Second question: Detail three comparisons between the US and SA
1) US civil rights movement and SA anti-Apartheid movement: both of these movements occurred around the same time. The US civil rights movement was a movement led by black Americans fighting for civil liberties and equality under the law and fighting against the segregation regulations across the country. In SA the anti-Apartheid movement was similar in that black and colored South Africans were fighting for their civil rights, freedoms and equality under the law. These two movements are different in that the civil rights movement was based on non-violent principles and the anti-Apartheid movements principles turned violent after having no success with non-violent tactics.
2) Colonialism: both the US and SA have experienced colonial rule. In SA the British colonized the Cape after the Dutch arrived. The Dutch never officially colonized the Cape. The British enslaved Africans and brought slaves from Indonesia, India and Malaysia. The British invaded the inland, taking land away from the indigenous people of South Africa. In the US, the British, as well, colonized the East Coast, bring slaves over from Africa. The colonizers also invaded and took the land away from the indigenous people, namely Native Americans. The settlers eventually fought for their independence from the UK and in a way, black South Africans fought for their independence from the colonizers, only many many years later.
3) Democratic systems: I won't go into the political science analysis of the two countries. Instead, just an observation. The US has been a democracy since the constitution, over 200 years. South Africa has been a democracy for sixteen years. So the US knows democracy like the back of its hand and South Africa is a transitioning democracy, so it has a lot to learn. The US is considered a developed country and South Africa is considered a developing country, which I will agree with. At the same time though, I wonder sometimes is there such a thing as being too developed, and have pockets of low development? Or is the unofficial definition of developed country still having those pockets of underdevelopment, because when is a country ever fully developed? What is interesting is that the US still has problems with poverty, just like South Africa. Another interesting point is that South Africa has been able to progress quicker with the topic of race and discrimination in its sixteen years as a democracy than the US has been able to do in its lifetime as a democracy. I feel like there is something wrong with that picture, not to say that South Africa should slow down, though. They're moving at a pretty good pace. South Africa still has a long way to go in terms of democratic values, such as equality. The US as well needs to take a look at its own principles and should maybe take some advice from South Africa and start working through the issues instead of shoving them under the rug.
Friday, June 4, 2010
She Stole My Heart -- Part I
Before going to South Africa, I thought the trip would be like all of my other trips across the pond. Boy was I wrong. There have been several experiences that have confirmed for me that South Africa has changed my life. I'm not just saying that for effects, I really do believe it has changed my life. The direction I thought I wanted my life to go is definitely not where it is going anymore. The first experience was standing in Lebo's park. Just standing there in silence I got a better understanding of the people of South Africa. They are a people of strong will power and persistence, they are brave, but also forgiving. It may sound a bit cheesy, but that within the first hour of being in Soweto I seemed to change the outlook on my own life. The second experience occurred when I felt two small arms wrap around my legs one afternoon. she was the little girl who clung to me the rest of the afternoon. This little girl had the face of South Africa, she personified the country for me. She stole my heart away. The other experiences come from all of the individuals I've discussed in my blogs, I think in this blog-site, but mainly in my other blog-site www.mesinsa.blogspot.com. To briefly list those individuals: Lebo, Bilquees (Bo-Kaap), Thabo (DACPM), the women from the SAHPF. All of these individuals and South Africa, in general, are inspirational and I intend to carry that inspiration with me for as long as I can. Oh and I loved the scenery. Table Mountain and the beaches were absolutely gorgeous...just thought I would throw that in there.
First question: two change processes taking place in South Africa.
We can look at the change processes in two ways, at the macro and the micro level.
1) At the macro level: The government of South Africa and other institutions within South Africa have been building off of the phrase "forgive, but never forget". These institutions have built monuments to honor lives lost and significant events during the Apartheid and they erected museums to tell the story of the Apartheid, of Mandela's life, of other individuals who fought for freedom and equality. Good examples of such structures include the Apartheid Museum, the Hector Pieterson Museum, and some of the smaller monuments we saw in the townships. These structures are meant to remind people of the events that took place, but they should also be a way to make forgiveness and reconciliation a less bumpy road.
2) At the micro level: The micro level seems to be much more effective than the macro level. Individuals take the initiative. As stated above, people like Lebo and the women of SAHPF have taken things into their own hands. The government can only do so much. These local level grassroots movements are what is changing South Africa, these of the acts that are helping south Africa move forward. For example, Lebo's does not just benefit the surrounding community, it also benefits the world. Those that have stayed at Lebo's are entrusted with a duty, or even an obligation. We must spread the word! Our job is to let people know about Soweto. We need to tame those fears and let people know that Orlando West welcomes outsiders so that they can see the beauty of the area and the people that live there. Locally, Lebo employs community members. The money flow stays within the community. Just yesterday I was talking to someone and he had said that he didn't want to go to South Africa. I felt that I was obligated to tell him the what it was really like. I'm not claiming that crime doesn't exist there. It does, but crime exists everywhere. Granted the crime may be more dangerous, because the crime is more violent, but the entire time I was there I didn't witness very much crime. People shouldn't be discouraged to go there just because of the crime because it is an absolutely beautiful country. One of Lebo's goals is to encourage more travelers to stay in Soweto to see that the assumptions aren't necessarily true.
Collective Action Problems
I've been back in the US now for about a week and there are some topics I've been meaning to blog about while in South Africa. I just didn't get around to it. This blog is mainly based on, yup, you guessed it, collective action problems. We indirectly discussed this during the lecture by Professor Steyn. She told us a little bit about herself. She was born an Afrikaner in the middle of the Apartheid. The question posed: what does it mean to be Afrikaner in Apartheid? For an Afrikaner born in the middle of Apartheid that was the way of life, a life where segregation was normal. People outside of the situation cannot claim that those born during Apartheid are racist. That generation didn't know there was any other option. It was a way of life. Looking back on it now, people are being called racist, but in this case it seems that racism is only relative. If you didn't live during that period in history, it is difficult to understand the situation. This is an explanation, not an excuse. The excuse is that there were severe collective action problems. There were white South Africans who did not support anti-Apartheid, but they were not well known. The problems seemed to be that those that did know a different option (other than racism) didn't take the initiative to join black South Africans in the fight for freedom. I can compared this situation to Nazi Germany, likely I almost always do. Those born into Nazi Germany didn't know any other way of life. The propaganda tactics Hitler used were extremely well carried out making it difficult for influences from outside of Germany to penetrate the minds of young Germans.
If you are a citizen of the United States today, and are currently living there, there should be absolutely no room for racism. We are a highly developed society, one that as far as the constitution and the bill of rights claims is equal in every aspect. The problem is that it isn't completely true. We still have a long way to go until we reach a point where blacks feel as equal in society as whites do, where latinos feel as equal as whites do, and where other minorities can feel as equal as well. The question is, will we ever reach that point? I'm an optimist, so I'm going to say yes, but there has to be an initiative to get to that point. We need discussion.
Collective action problems are the norm. They don't only happen at the macro level, but also on the micro level. During our Peace Circle we discussed the problems we had with buying and cooking food. Before the trip we had decided we would collaborate and alternate cooking food for the entire group. When we got to Cape Town, that all kind of fell apart. Everyone (minus me) went to the grocery store thinking we would buy things collectively and have meals planned out. Well, it soon turned disastrous and people started reneging on the plan. For one, we didn't even have a real list. We didn't sit down before going shopping to discuss what we would eat for dinner. This situation reminds me of a concept I learned in a class I had last semester: Rousseau's Stag Hunt. The situation goes as follows. A group of men gather to go hunt a stag for dinner. While hunting, one of the hunters' spots a rabbit. He thinks that if he can catch the rabbit he'll have dinner tonight guaranteed, but that means that the stag will get away and all the other hunters won't have dinner tonight. Classic collective action problem. One hunter benefits, while the rest suffer and go home empty handed. Our grocery shopping situation seemed to fit perfectly in the Stag Hunt Scenario. We never solved the problem either. I think had we been there longer we would have eventually figured out a solution to our food problems. From the beginning, though, we could have discussed the cooking plans before going to the store and even the optimal solution would have been for someone to cook for us every night....but that is getting a little carried away. Nonetheless it is a solution.
So where do we go from here?
As a group, well, nowhere really. We won't really all live under the same roof again, so we don't go anywhere. Hopefully we just all stay friends.
As a country (US), we can only move forward, hopefully. In order to move forward, though, we need to talk about these issues, instead of ignoring them. Sidenote: one of our lectures addressed this notion of race and he said that race does not exist. Race is a social construction. I believe it 100%. It has been proven that the origins of humans began in Africa. We are all the same people, we may just have different color skin, but what does that matter if we are ALL the same?! So Whities, get off your high horses and stand among the real people on this planet. But for the US that also means that black Americans need to be open to discussing this notion of race. We need to talk about our past to get over it.
As a country (SA), they can only move forward as well, and they are doing a much better job at it than the US is. Keep the optimism, the pride, strength and will power to reconcile and resolve the issues at hand.
If you are a citizen of the United States today, and are currently living there, there should be absolutely no room for racism. We are a highly developed society, one that as far as the constitution and the bill of rights claims is equal in every aspect. The problem is that it isn't completely true. We still have a long way to go until we reach a point where blacks feel as equal in society as whites do, where latinos feel as equal as whites do, and where other minorities can feel as equal as well. The question is, will we ever reach that point? I'm an optimist, so I'm going to say yes, but there has to be an initiative to get to that point. We need discussion.
Collective action problems are the norm. They don't only happen at the macro level, but also on the micro level. During our Peace Circle we discussed the problems we had with buying and cooking food. Before the trip we had decided we would collaborate and alternate cooking food for the entire group. When we got to Cape Town, that all kind of fell apart. Everyone (minus me) went to the grocery store thinking we would buy things collectively and have meals planned out. Well, it soon turned disastrous and people started reneging on the plan. For one, we didn't even have a real list. We didn't sit down before going shopping to discuss what we would eat for dinner. This situation reminds me of a concept I learned in a class I had last semester: Rousseau's Stag Hunt. The situation goes as follows. A group of men gather to go hunt a stag for dinner. While hunting, one of the hunters' spots a rabbit. He thinks that if he can catch the rabbit he'll have dinner tonight guaranteed, but that means that the stag will get away and all the other hunters won't have dinner tonight. Classic collective action problem. One hunter benefits, while the rest suffer and go home empty handed. Our grocery shopping situation seemed to fit perfectly in the Stag Hunt Scenario. We never solved the problem either. I think had we been there longer we would have eventually figured out a solution to our food problems. From the beginning, though, we could have discussed the cooking plans before going to the store and even the optimal solution would have been for someone to cook for us every night....but that is getting a little carried away. Nonetheless it is a solution.
So where do we go from here?
As a group, well, nowhere really. We won't really all live under the same roof again, so we don't go anywhere. Hopefully we just all stay friends.
As a country (US), we can only move forward, hopefully. In order to move forward, though, we need to talk about these issues, instead of ignoring them. Sidenote: one of our lectures addressed this notion of race and he said that race does not exist. Race is a social construction. I believe it 100%. It has been proven that the origins of humans began in Africa. We are all the same people, we may just have different color skin, but what does that matter if we are ALL the same?! So Whities, get off your high horses and stand among the real people on this planet. But for the US that also means that black Americans need to be open to discussing this notion of race. We need to talk about our past to get over it.
As a country (SA), they can only move forward as well, and they are doing a much better job at it than the US is. Keep the optimism, the pride, strength and will power to reconcile and resolve the issues at hand.
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