Stuff

A Sense of Place

~ susanhayden ~ 30 Comments

Wherever I go and whatever I do, this sense of place and belonging. Not everybody, I notice, is as connected to their land of origin. My husband is a nomad, putting down shallow roots wherever he lays his Cape Union Mart hat. I believe he could live anywhere; he’d make a decision and thrive. My roots are more discriminating; they curl up their ends in protest, unwilling to embrace strange, new soil. I lived abroad like a spectre; not really being there, moving slowly as if in a dreamworld, vaguely surprised that people could see me.

Now we live in Green Point close to the stadium where everything, lately, happens. This makes traffic a mare from time to time, like a few weeks ago, the weekend of the Cape Town Marathon coinciding with a rugby event. I woke up to the 7am sounds of a commentator welcoming the day and the athletes. I brewed a cup of strong Swedish coffee and opened the windows wide to see our strip of slate-blue sea. From my bedroom window you could travel, in a straight stripe, to the wild and windswept shores of Robben Island. On clear days I watch its waves crashing.

Then, the opening strands of Juluka’s Impi – of course. Our Zulu warrior song for the warrior scatterlings flying over Table Mountain National Park, tracing the footsteps of everyone’s early ancestors, pounding the tarmac of our city streets, fighting inner demons, fighting themselves to keep running, keep running, you can do it. Our metaphor for life down here: keep running, warrior, you can do it.

Impi! wo ‘nans’ impi iyeza

Obani bengathinta amabhubesi?

(Warrior! the army is coming!

Who here can touch the lions?)

And, I’m home. Johnny Clegg is singing to me from beyond the grave, alive as he’s ever been, flying up over the mountaintops, giving the runners courage, reminding us of our fighter spirit, telling us we belong.

Nothing things become things. Maybe because I was uprooted for so long. A 4pm walk in Green Point park through the alleyway of trees that takes you straight down to the lighthouse (the oldest in South Africa) and the sea. Pale spring sunshine and a slight nip in the air. Winter exiting but not quite out of the building. Three Xhosa nannies with their push-chairs and small charges. They walk slowly, ambling along. Unlike me they meander; now stopping for no apparent reason. Now talking loudly, a hand on a generous hip. I wish I could understand what they were saying but we white people are limited when it comes to language. My friend, Nolo, speaks five languages fluently without thinking anything of it. 

Having grown up during the darkest days of apartheid it always amazes me to see the ease with which South African people mix. There’s a warmth and a friendliness and a willingness to connect, to reach out, to bridge divides. I see it around me all day long. The offer of help, to carry a bag, to give a lift, to donate to a child. Say, Molo, Sisi before you ask for your chicken strips at Spar and you get the biggest smile. Order the samp and beans and you’ve got a friend for life. 

At the heart of us humans lies the most fundamental need of all our of needs and that is for connection to other humans. In the cool, northern parts of Europe this connection has become lost. People are too self-sufficient; the need for one another is obsolete and it has resulted in a deep loneliness. You see it on their faces, especially during the winter months. Sweden is the nation with the highest amount of people living alone, a massive 47% of its 10.4 million population. 

At the end of the working day they let themselves into their (mostly) rented apartments. Nobody is waiting to greet them. No delicious smells emanate from their small kitchens. They stand in the hallway’s semi-darkness and hang their coat on a hook. They walk through the rooms, alone, turning on lights. They warm up their dinner-for-one and eat in front of TV. Advertisements paid for by the state remind Swedish people to say hello to their neighbours. A hundred meters up from our apartment in Malmö is an area of road where people cross to access a small town square and a walking street. The crossing is unusually wide. After wondering about it for years I asked a local why it had been designed that way. To encourage people to interact with each other, was his reply. 

Back in Green Point, going anywhere by car on event days is unthinkable so I decide, if I can’t beat them I’ll join them. The main road is packed with spectators. The first runners, the serious athletes, came in hours ago. These ones are tired, they’ve been running for five hours and the pain and exhaustion is evident on their faces. Many don’t look like athletes and you wonder at the determination, the inner fire that makes them do this, makes them persevere. The training sessions after work, already tired from a long day of traffic and complaints. Getting out of bed early on weekends to meet their friends, to run. I see a husband practically carrying his wife over the last 100 meters. I see a white lady and a black lady somewhere in their sixties, holding hands tightly, willing one other towards the finish line.

A woman on the sidelines is clapping and singing for these amateur runners. Initially I think she’s marathon staff but after a while I realise she’s just a spectator, spurring the competitors on. She sings, here we go, ruh-nuhs, here we go! Only two hundred meters to go! You’ve got such a beautiful weather in Cape Town today, thank the almighty for this beautiful weather! She reads the logos on their vests and calls them by name, fist-bumping those who still have the energy to look up, to lift their arms: Go, SAPS! Thank you SAPS for fighting the creemeenals! Go, Rondebosch Running Club! You can do it, Durbanveeeel!

Tired runners and their families walk the short distance back to their cars. Tonight they’ll make a braai. The aunties and uncles are coming; maybe a neighbour or two. They’ll bring tupperware for barakat so nothing goes to waste. Back to their houses in Mitchell’s Plain. Bloukrantz wood, klippies and coke and a barking dog. Auntie Salwaah has made her famous ‘Rille Gebak’ (spiced doughnuts). There was a special on lamb chops at Food Lover’s. They’ve been marinading all afternoon in shishamyana spice and love. Money is tight; there are no extras. But it’s lekker. It’s oraait. 

That uniquely South African smell of braai drifts across the city’s neighbourhoods, over the vibercrete walls, satellite dishes, guava trees, Toyota Cressidas. Epson Salt for aching muscles. Wyn vir die pyn. Kaptein, Span die Seile is playing somewhere. The other night, on the way back from the jol, my 17-year-old daughter and her friends asked the Uber driver to make a stop at McDonalds. They ended up having a picnic with him outside on the lawn. He wanted a Big Mac Meal. This stuff, the very marrow of South African life day-to-day, this doesn’t make it onto the news, but this is where we really live. Here, with our people.

It’s Still Ayoba, Babies

~ susanhayden ~ 98 Comments

As you will have noticed, I took a long sabbatical away from my blog. I had a few reasons: it’s time-consuming; posts can take me an entire day and I don’t earn any money off it, so paid work has to come first. Then, trolls abound on this thing called the internet and it’s upsetting and exhausting being the recipient of gratuitous viciousness. But most significantly of all – and it’s hard to admit this – I started to get swept up in the bad stuff and the negativity surrounding our country, and I wasn’t sure I agreed with myself anymore. And that was a problem.

One thing about this space is that I’m not answerable to anybody; I write what I believe and I always tell the truth. Or, my truth. Which is why, over the years, people have learnt to trust me and they reach out for an agenda-less version of what life is really like in South Africa. ‘Is it okay to come here to study?’ foreign students ask me. Yes! I tell them, and they come (and sometimes never leave). Or, South Africans come back from Australia and the UK and write to tell me how the blog helped them make their decision and that they’ve never been happier in their lives. 

But loadshedding has been hard on the collective psyche. Covid was a disaster for us economically, never mind the foolishness of some of our lockdown laws. Cyril and his mattress have let us down (where are his words, that Scorpio?) Crime, corruption and unemployment are rampant thanks to our useless government. How to live with all these truisms and maintain a positive outlook without sounding downright silly became a challenge. Over coffee a while back a friend said, ‘you wrote those early blogs nearly a decade ago. Would you say the same things today?’ And I had to honestly answer, no. And answering no made me sad. 

But then I went to Europe on holiday. I get that going to Europe on holiday is the domain of the privileged few, and if I didn’t have a husband whose family and work are based in northern Europe we would certainly not be able to do our annual trek. But I do, and we did. And my word, did it ruk me right in about 14 seconds. It’s so easy to get mired down by the problems this country faces. And I don’t mean to minimise how hard life is for many people. But there are still so many amazingnesses to life down here and we forget them because we are used to them and we think everything must be better in The Overseas because there is less crime. 

But it’s not, my guys. I promise you. Especially now after Covid. They are kakking off for real, just like us. It’s easy to lose perspective and to start envying people in other parts of the world, but a month overseas opened my eyes and changed my mindset (thank G-d). Like the Buddhists say, two people can walk down the same road and have a totally different experience of it. It’s what you choose to see. And often you need to leave for a bit in order to understand how rich and joy-filled and sunny and privileged our lives here still are. 

Yes, many things don’t work but so many things do and we don’t often focus on that part of the narrative. I’m not going to go into a whole story, but I will say that I learnt some important things talking to my friends who live abroad: that the schools in many parts of Europe are struggling to cope with the massive influx of foreign children from war-torn countries who don’t speak the language and are traumatised. Teachers and school staff are trying their best to integrate them, but while they do this, local children – inevitably – get overlooked. A friend’s 8-year-old still couldn’t read. Some schools in downtown Malmö (southern Sweden) have classes where the learners are 100% foreign, usually Arabic. A close friend of mine is a librarian in one of these schools. It is not easy for anyone. Swedish families don’t want to send their kids there because none of the learners speak the language. Teaching these children Swedish takes priority, so everything is slowed down. Native Swedes move away from certain areas for this reason. Just like here. 

The healthcare systems are overburdened and no longer working very well (I’m trying to be fair; many people will tell you they don’t work at all). Friends in Sweden (who already pay a premium in tax) are having to take out private medical insurance at huge expense because you wait so long to see a doctor, even longer to see a specialist and years to get surgery. Trains are overfilled, late or don’t run at all because staff were laid off during Covid and have not been re-hired. It’s tough times out there, not just for us. Europe is fantastic, has lots more money than we do and a buffer to cope with crises like our recent pandemic, but it is not the utopia many South Africans imagine it to be. I love Scandinavia deeply and miss it and look forward to going back each year, but it’s a mistake to believe everything beyond our borders is better. 

The other day outside gym I bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen in some years. He is very negative about South Africa. I understand his reasons. He is a civil servant who finds himself on the wrong side of history. His teenage daughter just did a scholastic exchange in Germany. He wants to move to Germany. ‘It’s so free there,’ he enthused. ‘She can take public transport at night.’ ‘She can,’ I agreed. ‘One can take public transport at night. But then you have to live amongst Germans.’ I have nothing against Germans. My granny was German. I am fully one-quarter German. I love Berlin; it’s one of my all-time favourite cities. I love Rostock and its Christmas market. I play Alphaville in my car.

But what people don’t realise is that when you move to another country, you gain some things but you also lose a lot of things. More things than you understand when you’ve never done it. You are not moving to South Africa without the crime, you are moving to Germany with German weather and German traditions and German rules and German Germanness. Culture shock is real and it’s lonely AF always being the odd one out. Never getting the joke. And I don’t mean to be rude but my goodness, I have visited a few times and not eaten one single good meal in that country. Even the eisbein is shocking. They boil it, for the love of. They do it much better at The Dros in Stellenbosch for a fraction of the price. 

Also, Paris. We were just there. We stayed in a very fashionable, hellishly expensive apartment in Montmartre. To call it compact would be an understatement. The whole thing was about 25 square meters in diameter. You climbed a narrow, frighteningly steep staircase to get to the seventh floor. You climbed into a cupboard to use the toilet. Everything was miniature, like a Barbie house. At 2am on a Monday morning the noise from the street made it impossible to sleep. It was hot (and due to get much hotter in the ensuing months), but if you opened a window you got eaten alive by mosquitoes. Paris is every version of magical; the entire city is like a movie set, but it’s noisy and busy and the food is expensive AF – and, frankly, underwhelming. You get better French food on Bree Street and at my friend, Marlene’s, house. I love Paris. But we live well here. And honestly, the croissants taste the same as anywhere.

Here, you go to Gallow’s Hill to renew your driver’s license and people say salaam and molo, sisi. You might wait a bit, but the people in the queue will be friendly and chatty and share their granny’s chicken masala recipe with you. Or you go to the Labia cinema on a Sunday night with your mom who has a dicky knee and can’t walk far but there’s nowhere close to park so you tell the parking attendant of your situation and three seconds later he’s whipped a couple of cones out the way and is directing you to park on the pavement meters away from your show. I mean. It’s a thing. Try that shit anywhere else, they’ll arrest you. Despite all the stuff we deal with, there is always a friendly word; a ready smile. A joke. A sense of humanity that makes you feel like you’re part of something. You’re with your people. They’re mad and they dress funny, but they’re yours. 

And expensive things are affordable. To get your hair highlighted or your teeth fixed or to buy a nice steak in Paris or Denmark, or order a bottle of wine (or anything) in a restaurant and you’ll pay out your bunghole. Yes, there is good public transport. You’ll wait for your bus in a wet little cubicle with smokers, your nice shoes in a bag because you’ll have to walk a way from the bus stop to your destination. It won’t be cheap. You’ll have at least one stop on the way where you will repeat the process. It will take you a decade to get there. In the end you just stop going out. Or, we did, especially when we had young kids. It’s just too hard. Here, an Uber on a Saturday night costs you R30. Or you drive. There’ll be no traffic and plenty of places to park. A bottle of nice wine costs the same as a glass of shit wine in Sweden. Restaurant food is better and incomparably cheaper. Things in SA are easy and accessible in a way they are just not in Europe (or Australia or the States). We don’t know how good we have it.

I’m sure, after a while, I’m going to get grumpy about Eskom again, but right now I’m so happy to be home it doesn’t even phase me. I light candles, read by the light of a paraffin lamp and spend some time gazing out of my window at the darkness of the African night. Out there, in all those houses and apartment blocks, are people who know who Riaan Cruywagen is and love Marc Lottering and are cross about the fishpaste. You don’t know how precious this until you don’t have it anymore. Your country, your tribe. There is something very comforting about knowing where your home is. Anyway, I’m back. Thanks for waiting.

The Gucci Maid

~ susanhayden ~ 17 Comments
Is it just me or are these two having a fight?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would not know how to write 41 quadrillion in numerals if my life depended on it. Even writing it like this in letters causes the demise of several neurons. You would have to put two laptops side by side to fit in all those noughts. If you wrote it on paper it would be even worse. How many noughts can a page take before it spontaneously bursts into flame? Probably about 41 quadrillion. You’d need a whole exam pad to write that figure down. I think I thought a quadrillion was a made up number, like when you’re telling someone how much you spent at Zara. I wasn’t even aware of the story of Tokyo Sexwale when I was headed for – yes – Zara and got a whatsapp from my best friend who is also my chief source of information on this planet. And what she told me was that the above number of monies had somehow gone missing and it was all the ANC’s fault. Only, this was so many monies. I had to read it a few times to let the number settle.

And what she said next – and she has said this before so I’m starting to believe her – is that this is the last straw and she’s leaving and going to be a maid in Sweden because being a maid in Sweden is better than living someplace where R41 quadrillion can randomly go missing. I have to say, I agree. Also, maids in Sweden are paid very well. We paid our Serbian maid more per day than I’ve ever earned in my life. Not to say she wasn’t worth every penny and is absolutely the reason we are all currently here today with our sanity more or less intact. There were many times my gratitude for her existence was a bottomless well, but the time that really stands out was the winter of the kräksjukdom (pronounced ‘krrrekshwookdom’); or in South African English, the winter vomiting disease. 

This is a disease that grips all the children of Sweden at the same time, and also just when their parents’ light deprivation-induced depression is at its bleakest. That is the exact moment when the vomiting of the children begins. Not a word of a lie, it’s a thing. And, grown-ups can catch it. We have many sad and unfortunate occurrences here in South Africa, but children’s winter vomiting disease is thankfully not one of them. On that particular morning (was it morning? Was it night? There is so little sun it’s impossible to tell) I woke up feeling exceedingly vomity, but the worst was yet to come. The worst was that my two very young charges (I think they were one and three at the time) had the vomiting disease even more robustly than I did. Few things are worse when you’re vomity than having other people vomit on you. There was only one thing to do: call Menka. 

Serbian Menka, who started off being our cleaning lady but was rapidly promoted to granny and best friend in the world, was already up and about and headed to her morning Swedish class (her and I went to so many Swedish classes, yet only ever communicated in sign language. I think it was a kind of rebellion). Bless her kind, kind heart, if she didn’t do an about-turn right then and there in the snow and come straight to my house where she cleaned up vomit for hours. To my dying day I will be grateful. I still visit her in Sweden in her small flat (where her entire lounge is taken up by a jumping castle for her granddaughter because she is that kind of wonderful) and we eat sataraš and spinach pie and confide in one another other in sign language.

But I digress.

I got the whatsapp from my friend just as I was walking past the Gucci store, and wouldn’t you know – right there in the window was the perfect maid’s outfit. Coiincidence? I think not. And she could probably even afford it, given her Swedish maid’s rate. If you’re going to be a maid in Sweden, you might as well be fabulous while you’re at it. Be a maid amongst maids; a Gucci maid. And then we started exchanging worrying things on whatsapp like how Zondo Commission Cyril was totally lying to that polite and patient judge (I watch those body language videos on YouTube so I know), and I started to seriously ponder the question: would I rather live amongst thieves or Swedes? I love Swedes, don’t get me wrong; I’m slightly Swedish myself, and I really prefer not to get bludgeoned in the night and have people steal so many quadrillions of rands that we have neither trains nor an airport. Well, we have an airport but there’s nowhere to park anymore and also there are no planes. But that winter. It doesn’t surprise in the least that everyone starts vomiting. 

Then later that day after I’d been in a froth for hours, my husband (and other, possibly more accurate source of information) whatsapps me from Sweden where he’s waiting to get a massage and tells me to calm down, the money was fake. Fake money? Like Monopoly? How many games would it even take to rack up that kind of number? The mind boggles. But I’m happy we don’t have to emigrate anymore because there’s nowhere left after Covid, and anyway the thought of leaving forever gives me vomiting sickness for real. So I guess it’s back to business as usual. 

Those Winter Sundays

~ susanhayden ~ 22 Comments

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My grandfather, Richard Radford-Hayden

What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? (Robert Hayden, 1985)

For as long as I have known anything, I have known that my paternal grandfather, Richard Radford-Hayden, lost both of his parents to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Orphaned together with his little brother, Harry, at a very young age, this lethal and mysterious virus brought to our shores by ships and which – for reasons we’ll never understand – targeted the young and healthy, constituted the dark backdrop of my father’s family history. It was the reason why everything went wrong: why my grandpa drank. Why money was scarce. Why he neglected his six children; showed contempt and indifference, at times incomprehensible cruelty towards the people he should have loved. The deep trauma and loss he experienced as a small boy lived in him all his life like a cancer, festering and growing, a black stain which would colour everything he touched. 

It was the reason he could not show affection to his sensitive, intelligent, eldest son, my father. It was why he lashed out, spoke harshly, withheld love and approval. Disappeared, locked himself away, spent money he never had. In an attempt to heal the wounds inflicted on him by this damaged man my dad started writing my grandfather’s story. Teasing out the details of narratives he had heard again and again since boyhood; jotting everything down in his square, cursive hand before methodically typing it out. Therapy where the real thing was not an option for a man of his generation. When my grandpa died of a heart attack at the age of 83 – unceremoniously, in the bathroom of the tiny flat he shared with my granny while she waited in the kitchen for him to come and eat his lunch – my dad went through his affairs and found notes the old man had made for him, ‘for Errol so interested in this.’ 

From these notes and from his own, my dad – so interested in ‘this’, whatever ‘this’ may be – put it all together so that members of the next generation who happened to have an interest in our family history might know who Dick Hayden (so much less grand than the name he was christened with) was before he sat, small and shrunken in his armchair in the corner of the living-room, too old to get himself to the liquor store so he simply stopped drinking. Sometimes recalling the past caused tears to gather in his soulful brown eyes. I had never seen a grown man cry, least of all my father’s father. I would look away, at the profusion of purple violets my granny always had growing on her window-sill no matter where she lived.

 “At any rate,” she would say in her husky, cigarette-voice to break the silence as all the things unsaid hung like smoke in the Sunday air. I was too young to understand the significance of the stories. Today I would listen more closely to how, one moment – his earliest memory of himself at the age of four – he was lying between his parents in their shiny, brass bed before breakfast, his mom with her long, dark hair plaited down her back, and seemingly the next he was in a house filled with sick and dying people. He and his grandfather – being very young and very old, respectively – were immune to the flu, and therefore the only ones well enough to care for the seven family members who had contracted the deadly disease. My grandpa Hayden remembered it like this:

“I lived in Port Elizabeth at the time. I was then aged 11, the eldest of five children. I remember that people dropped dead in the streets, died in trams and trains. All schools were closed, some being used as a form of hospital or soup kitchen, when gallant ladies accepted the job of delivering jugs of soup to many hundreds of homes and the Red Cross did wonderful work. This went on for many weeks until the disease passed on. Undertakers simply could not cope, and (…) the deceased were rolled up in blankets, many (…) left in trenches. Even now I suspect that was the fate of my parents. Our mother died on Sunday the 2nd of November, father the next Tuesday. I am convinced it was Providence that shielded Grandpa and me from that dreaded flu. With the whole family a-bed at the time, numbering seven, only my garlic-smelling Grandpa and I were up and about day and night giving service to the bed-ridden. 

“But perhaps the most difficult job I had at that tender age was to keep my younger brother in his bed. We shared a small bedroom next to the lounge, opposite the women’s large four-bedded room fully occupied, with an old neighbour nurse friend in charge, who had made a quick recovery from the epidemic. I distinctly remember that we had a Dover coal stove. It was my job to light it in the mornings, and on that Sunday Grandpa, who was always up and about early, came through and sat in a chair for a while, and then said, ‘Dickie, I want to talk to you.’ As he led me out to the water tank adjacent to the kitchen window, I picked up the bucket to fill it. He put his arm around my shoulders and his warm tears fell on my upturned face as he said in a low, trembling voice: ‘Your mother is dead, God bless her soul.’ I picked the bucket up and dazedly made for the shed. ‘Where are you going?’ he called, and took the bucket from me. 

“On the day the horse-drawn hearse called to take Mother away, my brother was most restless, wanting to look out of the window when he heard the horses on the roadway outside. Sitting on his bed to keep him down, I assured him it was just the vegetable hawker on his rounds, and he quietly accepted that lying explanation, much to my relief, as I now review the incident but at the time you can imagine my worry and emotion, because it was our mother being taken away and how was I going to account for her absence?”

And so it was. A lifetime of absence begetting absence. A paucity of love and the concomitant shrivelling of the human psyche; a state which seems destined to roll over to the next generation. His dad locking himself in a room with a bottle of brandy. My dad locking his heart away some place I could never find it. But I find it now in the words he carefully recorded. The love and the longing which emanate from these remembered fragments of a small, unremarkable past. A yearning, perhaps, for the wholeness neither men knew; something I find myself searching for in the scant book of typed-out memories I keep in a cupboard together with dad’s collection of LPs. A few months before my dad died – that line still shocks me to write – he told me he was looking forward to seeing his dad again. He said, I want to tell him, I understand, putting emphasis on that word. At the age of 77 he sought to forgive, and in the forgiving, find peace. I look forward to seeing my dad again and telling him the same thing.

 

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labour in the weekday weather made

blanked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden, 1985 (no relation)

Who is the Africanest of us all?

~ susanhayden ~ 47 Comments

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When February draws to a close, even while the weather remains hot, something subtle happens to the quality of the light; a nearly imperceptible softening of summer’s white glare. You have to have been here a really long time to notice this tiny shift. My husband has only lived in South Africa for 30 years, so many of its nuances remain lost on him. But hidden somewhere in the strands of our DNA lurks a knowledge that’s been passed on for millenia. It has to do with communing with nature; when the survival of our hunter-gatherer forebears depended on a minute reading of the environment. The days might feel like summer, but autumn is in the air.

Last night I gave myself a sleepless night by reading a Christopher Hope essay on Zimbabwe, in particular about the white people who stayed on after the election. He describes them as somnambulists, daytime sleepers in a country which is, in his words, ‘an eternal afternoon.’ Drugged by sunshine and servants, in a torpor of privilege, they didn’t believe Robert Mugabe when he told them he was going to take away everything they had. They misread the climate, and how much they were loathed. Not happy reading for a white girl living on the Atlantic Seaboard. It’s lazy to draw simple parallels: Zim is Zim and we are here and the countries are not the same. At the same time, one can’t help wonder, as our country is plunged into literal darkness and we reach passively for the candles, are we also sleepwalking into an abyss? And if we are, where the hell will we go? Even if we find ourselves passports, where else would ever be home?

Telling Africans they aren’t African is like telling fifth generation Germans they aren’t really German. ‘You see, there are Germans who are Germaner than you.’ Maybe there are. If genetics is what gives us our identity. I’ve never done that DNA test, but if I did and if I was – for argument’s sake – 80% Khoisan (which is not that far off, actually, as I am one quarter pure Afrikaans, and that lot were vrying with everybody), then would I be African? Or still not? These are the things I think about at 4am. What I do know is that our small colonial hangovers like eating trifle at Christmas do not make us British. For one, we go brown and not pink in the sun and we don’t have vrot teeth. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering what makes us who we are. 

I have a friend who is an animal behaviourist. He grew up in the Transkei, on the beach, in the wild. When we go away on holiday he spends the entire day out on the rocks fishing, gathering mussels, being one with his world. He is as much of this earth, of this continent, as the Nguni cattle he has raised, the fynbos he identifies. He is white and one of the most African people I’ve ever met. Transplant him to Europe and he would wither and die, like a succulent in an English country garden. Send me to northern Europe permanently and I would love my look in a cashmere coat for about 11 seconds before withering and dying, too.

We, who are of this place – who recognise its subtleties and perceive its nuances; who call people sisi and bhuti and understand Kaaps and know exactly how Auntie Washiela from the Bo Kaap sees the world – we don’t transplant easily. A while ago we had family from Denmark stay with us. For two weeks we were tour guides, showing them the dramatic splendour of our coastline, the ridiculous beauty of the wine route. I found myself trying to explain South Africa to them. I got tongue-tied a few times; contradicted myself. It’s a very, very difficult landscape to reduce to simple sentences or, even with time on your hands, adequately explain. I had to simplify everything into soundbites. Sometimes they roared with laughter. Other times they went quiet. Where they come from things are so simple. People are all the same and everyone is fine.

It would be hard to find a more complex mileu with a weirder history than ours. When we’ve been traveling and we arrive at the departures gate at Doha airport for our plane bound for Cape Town I recognise my people immediately. I don’t know what it is that makes us so identifiable, but you can’t miss a room full of South Africans. Badly dressed, chatting to all and sundry, a roomful of mongrels. We are, after all, braks; pavement specials; hybridisations of all that has been. We are the products of centuries of travel to and from this beautiful land; brown faces with blue eyes. White faces with kroes hare. Even my hair minces when it’s humid. Before we were apart we were very much together. The evidence of our togetherness is clear wherever you look. 

We file patiently onto the aircraft. We smile at one another in recognition. Wherever we have been on the planet, now we are here with our tribe ordering the chicken or beef and loving the free drinks. Yussus, check at us larnies. Afrikaans, isiXhosa, Sotho, Kaaps.  I’ve tried to identify what it is that makes an Afrikaans face so recognizable. You see it long before you hear the language. I try to separate the features – is it the jawline? The eyes? The nose? Who knows, it just is. Charlize Theron looks like any girl from Durbanville (yes, we are that gorgeous).

The thing is, I don’t think it matters where our distant ancestors came from. What matters is where we are now. The only things we know for sure is that we are mad and fabulous and resilient AF. Nobody is the same and nobody is fine, but that is our normal. Sometimes, when I get freaked out about Eskom or the EFF or the ganglands or the girls getting raped and murdered I think, are we misreading the climate? Are we daytime sleepers on our loungers on Clifton 4th, and is summer drawing to a chilly close? Many insist it is. I say, I don’t know. We’ve been asking ourselves this question for 600 years. So, while we decide, let’s put on a bit of Mandoza and dance.

This Kak has to Stop

~ susanhayden ~ 16 Comments
Uyinene Mrwetyana, everybody’s daughter.

These are very dark days for us in South Africa, and it pains me to admit that I have nothing reassuring or funny or uplifting to offer. There is nothing funny or uplifting about femicide and the rape and murder statistics in this country. But I feel the need to say something, anyway, as it’s weighing very heavily on me. It was our 12-year-old daughter, on her phone at breakfast, who told us that Nene’s killer had been identified. As a family gathered around the kitchen counter on an ordinary Tuesday morning we learned the circumstances of her murder. Along with all of South Africa, the details of her disappearance had been a topic of discussion for days. Where could she be? What could have happened? 

On our way to watch The Lion King on Friday evening, my daughter and her best friend ventured their opinions. ‘Maybe she’s just hanging at her boyfriend’s house,’ one of them offered hopefully. ‘Maybe,’ I agreed, trying to assuage their fears, but knowing – as these things go – that the chances of her being found alive were slim to non-existent. And then the truth, the shocking, devastating details of her attack, were announced. I think I couldn’t process the horror right away. I paid bills, bought a bed, did some washing, cooked bobotie, added extravagant amounts of butter and sugar to the yellow rice. 

On Facebook I read the reactions of friends, all reeling, all petrified, many wanting to leave the country. It was in a state of high anxiety that I walked the 500 metres to my yoga class this morning, leaving my phone behind (just in case I was mugged on the way, or worse) and constantly looking over my shoulder. At one point a man with a briefcase walked a few steps ahead of me, and I glared at the back of his head, daring him to turn around, to try anything, just try. The magic of yoga lies less in the softening and strengthening of the limbs than the softening and strengthening of the heart; the remembering of how deeply connected we all are as human beings. It took just a few moments of hearing the soft, mellifluous sounds of my Hindi instructor’s voice guiding us through the Asanas to make big, splashy tears drop down on my mat. Nene was everybody’s daughter. The pain of her rape and death is not relegated to her family and the ones who personally knew her. 

We failed you, Nene. Our beautiful, innocent child. We also failed Meghan Cremer, Hannah Cornelius, the 14-year-old girl whose body was found in a backyard in Heinz Park a few days ago. So many victims; too many to mention by name. According to recent stats, a woman is murdered every three hours in South Africa. Every 3 hours, people. We are failing as a nation. The ANC’s P.R. team issuing a facile, generalised statement making everyone wonder, where is our leader? If ever there was a time we needed comfort and reassurance; to be told that this isn’t okay, that there is a plan in place; that addressing the rampant and growing levels of femicide in this country is high on our government’s agenda, that time is now. Where is uCyril? Playing Candy Crush in the bath?

We are a fatherless nation. But if nothing else I have learned that if you’re going to wait for a man to pour your wine or give you permission to speak you’re going to be mute and mightily thirsty. So, what I can offer is this: there is power and strength in numbers. A short while back we believed ousting Zuma was a lost cause but we showed up to toyi toyi anyway, and what do you know? The old doos went. Before we give up and move en masse to Portugal (they eat a lot of sardines, I’m just saying), let’s find every march we can and show up and shout and scream and make our collective outrage known. 

On 9 August 1956, 20 000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in protest against the Pass Laws. It was the biggest march by women this country had ever seen. The women stood silently for 30 minutes and then started singing a protest song, Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo! (‘Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock’). We cannot sit in silence. We can’t live like this, constantly afraid and looking over our shoulders. Petrified to send our daughters out into the world. Always on the alert, in our minds fending off attack. All of you based in SA, find out where the marches are happening in your area and show up. Sing, shout, do whatever it takes to be heard. We learned long ago that ain’t no man gon’ save us. It’s time to make a noise and take matters into our own hands. Let’s make history and make this the biggest gathering of women our country as seen. We owe it to Nene, to Meghan, to our daughters. Not only that, our lives depend on it.

Palesa and the Hooker Boots

~ susanhayden ~ 31 Comments

Palesa

Like most white people born and raised in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, the only interactions I have with people of colour are in supermarkets, Ubers and on Facebook Marketplace (where, lately, I find myself spending unjustifiable amounts of time browsing for items of footwear I do not need nor have the space to store. But, girls and shoes being a thing that defies logic and explanation, we must accept what we are and get on with it). 

And the interactions I have in these spaces are sometimes dull and pedestrian, and sometimes, for a while at least, make me think about the world we live in and the thoughts we have about the people who populate it. For a while I’ve had a pair of thigh-high, lace-up boots bought on a whim and which have always been that level of tight that only stops hurting after a bottle of Chardonnay and several tequilas. And since I am now old as a stick and not inclined to anaesthetise myself with the same gay abandon as I did in my youth, it made sense on several levels to sell them. 

So, for the first time, I placed my own ad on Facebook Marketplace and waited to see what would happen. What happened initially was nothing, and I wondered if I had marked them too high. But then Friday 5pm rolled around and while people crawled home in rush hour traffic and commuters trawled shopping sites to pass the time, my phone started pinging with women urgently needing a pair of thigh-high, lace-up hooker boots. A notion I fully understand. By Saturday morning I had several eager buyers, indicating that I sold them far too cheaply and am utterly useless as a businesswoman. 

Come Sunday morning my phone was still pinging and I was copying and pasting the same message to scores of hopeful shoe lovers scattered around the city. Then a message came through from someone called Palesa. It was riddled with typos, and all my prejudices kicked in. Because she wasn’t white and living in Claremont and because she wrote ‘ur’ for ‘your’ and because I was sick of copying and pasting I almost didn’t bother to respond. But then manners got the better of me. In seven seconds I got a message back from her requesting my phone number. 

Now I felt a twinge of annoyance. Not only was Palesa making me write things, but I had to also say things with my voice. I sent it anyway. Seven seconds later, my phone rang and Palesa – with such excitement her words tumbled over each other – was telling me how she was hopping in the shower that very second and then making her husband drive her from Goodwood to Green Point so she could purchase the hooker boots which were going to make life worth living. She would be there in under an hour and I was not to leave my house nor dare sell them to anyone else. 

My husband, on his way out the door to the airport, warned me about letting her inside. I rolled my eyes at his paranoia, but his comment made me secretly nervous. Because, you know, you never know. At exactly the alloted time, a little green car with a number plate that said PALESA and driven by an exasperated-looking husband type of person pulled up outside my house. She bounced out the car, bounded up my steps and started praying in a loud voice that the boots would fit. It took a bit of pulling and tugging, but she got them on. ‘Thank you, Lord Jesus!’ she announced to the heavens, and embraced me in a tight hug. ‘You are wonderful! Thank you, God bless you!’ she called out to me as she clambered back into the small, green Palesamobile and, waving and blowing kisses, disappeared from sight.

I stayed where I was on the steps of my big house in a good area, all bolted up and enclosed in expensive Victorian-style railings custom made to keep people out and felt a twinge of sadness. About how small and uncontested my world is. About the way I think about people who are different. About how many kind, warm, generous humans exist that I will never have the joy of knowing. It’s weird how we live. In many ways, nothing down here has changed. Now that the apartness is socio-economic it is no less insidious. 

I wish I had the courage to message Palesa and invite her around for dinner. I know our husbands would have loads in common, and I know for certain she would be somebody who would brighten up my day beyond measure. But I won’t because one doesn’t, and eventually I will forget about her and our heart-warming interaction. That evening I got a message thanking me again, and the next day a third message with a photograph of her standing in her office, smiling from here to heaven, rocking those sexy boots.

 

Tsek, Tsotsi!

~ susanhayden ~ 46 Comments

 

Screen Shot 2018-02-16 at 11.50.30 AM
Did you hear the one about the president who wouldn’t resign?

 

Isn’t it so typical of how things work down here: one minute it’s business as usual and you’re going to bed gatvol because President Zuma is hanging on with the tenacity of a gazonkelnut and whyfor must he resign just because eleventy zillion South Africans are up to here, and next thing it’s morning and you’ve barely bitten into your Bovril toast when you see there’s a party happening on Facebook that you didn’t even know about. And then Cyril is hugging the rabbi’s wife on Sea Point promenade and everyone’s high-fiving everyone at the Spar and the people who’ve just emigrated to Australia are feeling deeply conflicted.

Shem. I’m not going to tell them I told you so because they’re sad enough as it is. And then, the cherry on the cake, there’s the pilot refusing to fly that skelm Atul Gupta out of Lanseria airport and he’s sitting lekker sipping his Vida E, flipping through the in flight magazine wondering why it’s taking so long to take off and did they lose the keys to the plane, only the truth of the matter is he’s going nowhere but onto a poster put up by the Hawks saying Fugitive on the Run. As we speak he’s hiding in his cousin’s cupboard in Lenasia because Jacob is too busy trying to keep Duduzane out of Pollsmoor to answer him on WhatsApp. Yoh, how things can change in a day.

And yet you still have the lady at the gym putting on lotion and watching the news in the changing room at 10am finding something negative to say about South Africa. And I want to take her straightening iron out of her bag and actually just bliksem her with it because yussus, people – this is a good day for us! Can you not see how astonishingly well things have turned out? It’s better than we dared even to dream. Also, by the way, you’re at gym at 10 in the morning, and not because you’re cleaning the toilets. How about a bit of perspective for the amazingness of your life?

A classic South African moment happened a few weeks ago at that same gym when we asked one of the managers if they no longer get the paper delivered in the morning. Because it’s quite nice to distract yourself from the fact you’re drinking coffee instead of doing interval training. And he shrugged apologetically and said, ‘No, I’m afraid not. It’s the government.’ Now, the government can be blamed for many things. Many. But, hard as I’ve thought this through, the fact that there isn’t a Cape Argus for the white people to read while they eat their eggs and avo I cannot trace back to the inefficiency of the ANC. But that’s the manager’s story and he’s sticking to it.

So here’s a thought. Since things are looking pretty peachy for us right now (we even have Thuli back on neighbourhood watch), and – try as some people may – it’s quite hard to put a negative spin on recent political events in South Africa, let’s do a little personal inventory on ourselves and what really motivates the gratuitous grumbling about our country. It doesn’t take a psych degree to work out that much of what we attribute to our environment is a projection of what’s happening in our inner lives. Except honestly assessing why you’re depressed is a lot harder than posting vitriol on social media.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the knee-jerk way many of us respond when things aren’t going our way. When someone in government does something kak, you hear about it all day. When someone in government does something good, it’s crickets and we post pics of our kids. How about we try to be more fair and a little more balanced in the way we assess what’s going on politically? Jacob Zuma’s governance was a bad time for us. Hendrik Verwoerd’s governance was worse. But we survived both – the former, due in no small part to our robust and extremely hard-working democracy.

We didn’t sit back and wait for things to change, we took to the streets and protested. Many people with placards were scorned and ridiculed for being white and entitled; they showed up anyway. There was more uniformity, more mutual respect and affection at those events than I’ve ever seen anywhere before. Nobody gave a hoot what anybody else looked like or where they came from. We were South Africans – mixed, mad, purposeful, indignant. How dare they try and steal our country from us again? How dare they let us down now after all we have been through as a nation?

Our courts, our journalists, our opposition parties, our whole judicial system worked hard and determinedly to fight the corruption and to prevent the state capture that would have been a tragic ending to a beautiful beginning. We did it. He’s gone. But we can’t rest on our laurels because there is still much to be done. It’s early days. Let’s be positive and generous in the thoughts and intentions we send out into the world. Let’s not wait for this magical government to bring the Argus to the gym. There is only so much one man can do. Now we have seen our strength and exercised our might. Let’s use it in this new era: make friends with ones who are different. Greet people in their own language. Be kind, generous, tolerant, and in your own capacity do whatever you can to make South Africa the kind of place where you want to live.

Right now our house is a building site because we are lucky enough to be able to afford to renovate. There’s a Zulu and a porta loo on our stoep and it’s noisy as hell all day. What the builders don’t know is that we hear almost everything they say. They speak mostly Kaaps. It’s hot as hades up there in the roof and they’re covered in dust and grime. They work really, really hard. Also, they tease each other and laugh a lot. Sometimes I stop and just listen. What they say I can’t even begin to translate into English, but it’s fricking hilarious. The banging drives me mad but the banter makes my day. And I guess that’s a bit of a metaphor for South Africa. Cheers to that, and to us, and to watching SONA this evening with pride instead of dismay. It’s been an extraordinary few days.

Shap Shap Shanana

~ susanhayden ~ 26 Comments

cape town pic

I love Cape Town this time of year. Spend enough Decembers and Januaries in the soggy greyness of Europe and you’ll stop moaning about the south-easter and the Vaalies (well, maybe not the Vaalies) and feel a deep, abiding gratitude for the fact that when the table cloth stops tumbling over the mountain and a still and clear blue morning awakens, get there early and you have the whole beach to yourself. And as you wade into the water it dawns on you that the summer is yours, all yours. In fact, the whole place is. Cape Town is the kind of city you own if you’re a local. I used to walk around the icy streets of Malmö, already dark at 3:30pm, dreaming of Clifton 4th. I knew what was going on there: that the sun was not even close to setting yet. That people were navigating the cold, clean waves on SUPs. That a granadilla lolly would, indeed, make you jolly.

And as the sunbathing crowd marches up the steps to wherever it is they came from, the picnic crowd would be marching down with white wine and blankets and things from Giovannis. And the knowledge that all this was happening on the other side of the planet while I pushed a double baby pram through slush was almost more than I could bear. And I’ll never take it for granted again: the girl crossing Buitengracht street yesterday in a strappy sundress and converse high tops, holding her skirt so it didn’t blow up around her head. She was just so Cape Town. The guy in the airport parking lot a few mornings ago who, to pass the time while he waited for his load of tourists, had opened all the doors, put his favourite song on loud and was dancing like nobody was watching. The bergies on High Level road wearing Christmas hats with flashing lights. iKapa.

It’s too hot inside the restaurants so patrons spill outside into courtyards festooned with fairy lights. Summer nights black as ink, balmy, alcohol-steeped, humming with the energy of the season. Midnight in a swimming pool underneath a blanket of stars. Carols by candlelight. Sunrise walks up the mountain. A friend recently arrived, coming home from Australia where he tried to emigrate but nearly died of dismay. He calls it ‘a dusty rock where souls go to die.’ Sometimes I sit on a bench at the Waterfront and watch the tourists go by. It’s easy to tell who is who. Nobody on the planet is as pasty as the Brits. Nobody wears uglier shoes than the Germans, and even though the Swedes have only been here for half an hour, they’ve already managed to turn themselves a deep shade of mahogany. But, come! Come! Spend your Kronor and your Euros. Heaven knows we locals can’t afford the seafood platter.

The thing is, you’d be hard-pressed to find worse whiners than we Saffers. Here we are actually living in the city the whole world rushes to in the summer and we still find things to complain about. Cape Town – like the whole of the country – is not without its problems. But actually it’s pretty amazing, as places go. And, as I’ve said many times in the past, sometimes I wonder if it really needs to be ‘fixed’. Like life, South Africa is messy, unpredictable and full of contradictions. Some days you’ll be frustrated, others you’ll be delighted. It’s the human experience presented in sharp technicolour. It’s like all the bad and all the good you can ever imagine has been crammed into this one little corner of the globe. Pour yourself a rooibos gin and enjoy the ride.

This year, despite the drought, hotels have been fully booked since July. Restaurants are crowded, main roads crawling. I know some folks get grumpy about actually having to plan in advance and make dinner reservations (the horror!) but I love it – the bustle, the vibe, the money pouring in which keeps the machine oiled and the wheels turning. And there’s a reason why everyone on the planet wants to be here. This city really does have everything. Last week a friend made an appointment over the phone. As they settled the details and she was about to hang up, the person she was talking to clinched the deal with, ‘shap shap, shanana.’ She was so amused she told me about it on Whatsapp. We both posted ‘laugh-till-you-cry faces. ‘You should write a blog about that,’ she suggested. So, here it is.

Happy 2018 to all my readers. Thank you for engaging with my ramblings over the past year. The past 12 months were a tough journey for many of us, but I think 2018 is going to be shap shap shanana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trouble with Flying Business Class

~ susanhayden ~ 20 Comments

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Us in Business Class. O, how we laughed.

So what I learnt quite recently on being upgraded to Business Class on an Emirates flight from Copenhagen to Dubai is that I’m able to literally and in real life do very many things at the same time, and while I’ve kind of known this about myself for some time because I own children I didn’t fully grasp the range of my abilities until this particular, happy occasion. And the many things I was able to do at the same time were the following, though there might even have been more that I’m forgetting: drink Moët et Chandon from a real champagne glass while at the same time signaling to the girl in the red fedora not to be casual around the refilling of said glass (because thirst); gobble a bowl of hot nuts; scan the menu and try to decide if it would be greedy to make them bring me two of everything; lie prostrate while being massaged by my chair; grin in a maniacal way at my husband; high-five my children, listen to relaxing dolphin sounds while still managing to direct scornful and disparaging glances at the steady trickle of passengers making their mournful pilgrimage past my comfortable, reclining chair-bed to the hell seats of Economy.

It was almost (but not quite because it also made me a bit happy) spoiling my fun having to witness their despair, and I wanted a little bit to say to the lady in the red fedora whilst making a dismissive gesture with my hand, please can you make the poor people not be here? But luckily she was very much on her game as far as the champagne went and it’s hard to be petulant under those circumstances. But the trouble with this thing is that, as we well know, all good things come to an end, and in my particular case which made things very much worse, our journey had two legs, and only the first (shorter) half happened in the party area of the aircraft. For the second (and significantly longer) segment of the journey – that being from Dubai to Cape Town – the people of Emirates didn’t think we were quite fabulous enough to waste any more of their fanciness on the likes of us and so we had no option but, on Boeing #2, to do the walk of shame to cattle class, with some of the very same people I had sneered at – also en route to Cape Town – now looking at us with eyes that said, oh, how the mighty have fallen. And they had. What’s more, they now had a touch of the babbelas.

You know that James song that goes ‘if I’d never seen such riches I could live with being poor?’ Our seven-year-old daughter looked around at the cramped bunker of sadness and shattered dreams which make up any airline’s Economy Class and said in a voice deeply etched with pain, ‘what happened to this place?’ What happened indeed. And the thing is, we wouldn’t have minded our little plastic cups and Barbie-sized bags of pretzels if we hadn’t been confronted with all that wonderfulness to start off with. Even the small polyester blanket that barely makes it to your feet would have been a nice touch if it wasn’t replacing a down duvet covered by one millionty hundred thread count cotton whilst beautiful, red-lipped angels swooped about bearing bottles of Voss and the toilet smelt of candy floss and had a marble sink. I remember a time, not even that long ago, when flying any class to anywhere was more fun than I knew what to do with but I suppose I’ve been corrupted since those days. And now, evermore, I must trundle past the (real) rich people and take my seat together with the lowliest of the low knowing very well what I’m missing even as I beg the steward, Fernando, for just one more tiny drink. So, the moral of the story is this: if you’re ever, for any reason, offered an upgrade on a flight say no if it kills you because it will ruin you for life.