24 posts tagged “south africa”

Ryan and I went out for coffee today. We used to go for coffee almost every day last year when we were studying for our teaching certificates. At the time Ryan was hoping to find a teaching post in Grahamstown because his family and friends were here, but in the end he got a job about an hour away by car in Port Alfred. It is also an old English settler town but is even smaller than Grahamstown. The main attraction is the beach and Kowie river, which you can navigate upstream for about 28 kilometres. Apart from outdoor activities though there is not a whole lot to do there. Many working adults live in Port Alfred for the peace and quiet but work in the neighbouring towns. For the kids who are pretty much stuck there all the time it can be a hellishly boring place.

That is why I wasn’t that surprised to hear that Ryan has some real discipline issues to contend with at the local high school where he teaches Maths. His situation is exacerbated by the fact that he is overworked. At the moment he is teaching Natural Science on top of his regular Maths classes, even though it is not his subject area. To add insult to injury he has to teach Natural Science to Grade 8 pupils who are a very different kettle of fish to Grade 10, 11 and 12 pupils which is the band he is qualified to teach. In the beginning he found the situation completely overwhelming and it was not long afterwards that certain parents came down on him like a tonne of bricks. He says that things are running much smoother now, but I am still left to wonder what makes him stick it out. Evidently it is not a job that earns him much respect, either from his pupils or their parents and the pay is hardly seems worth it.

At least in the art school where I teach I am never openly abused. The worst thing my pupils do is to neglect their work and skip lessons but even these are isolated cases and to be honest they don’t particularly bother me… I am there for those who want to learn. I am also not overworked - quite the opposite in fact. Even when I have several classes running concurrently, the kids generally get on with their work on I leave them to their own devices. My input is merely to discuss ideas, show techniques and supervise - hardly strenuous.

I wouldn’t want to teach core a subject like Maths or English, which requires endless explanations, demonstrations and painstaking corrections. I wouldn’t want the pressure from all sides that every kid gets through these subjects either. Particularly if it was in a school like Ryan’s where many of the kids don’t particularly care about even finishing school. I realise there are selfless teachers (perhaps Ryan is one of them) who take it upon themselves to ‘save’ the lost causes no matter how slim the chances or how difficult the process and for these kind of teachers I have infinite admiration, but I am not one of them. Nor do I intend to be. As I mentioned before, the onus I place on myself is simply to teach to the best of my ability - regardless of how many kids actually benefit from it.  

I guess this approach is suited to teaching Art and Design because it is not a subject kids are inclined to loath, like Maths. Most kids find making art fun, so they tend to be open to what I have to say in class. My subject area is not the jagged pill that Ryan’s is, that needs to be coaxed down my pupils’ throats with fury and frustration. Thank God for that.

I don’t go out often but I made an exception last night and met up with some people from work at a restaurant called the Yellow House. We had been there a couple of times before and liked it because you can bring in our own wine and not be charged corkage, and because there was no sense of being rushed to finish your meal and leave. The only bad thing about the place is the décor. The walls are a dirty cream and brown with badly framed pictures of cocktails hung up too high to see properly. A half-hearted attempt was made to create a rustic African look by hanging wooden masks here and there and placing an odd assortment of animal sculptures in the on the window sills. I suppose it can be argued that the lack of interior design is what actually gives the place its unpretentiousness, which is its charm.

Anyhow, a band was playing there last night and they seemed a bit like their surroundings at first. The sound equipment had not been not properly adjusted before hand so when they started the vocals where practically inaudible. The guitar caused the speakers to whine and the violinist seemed to drown out the rest of the band. Amid this a faltering start though the two vocalists suddenly did a heartfelt a cappella which silenced the audience immediately and kept them quite for the entire duration. It was brilliant. After that the band somehow got their act together. The restaurant filled up, people started mixing with one another and dancing and a really good vibe was generated.

There are times like last night when I really enjoy being in South Africa. I’ve had the best times of my life in this country and have never been happier elsewhere. I just wish that things were different here and that South Africans could really exist as peacefully together as they did last night when conditions were just right. It would not matter so much then that government is like the restaurant itself, which is basically run very badly; for the sake of good company that can be forgiven. But I don’t see South Africans getting their act together any time soon. Who knows if they ever will?

Grahamstown is quite a charming place with its quiet streets and old colonial buildings nestled between the hills. But, like all small towns out in the middle of nowhere it is also somewhat peculiar. I think the over familiarity one acquires with everything in the town after a while makes it seem peculiar, in the same way that saying a word over and over again makes it sound more and more strange. The locals can also be quite odd. There is this one guy for example who wears a jet-black wig, black sunglasses, a black Stetson, tight black pants and a black top, everyday. He is in his forties and looks like a faded musician. He probably is. I have never seen him smile or talk to anyone. He always seems to be walking somewhere urgently.

A large part of the population is made up of students at the university and school kids. They occupy the town centre and most businesses are geared towards them in one way or another. Sometimes I feel annoyed at always having such young people around me. It is impossible to watch a movie at the cinema for instance that is not filled with kids. Bars, clubs and coffee shops are all filled with students who are for the most part incredibly irritating. I wish there were places for a more discerning crowd like there are in the cities. When the holidays come round Grahamstown feels completely deserted. All the university students and school kids go back home and the locals have the town for themselves for a few months, but it is not much fun sitting at a bar when you are one of three people either.

I was speaking to a teacher here the other day who said that he first came to Grahamstown thinking that he would stay for a year or two and then move on like most people do. But 25 years have gone by since then and he is still here. When I asked him what made him stay he said it was the peace and quiet of the town and the wild landscape of the Eastern Cape, which calms his soul. I tried to imagine myself staying here for that long, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even imagine living here for 5 years. I would miss meeting new people like you do in cities too much and going out to interesting places. I would feel lonely here.

When my sister tells me of her favourite haunts in London and of the fabulous mix of people she met over the past year, I really get the itch to go there as well. I can imagine Nancy and I living fast in London far easier than I can imagine us living nice and slow in Grahamstown. As pretty as it is here, we both feel quite bored and that is a serious condition to suffer from. I think Nancy could bear living here as long as she knew that there was a time limit to it and that we would defiantly be moving to a bigger city down the line. She can be put her mind at rest though. Once I have accomplished what I set out to do in this little town I will be ready to pack my bags and take on the world again.

Lately I have been doing little else besides compiling all the work I have done this year into portfolios and studying for my exams, which started today.

Although the first one went well enough, I couldn’t help feeling put out because of it. I just feel too old to still be writing tests.  I don’t mind the idea of studying. That I like. So much so I want to keep on at for the next few years if I can. It’s just the idea of writing tests that gets to me: Having to memorise stuff at home and then sit in a room for three hours and spew it all out again. There’s no point to it anymore.

On Friday I wrote an Afrikaans test to get an endorsement for a second language. Apparently state schools in South Africa require proficiency in at least two of the eleven official languages before they can offer teachers a permanent post. Since I’ll be working at a state school next year I had no choice but do take the test. It wasn’t too bad though. All it entailed was a written comprehension, a piece of writing and a 20-minute oral test afterwards. It was actually quite fun. I was curious to know where my Afrikaans stood anyway because I haven’t spoken more than a few words of it in absolute years. In South Africa Afrikaans people speak Afrikaans to each other and English to pretty much everyone else. The same was true in Taiwan. Although the majority of South Africans there were Afrikaners they always spoke to me in English. Nevertheless, I was glad to discover my Afrikaans is still in working order despite the layer of dust that covers it.

In two short weeks from now my course will be over and I’ll get the certificate that I wanted out of it. It will certainly make me more employable than I was this time a year ago, which is a comfort. To me a teaching qualification is a kind of insurance policy. It guarantees me job in many countries and I feel far more confident to take certain career risks now (like becoming a professional artist) with the sense of security that comes from being able to get a teaching job if it doesn’t work out. Besides, I do like teaching. I could do it as a career quite happily too. It’s just that it's not my dream job… more like my bread and butter job that’s not too bad.

The other day I went into the school where I’ll be working next year and got talking to the sculpture teacher. He is a little older than me and was saying how difficult it was for him to get a job a few years ago. He said that for a long time after the 1994 democratic elections that saw in the new government, white males were the very last choice amongst job applicants, especially for state positions. His CV was constantly overlooked and as an artist he struggled to find a gallery that would even look at his portfolio before they rejected him.

I remember reading and hearing about affirmative action and black empowerment when I was abroad but it never affected me directly. Since I have been back in South Africa the issue has come up a few times, but it was only over the weekend that really struck a chord. I was filling out a hefty application form for the position of a House Warden at one of the student residences at Rhodes University when I came to section that asked to specify if I was Black, Coloured or Asian. Underneath it explained that this information was necessary for equity purposes, but to me it read that the job was not open to whites. I felt incredibly discouraged and reluctant to even complete the form. When I handed it in today I noticed that most of the applications in the box were from black candidates. I would imagine that many whites felt the same way as I did and did not bother wasting their time.

Still, I cling on to the hope that I at least get an interview. A friend of mine who was a Warden for 6 years at the university said that if I get an interview it means that there is a space for a white Warden and that I could well get the job. But she admitted that it is more likely that the university is required to employ a black Warden, even if it means employing someone less qualified or suitable to do the job than other candidates.

I wish that it could be a case of the best man winning, but that is not the way equity works in South Africa. The national rugby team is a perfect example. Even though they won the World Cup this year (which united the country with a sense of pride like nothing else), the coach has been driven to quit and the jubilation that swept through the country has been put out by all the emphasis placed on the fact that the team is made up of mostly white players. It overlooks the fact that the player of year is black and that black people in South Africa are quite comfortable with the idea of rugby being a ‘white’ sport anyway, just as whites are comfortable with the idea of soccer being a ‘black’ sport. The players were chosen according to ability, not colour. One would think that is a more equitable stance.

The employment situation for white males in official posts may be a lot better now that it was for the sculpture teacher I was chatting to, but there is still a lot of reverse discrimination and I have only now began to feel the brunt of it. It is a pity that the powers that be in the South African government practice the same kind of discrimination that they fought so hard to overcome. But such is the world.

In my exam today I wrote an essay on humanism, which argues that people have the capacity to live moral, productive lives in harmony with each other if only they employ reason. Unfortunately this is easier said than done.

For the past few weeks I have been feverishly trying to decide what to do next year once I finish my course. I was considering going to London for the obvious reasons, but then I was offered a job at a lovely school in Cape Town, which made me reconsider staying in South Africa. I was about to accept the job when I was also offered a post at an art school across the road from Rhodes University. The art school job is quite unlike a regular teaching post though. For one it is a specialised school, geared only towards teaching art and design. It is comprised of a sculpture, painting, ceramic, textile, drawing and graphic printmaking studio, each with a designated teacher. The teachers themselves are all artists, so the whole centre is a hub of creativity.

The art school basically caters for the public schools in the Grahamstown area. Pupils who wish to take art as a matric subject come to the art school by bus for their lessons. As such there are kids from three schools who come in at various times in the day for classes. For the kids, the art school is like a huge art classroom off their school campus. For the teachers at the art school, it is like a personal studio where they teach as well. Since there are no assemblies, parent teacher meetings, extra-curricular sport activities and so on at the art school the teachers have far more time on their hands to prepare well conceived lessons and to work on their own projects. Also, with class sizes never more than a few kids it is possible to get to know each pupil and give them proper attention. So unlike regular schools, there are hardly any discipline issues to contend with. The kids are for the most part delighted to get out of their schools for a while to come to the art centre and it clearly shows that they enjoy what they do there.

All in all I really couldn’t wish for a nicer job. Even the late Victorian school buildings and the peaceful area around them are perfect. It is in walking distance to the shops and cafes along High street and close enough to cycle to work every day. And the best thing about working there is that I can continue studying at Rhodes University to get a Masters Degree.

There is one aspect to the job however that is not so great and that is the pay. Some months ago, teachers across South Africa staged a huge four-week strike insisting on a 12% wage increase, with the government eventually agreeing to a 9% increase. Although this a welcome change, government employed teachers still earn an abysmal salary. The money I will earn at the art school will just cover my living expenses. Buying property next year as planned will simply be impossible. Nancy and I could survive off my salary alone, but we will have no way of saving any money unless Nancy finds a job, which may be difficult in Grahamstown. The only way to make a living is for us to start up a business of sorts. With the money I would have used as a deposit on a house I’ll try and set Nancy up with a little shop or something. Meanwhile, I’ll focus on building up a body of artwork that I can exhibit and make money off down the line.

Perhaps the lack of money in teaching is precisely the impetus I need to take my work as an artist very seriously, and for Nancy to seriously figure out how to get a business off the ground. We have both been toying with these ideas since we met, but until last year earning comfortable salaries made us too complacent to actually act on them. Now it is a matter of necessity.

If in a year or two I really have not made it as an artist and Nancy and I have failed to generate money by our own invention, I have no reservation about moving to England to earn those precious Pounds. The opportunity to earn money by teaching there is there to stay, but until I’m forced to take it up, I’m going to make a go of things in South Africa. If I do end up going to the UK down the line, I will at least have gained some teaching experience and hopefully a Masters to my name, which will get me a better job. As for Nancy, her English will have improved dramatically, which will make life in England so much smoother… Anyway, for now I am excited to experience what it is to have an enjoyable job. It is something I have wished for ever since I graduated from university seven years ago.

Almost everyday for the past year I have been going to St. Andrew’s College and the Diocesan School for Girls across the road as part of my teacher training. In that time I have become quite familiar with the two schools, especially College where I did the bulk of my teaching practice. I have made friends with the staff, gotten to know the kids, learnt the layout of the campus and generally figured out how things run.

Just as I am well settled into the school though I am done with my teaching training. Today was the last day I had to go into the schools, and I must say that I am going to miss it. Both of the schools are lovely places to teach. The pupils are polite and respectful and the staff a welcoming team. The schools are beautifully maintained too, which makes working there that much more pleasurable. With all the resources and facilities available at the schools there is no limit to what can be taught or produced by the kids and that too makes them stimulating, creative places to work.

Going into a school next year with the usual discipline issues and a low budget is going to be a tough adjustment. Hopefully I’ll get a job at a school more in line with College and DSG and avoid the harsh reality of teaching that is the norm. I leave for Johannesburg this evening to see my cousin and his wife who were recently married in Italy. While I am up there I’ll drop my CV off at some good schools. Then I fly down to the Cape to see my sister and go for an interview at St. Andrew’s brother school in Claremont. When I return to Grahamstown next week I’ll have an interview lined up at an art school across the road from the university. I would imagine that at least one of the schools will offer me a post for 2008. In the mean time I am still strongly considering going to the UK next year to find a post there. The exchange rate between the British Pound and South African Rand is 14 to 1, which makes it an attractive option from a financial point of view. Also, the chance to live a train ride away from various enchanting European countries is appealing.

My fate at the moment is subject to the way the wind blows, but I am not too put out by that. Whichever direction I go to from here seems fine.

I enjoy the theatre productions at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown more than anything else. Over the past week Nancy and I have seen some absolutely amazing performances. Until this evening the most amazing play we have seen was a story of a young girl who had a sexual relationship with a forty-year-old man when she was twelve and confronts him years later at his place of work long after he has already served time in jail for the offence. The script was like prose and the acting was so raw with emotion that it was like watching an event in real life unfold. At the end of the play the actors were in tears as well as many people in the audience. The play raised issues about morality and justice that sparked conversations amongst the audience as soon as the play ended and it has lingered in my mind ever since.

 

Tonight Nancy and I saw another play that also blew us away but for different reasons. It was titled Interracial and dealt with the implications of interracial relationships in South Africa, particularly between black and white people. As we were ushered in we were given a sheet of paper that read:

FROM THE CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR

1.    Apologies
Please note that this play is performed by a predominantly black cast, unlike as advertised in the National Arts Festival programme. We deeply apologise for this, but, after the NAF programmes went to print, we experienced problems with securing the rest of the white actors we needed for the production… This is when we decided to re-conceptualise the entire production as a means of … “damage control” (as the phrase goes), and dropped the white actors we had intended to use… We based the entire play on the problem of finding white actors and used this very real problem to explore race relations in the country… A thousand apologies, if you came to the play expecting white actors… but this matter was truly beyond our control… As a final note, I would like to add that what you are about to see is not a documentary, but pure fiction.

2.    The new cast list
…

I didn’t think much of it, besides wondering how the black cast would highlight the interracial aspect of play without the help of an interracial cast. The play began with the ‘director’ on the stage discussing the problem with the cast. Instead of changing the story the director insisted instead that the actors play the roles of the white characters. At first the actors argued that it would be hard to do because their accents and mannerisms wouldn’t fit, but the director insisted and the play commenced as a “rehearsal” with the director taking a seat in the front row with the audience.

After a few minutes into the story it was obvious which of the characters were meant to be whites. The actors certainly had no trouble imitating accents and ways of speaking and, as the director had said would happen in the beginning, the audience honestly began to see them as whites. However this was suddenly cut short when one of the actors whose role was a white school teacher stopped in mid sentence and told the director that he felt ridiculous acting like a white person. He said that white people have different hang-ups to black people. He said something like, “White people are different. I mean they have panic attacks for fucksakes… I suppose black people also do, but we wouldn’t call them that, and we wouldn’t go to a doctor for it and take medicine for it... And they have stuff like Prosac. Which black man takes Prosac? They’ve probably never heard of it!” The director tells the actor that he needs to draw off his own problems and substitute. That is what actors do, he said.

The story continues with white schoolteacher finding out through the services of a staunch Afrikaner private detective that his wife is having an affair with a black man. The teacher is mad with fury and heartache and it is later revealed that he and the detective come up with the idea of having them both killed by a couple of black ghetto kids hired to do the job.

And so the play unfolds with a various interruptions, like when the director decides to cut a particular scene, or hands out a revised part of the script to the actors, or has a quick meeting in the middle of the stage, or deals with some of the uncertainties that the other actors who have white roles are experiencing.  

When the play reaches its climatic and emotional ending some 3 hours later and the lights are starting to fade, the director storms on the stage and says that the whole thing is ridiculous. The play does need white people to play the white characters he says, and that without them it doesn’t work at all. From that point on the director launches into an impassioned diatribe where he condemns white people for not participating in a play that was meant to have an interracial cast. He agues that whites have no problem finding blacks for their plays but blacks cannot find white people willing to be in theirs and that this perfectly illustrates the one sided effort at reconciliation in South Africa. Blacks are the ones extending the hand of friendship he says, not the whites. He starts shouting that whites are as racist as always and as he does so goes into such a rage that the tendons in his neck are popping out, he starts sweating and every word is spat out. I hate the fucking whites he screams. Fuck them! Fuck white people! He starts kicking and throwing the props around the stage before marching off out the hall.

By now the audience was in shock. Some people in front of us had already got up and left. The cast lined up and took a bow but despite their tremendous performance throughout there was only a smattering of applause. I looked around the hall and noticed that people were gathering their things and getting ready to leave. The white people in the audience who happened to be outnumbered by the blacks looked a bit nervous. Everyone seemed eager to get out of the theatre hall quickly. The air seemed electrified. It felt kind of dangerous. As if the smallest thing could spark a fire at any moment.

The feeling of danger was heightened when Nancy and I noticed a huge throng of people gathered outside at a pub across the road from the theatre. There were police cars and ambulances all around. We didn’t stop to have a look what was going on though. We just drove on past.

Thinking about the play now, I am not sure if the leaflet we were given apologising for the absence of the white actors was a part of the play or not. In fact I don’t know if there really were meant to be white people in the cast to begin with. Perhaps the whole thing was staged to make the audience question their own racial prejudices and whatnot. Nancy said that she is sure quite a few people did not attend the show after receiving the pamphlet because all the seats were booked yet many better seats around us were open. Perhaps the number of empty seats is what really made the director so angry… who knows?

As much as I love theatre that pushes the envelope, I think the director went too far at the end and ruined it. His denouncing of white people could quite easily have been echoed by some radical blacks in the audience or been thrown back at him by some white radicals and caused a nasty fight. I felt very uncomfortable being 5 meters away from someone shouting how bad white people are - especially when surrounded almost entirely by black people. It would have been be equally inappropriate and reckless for a white actor to venomously declare his hatred of black people and I would have felt just as uncomfortable. Freedom of expression and all that is fine, but there is a limit too.

Grahamstown is like an island. From virtually any point in the town you can see the last row of houses that cling to civilization before giving way to the wild open land that stretches out to the horizon. It is quite alluring really. There are towns beyond the horizon that are even smaller than Grahamstown whose residents are all but lost to the wider world. Out of curiosity Nancy and I drove to one of those towns called Bedford.

It was not exactly the quaint little town I had imagined, but rather forlorn and creepy. The main road was flanked by the usual array of shops and businesses: a petrol station, post office, general store, bank and so on, but since these were all closed for Sunday, it all looked like the faded remainder of a movie set. Only the occasional pedestrian and motorist gave any sense of life to the place.

While we were looking for a place to stop and have a picnic we came across a sign to a B&B, which we followed down a few gravel streets. The owners eagerly met us at the gate of a lovely Victorian home and led us into the garden where we had some tea and scones. It really felt like taking a step back in time. There was a kind of silence and tranquillity there that just cannot be found in busier places. The house, the trees, the mountain behind the house all seemed very still. It was hypnotic really.

When it came time to pay for the bill, the owner asked us if we would like him to show us around the house and it was just as still and beautiful as the outside. Broad planks of wood ran throughout, the ceiling was at least 4 meters up, stained glass windows surrounded each of the doors that led out the house, thick wooden frames hugged the windows and every third room had a fireplace. It was simply gorgeous.

As it turns out the owner only bought the house in January. For the past 10 years prior to that he was in Ireland working in clubs as a doorman and then a barman. His wife was working as a waitress and together they saved enough money to buy the house in cash as well as the house across the street. He told us that he and his wife decided that they would rather live a quiet life with their two young kids and started looking for homes in small rural towns in South Africa over the Internet. When they saw this house they decided to buy it even though they couldn’t find the town on the map.

They seem happy with their decision though. Their B&B is one of the only ones in the town and it is being wonderfully restored to its former glory. There has been a steady stream of guests to pay the bills and their little children have quickly adjusted to an entirely new life.

On the way home Nancy and I imagined what it would be like if we bought a house out in the middle of nowhere and ran a little business there. It seemed quiet romantic at first but the closer we got to home the happier we felt to be back in the real world. Grahamstown may be a small far-flung town too but it doesn’t feel like it is entirely cut off from civilization. I guess the university is what keeps it connected.  Towns like Bedford are so isolated they could cease to exist and hardly be missed. Then again, it is this light and tentative existence, like a dream, that makes them so enchanting.

Some 700 000 public sector workers in South Africa went on strike today. They are demanding a 12% salary increase across the board. So far he government has agreed to a 6% increase, but the unions have rejected that. They are sticking to their guns instead and will strike indefinitely until a resolution is met.

Naturally this creates all sorts of problems. Kids can’t go to school and parents don’t know what to do with them while they are at work. Many people can’t get medical attention because hospitals are running on skeleton staff only. Even getting medication from the pharmacy is difficult as there are so few doctors to write out prescriptions.

Hopefully the government and the unions will reach an agreement when they meet on Monday so that everyone can get back to work. The country certainly can’t afford a strike of mammoth proportions like this. It literally costs the country millions a day, not to mention lives too. It would be so much better if there could be representatives of the unions who handle the negotiations from next week on, but I guess without the power of the people behind them, twisting the government’s arm, they won’t get what they want.

In South Africa teachers have long complained of unreasonably low salaries. It is certainly a job one does for the love of it alone, but even so teachers expect (and deserve) enough money to at least afford a modest house and lead a moderately comfortable life. With the cost of houses, the price petrol and the inflation rate, this is becoming increasingly difficult. It is small wonder then that so many South African teachers leave for greener pastures….

To tell the truth I have all but decided to jump on the bandwagon and teach in the UK next year. Strangely enough it does not have to do with the extra money I’ll make there, but with living in Europe itself. I just love it there. I like the cultural diversity, the beauty and the luxuries that come with a first world country. The only thing that is missing in Europe is my family. We are a very close knit and it would be very hard to live apart from everyone. To make it even more difficult, I am a godfather to my niece Jessica, who is the prettiest little girl in world. It would be such a shame to miss seeing her grow up and being a part of her life.

Perhaps if the unions get their way, and my salary next year looks somewhat decent I might stay after all. I love Grahamstown as much as anywhere in Europe, so I might even stay right here and live a quite life.