Real Troubles – S’bu and Abahlali Attacked

S'bu Zikode at Constitutional Court, May 14th 2009

Luckily work is so very busy, otherwise I’d get a free moment and be forced to dwell on the horrific fate of our friend S’bu and Raj’s Abahlali friends and colleagues.  Abahlali baseMjondolo is a shackdwellers movement in South Africa.  Our relationship with S’bu (who has lead the movement) has certainly broken any stereotypes I might have had about peoples movements, or people who live in shacks.  S’bu is a sophisticated thinker, a brilliant writer – and someone who’s been committed to the cause of the shackdwellers even after severe personal injury – he was picked up and beaten (quite randomly) by the Sydenham police last year.  Now, in this latest raid – apparently instigated by the ANC and supported by the police – they destroyed his house.  I’m hoping he, his wife and children are fine.  The settlement reports several deaths.  Although I speak of him, of course it’s the settlement that’s traumatized.  I think about a beautiful photograph in Raj’s upcoming book.  It’s a picture of Moses Mnewango pouring over council documents by candlelight in a shack, reading, studying, learning to support the fight to gain decent housing.  To move beyond the shack built on the slopes around a waste dump.  

I’ve been reading ‘The Lazarus Project’ by Alexsandaar Hemon.  Three stories intertwine – one from the turn of the 19th to 20th century, a jewish man, Lazarus, arrives at the door of a constable in Chicago and through a kind of misunderstanding is shot.  We learn about the context, the automatic slandering of the man as a ‘jewish anarchist’ and the targeting and harassment of his sister and broader community.  A second thread describes the horrors of the Bosnian/Serbian war, including the random killing of civilians and the more organized violence, as told by a photographer as he journeys back with the protagonist of the novel ‘to the homeland’, back to Sarajevo.  A sub-thread in the protagonists searching through records for the backstory to Lazarus reveals a pogrom in Moldovia.  The details of these take me back to 1984 in India.  And just when I finished the book I got a call from Raj about the Abahlali targeting and violence.  It’s very hard to wrap my head around how the proclivity to this kind of violence persists, how we can do such horrific things to each other. 

S’bu and Abahlali colleagues and friends are in the midst of a struggle.  There’s not much I can do.  Sign this petition if you know enough about the scenario that you feel comfortable in doing so.  The goal is to at least let the local ANC politicians and the police know that there’s a broad international community that knows what’s going down – they cannot keep perpetrating this violence and imagine they will go unnoticed.  It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Join us in transitioning ASATA to new leadership

ASATA focuses on the challenges of racism, exploitation and communalism. Our actions emphasize our connection to the South Asian community, but our vision of change and solidarity is cross-group and communities. Photo by Eric Mar.

If you’re in the SF Bay Area, have any familial, coincidental or other relationship to South Asia, are politically inclined, understand and engage with the haves and have-nots of power, then join us in taking the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA) to it’s next phase.  We’re meeting on Sat Mar 28th at 11am, and then again to continue transition conversations on Apr 7th at 7pm.  If you’re interested in joining, re-joining, re-engaging with a San Francisco Bay Area institution – especially if you’ve got some time to devote to a leadership position - drop me a line at miniATbrainbytesDOTcom  

ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, is a San Francisco Bay Area group working to educate, organize, and empower the Bay Area South Asian communities to end violence, oppression, racism and exploitation within and against our diverse communities.

Durban: House of Immigrants

Conversations overheard, statements delivered. Zimbabweans in South Africa, one finds out her study permit has been ‘lost’ by the university – her life is on hold as she frantically calls up office after office. Another is on the phone checking on the status of something, quickly moving from a polite enquiry to an emotional exchange – “you know I don’t want to be here, I’m just asking for information”, tears in his eyes as he slams down the phone. Someone stuck. And the handsome young man who came while we were here, and left while we were still here, back and forth from Zimbabwe, under the radar, fighting the fight. When he left, I said, lightly, as one might in my world, ‘hope it’s a good trip’. His response was determined. “It will”.

Immigrants, fighters, homeless and transient. All over the world, it’s the same, and yet another gulf that separates people – those that have and those that haven’t moved across boundaries in any way other than those predetermined, for the few predetermined.

And this is only middle-class strife. Sunpuppy (left) has found a home finally but still shakes when we take her out of the house (she was dognapped once), straining at the leash in the direction of the house of immigrants.

Differing Realities

On another work-related project, I spent last Saturday interviewing amazing students for our Summer Math and Science Honors Academy for students of color. These students were inspiring. Not only are they smart, dying to get off the streets or couch and study over the summer – many live hard lives that they simply take for granted.

Not all will get in, and it breaks my heart.

Instead, I have to read articles such as the recent one in the Wall Street Journal. It straight-facedly describes “bought” community service sessions for rich kids -

‘work in a village in vietnam’ for 2 weeks, snorkel off the coast for four: 5000 dollars; college applications look good with ‘community service’ on those resumes: priceless.

And if that wasn’t wierd enough, the article slips out one-liners that lament the case of the student (whose parents can afford afore-mentioned application booster) who has to look for that little extra something since those ‘lucky’ students of color have affirmative action – or whatever remains of it.

So would the wall street journal students exchange their life with one of the students I interviewed? Here’s what Chris Rock has to say:

There ain’t no white man in this room that will change places with me – and I’m rich. That’s how good it is to be white. There’s a one-legged busboy in here right now that’s going: “I don’t want to change. I’m gonna ride this white thing out and see where it takes me.”

And the movie version: go watch Crazy/Beautiful. Carlos gets on a bus for 2 hours to get to the school from which Amy can’t wait to cut class. They fall in love. But that romance trajectory is full of moments that make you squirm. Amy just completely misses the reality and limited set of choices that make up Carlos’ life. The movie’s got its problems, but it sure makes the point of the yawning gap and completely different starting assumptions of the two worlds.