent in the South African context. Afrikaners are too easily branded the only villains of Apartheid. Black intellectuals supporting Mbeki are often called sycophants and elitists, while white middle-class lefties are left tenuously disorientated in a world of multi-national capitalism and affirmative action.

This elusive ‘honour’ and lurking shame produces defensiveness and paradox amongst men in general and South African men in particular: the more they assert themselves the more they call themselves into question. Addy and Ronny and Willie attempt to claim recognition and legitimacy through the different masculine South African narratives they contrastingly position themselves within. But these narratives are tentative because of the history of this country and the way it has divided groups of people and because the future seems hazy. Threatening these uncertain masculinities can easily lead to conflict and violence when honour is at stake.

But the coliseums for settling these disputes should not be Fiction or the Rhino and the means of engagement should not be fisticuffs. Despite our high Gini co-efficient, ethnic heterogeneity, colonial history, lax alcohol laws, prison system and rates of single parenthood, South Africa still has higher rates of crime and violence than countries with similar structural conditions. Perhaps this is because we have certain forms of socially learned, volatile and uncertain masculinities, produced by our collective history and the way it has divided groups of people. These forms of being men negate dialogue and compromise in political circles, social settings, schools and homes. Social change does not come about through mindless violence. It requires a combination of brave action and intelligent consciousness expanding. It also requires reflection, asking questions and the ability to be self-critical. If Addy and Ronny and Willie want to become heroes, they need to learn to listen, think before they act, breathe deeply, accept criticism and reinvent forms of South African masculinities that serve as peaceful and empathetic role-models for the next generation of South African men.

Saturday Argus article

This article appeared in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, October 13 2007.

Many thanks to Julia Merrett for these pics!

Opinion piece featured in the Argus

On the afternoon of Heritage Day, the kultural upstarts kollective transformed the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, taking inspiration from the colourful and distinctive outfits of the nation’s soccer supporters. The motivation behind this installation was to challenge the idea that heritage belongs to a static past and to show that, instead, heritage is inextricably bound up with the process of looking back as the nation moves forward. Through such an initiative we hoped to communicate, in a creative way, that heritage is how we imagine – and locate – ourselves in the present. Although we were granted permission by the University our project was met with vehement criticism by DA ward councillor, Owen Kinahan.

After seeing an article about us in the Argus, Kinahan wrote a letter to the vice-chancellor objecting to the installation for two main reasons: firstly because I had been arrested for defacing public property. In 2002 I stencilled an image of a spray can along with the words ‘Free Art’ on an N2 bridge in protest against the barrage of proposed by-laws that boasted a “zero tolerance” approach to all the City’s social ills by banning everything from graffiti to the homeless. As I was a middle-class, white and supposedly upstanding member of the community this little escapade received a lot of media attention and fuelled the debate around the short-sightedness of Draconian laws that threatened to turn two already marginalized groups into criminals: the youth and the poor. People begging and living on the street are a symptom of poverty and graffiti is the voice of the youth refusing to be silenced. The protest was not just about graffiti, it was about demanding to know why our leaders were not providing viable, long-term solutions to uplift the communities that need it most. No wonder they were threatened by the writing on the wall. A few weeks after the arrest, amidst raging debate about graffiti and youth culture, Diesel did not miss the opportunity for some guerrilla marketing, and their signature back-to-front ‘E’ began appearing on the walls of the city. There were no objections from Kinahan or any other councillors for that matter.

Secondly, Kinahan objected to the Heritage day installation because he regarded it as an immature act of anarchy rather than activism or art. In his letter, he stated the following: “While I have no problem with pranks that dress up statues from time to time, I have a real issue with the likes of Delle Donne practising "activism" on the UCT campus for their own anarchical reasons. It is one thing for them to get involved in a mature debate WITH the University about its heritage but quite another to behave in this manner.” What I find most amusing about Kinahan’s statement is that it is, if nothing else, a dazzling display of ignorance and narrow-mindedness when it comes to the notion of public art. How can someone hold public office and still think that art only belongs in a gallery and therefore anything outside of that platform could not be construed as a mature act of creative engagement with the notion of heritage? More to the point, does Kinahan, as a ward councillor, not have more pressing issues to deal with?

Currently, many Cape Town streets are being considered for renaming in an attempt to erase certain elements of the apartheid legacy. As part of the process of transformation, many of these public spaces can be renamed, in so doing re-constructing our champions and values to fit more congruently with contemporary democratic South Africa. Street names can be dealt with fairly easily, as can names of airports and other physical locations. But what about statues? These more heftily spatial, weighty and personified symbols of the past are difficult obstacles to deal with. Destruction or removal seems to be an unsatisfactory cop-out that lacks both creativity and attempts to obliterate people who have left their mark in ways that go deeper than the statue itself. So what do we, as ordinary South Africans do about statues which form part of our colonial and apartheid heritages: the concrete figures that seem somewhat out of place in the contemporary democracy? Although events and people cannot be erased, they can be reshaped and resignified to cast different shadows. While I found Kinahan’s response amusing, it is also alarming because it smacks of elitism and limits the possibility for individuals and communities to explore heritage as a complex cultural resource which we all can lay claim to in empowering and meaningful ways.

More News

This article appeared in the UCT Monday paper. Read about it here

And the winner of the worst idea for 2007 is.................

Usually, around this time, I like to take stock of what the year has brought so far. We’re over the half-time mark in the game of 2007, 3 years away from the soccer world cup, 5 years away from the end of the world if you follow the Mayan calendar (I can’t shake off the feeling that somehow these two events are connected), and 43 years away from completely depleting the earth’s supply of fossil fuels. My new year’s resolution for 2007 was to take up a hobby. People have told me it relaxes you so I’ve been giving it a go. I heard that some people collect stuff like stamps which, initially, sounded pretty easy going to me as a first stab. My only problem is that having a hobby isn’t proving to be as relaxing as I thought it would be, especially when you're collecting the worst ideas of 2007.

So far top of my list are the crew of Chinese scientists who have successfully created the first artificial snow by seeding clouds with particles of silver iodide over the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. Tibetans have really got it rough, first they’re occupied by the Chinese at gunpoint and then they’re showered with artificial snow! Apparently because the glaciers are melting, freshwater lakes in the region are drying up faster than you can say chop suey so Chinese scientists are celebrating the fact that they’ve found the solution to global warming. Hooray! Much easier than cutting down emissions. Go China! Keep producing all that stuff that WE keep buying. Second place was a tie, so you’re going to have to be the judge. In the right-wing….I mean right-hand corner we have Juan Jose Daboub, the managing director of the World Bank, who is rumoured to have links with a Roman Catholic sect and has ordered all references to family planning to be removed from Madagascar’s assistance programme document. I mean come on Juan, are the words “developing country” and “reproductive health” not synonymous in your vocabulary? There are 75 million unplanned pregnancies a year and third of which are dealt with by resorting to unsafe abortions. Are you going to confess to that next time you in the confession booth, Juan? Something tells me you’re going to have to say a whole lot of Hail Mary’s to get out of this one.

In the other right-wing corner (and this time I mean right-wing) weighing it at a trillion pounds, we have the majority of French fascists who voted for Nicholas Sarkozy as their new president. Not only is he planning to cut social services but plans to make life even harder for Arab and African immigrants than it already is in la belle France. I guess what can you expect from a man who believes that deviant and criminal behaviour is genetically determined making some races more predisposed to such behaviour than others? Sorry readers, no prizes for guessing which races he’s referring to. Next up is the U.S.A.’s National Rifle Association who has come up with a sure-fire winner solution to the reoccurring problem of All-American psycho kids emptying bullets into other kid’s heads before turning on themselves: arm the teachers, the Virginia shootings would never have happened if one of them had a gun. Great! What is this, the Wild West? One minute your old math teacher is scribbling algebra formulas on the board and next thing he’s Rambo crouching behind the desk locked in a shoot out with the captain of the football team.

Brace yourself peeps, the next one is pretty gruesome and it involves pigs. By the end of the year, the U.K. wants to convert to a biofuel made out of pig fat. Pretty ironic considering a recent UN report which states that the meat industry is responsible for more global warming emissions than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world put together. This is an ideological minefield, as you can imagine, its got animal rights activists and vegetarians up in arms. Jews and Muslims are freaking out but maybe it’s great that they can join forces against a common enemy. Now that I’m thinking about it, could a pig be the solution to the Middle East crisis? Are you relaxed yet? I’m not. Do you think it’s too late in the year to get myself a new hobby?

Live Earth, a Convenient Truth

I’m sitting on what, potentially, could be the worst flight in Mango’s short history. My travelling partner and I arrived at Jozi airport in the knick of time only to discover that we’re not on the same flight back home to Cape Town. We say our farewells and I head off to find a Kauai smoothie to drink and a Sunday Independent to bury my head into for the next hour and a half or so. At the boarding gate, a fellow passenger tells me that the plane has been delayed by an hour. He is furious – apparently this is the third time he has been delayed by the previously mentioned airline. Now I’m stuck in the purgatory they call the departure lounge. Faced with the ethical dilemma of having to choose between Wimpy and Nescafe’s coffee I choose Wimpy because I just can’t bring myself to support Nestle whose tactics to get mothers in the “Third World” to feed their babies powder instead of breast milk rivals that of the cocaine industry. I’m now finally on the plane, and still there is no God.

I’m sandwiched between two screaming kids. Two! What are the chances? I am really regretting my decision not to order a whiskey when the refreshment brigade came around. What makes matters worse is that the co-pilot hasn’t instilled much confidence in me. She first announced that we would be landing in Joburg and then corrected herself (with a giggle, nogal) and confessed that she was a bit “confused”. Geez Louise sister, you can’t joke about shit like that in a post 9/11 world. Anyway, I’m starting to get the feeling that this is definitely a case of instant karma kicking in. I cast my mind back to a few weeks ago, when a free ticket to Egoli together with a comp for the Live Earth concert landed in my lap. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t all plain sailing. I first had to endure a mental wrestling match between the activist and the self-serving writer that reside in my head. The activist pinned the writer down with the carbon footprint issue and the incongruity of flying to a huge music concert to raise awareness about global warming. The self-serving writer had no choice but to resort to some pretty dirty tactics which I can’t, in the interest of maintaining some degree of privacy when it comes to the workings of my innermost psyche, go into. Three minutes and 40 seconds into the wrestling match, the writer was declared the winner. Needless to say, that it’s the activist who is now getting the last laugh and while I sit typing on my laptop, is smugly telling off the writer that this rotten Mango is payback for having supported the biggest corporate greenwash event of the millennium.

At the concert, watching all the punters devouring their hot dogs and slurping their Cokes I wondered how many of them could define ‘carbon footprint’ let alone are aware of the fact that the meat industry generates about 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions – that’s more than the transportation industry. I mean, does Al Gore really think that a heavily branded concert filled with musicians telling people to only boil the exact amount of water they need for their cup of afternoon tea is really going to make a difference when what we need is a radical shift from the business as usual mindset? If change, real change is going to happen people need to be challenged and they need to feel part of a global movement as activists rather than consumers. Also, is the Live Earth concert symptomatic of yet another way in which local responses and solutions to Africa’s problems are being hijacked by the West? Given the problems that Africa is grappling with, do we really need the rich and famous to put on yet another “Live 8” type concert which incidentally, did little in the way of providing debt relief? It’s hard to escape the irony of Al Gore, representative of a country which refuses to sign the Kyoto agreement and is the biggest contributor to carbon emissions, spending millions on an expensive, environmentally damaging event to raise awareness about global warming here in the “developing world” where Africa’s carbon footprint ranks amongst the lowest in the world. Speaking of climate change, we’ve just hit some serious turbulence. It looks like the Live Earth concert came at a price after all.

Article featured in the Cape Argus

Read the article here