The strongest victims in the world

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

The violent and public beating of non-violent black protesters at the University of Free State demonstrated white Afrikaner impunity on full display. It was a reminder of the continued ways in which white people’s violence in South Africa is a tool that takes direct aim at black people’s bodies.

The violent racist does not bother with acts of vandalism or bother with the destruction of property: That would be a waste of time and energy. Over centuries the violence has evolved into an efficient and highly effective machine. Kick the head and wound the body. Send a clear message – no warning shots. There is nothing symbolic about the violence whites have carried out in South Africa in the past and on Tuesday we saw that it continues to be as literal as it ever was.

Sisonke Msimang: Mad at Mandela

Out With The Old: Exploring the Myth of the ‘New’ South Africa

Sisonke Msimang, The Con

In the past few weeks there has been much consternation about the de facto existence of the dompas in the Western Cape community of Worcester. The dreaded dompas was a humiliating fact of life in apartheid South Africa; my father had one and his memories of it are vivid and painful. The passbook was arguably the most visible aspect of the system of apartheid. Any white man could stop a black one on the street and ask to see his pass. In this way, the pass gave power to petty bureaucrats and ordinary white men. Passbooks allowed racial authority to be invoked on a pretty random basis, and this of course instilled fear in the hearts of black families. When black women resisted the pass in the 1920s and then in the more famous marches of the 1950s, it was because they had seen the effects of the passbook on their menfolk.

I told you so: The return of Angry White Men

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

Yesterday reports were published of a black taxi driver who was attacked with an axe by an enraged white male motorist in Johannesburg. The paramedics came to the scene of the attack and attended to the unharmed perpetrator of the crime, leaving the bleeding black male victim on the side of the road. When they were called out on their behaviour, apparently they got angry and left him there bleeding.

Belonging – why South Africans refuse to let Africa in

Sisonke Msimang, Africa is a Country

Any African who has ever tried to visit South Africa will know that the country is not an easy entry destination. South African embassies across the continent are almost as difficult to access as those of the UK and the United States. They are characterised by long queues, inordinate amounts of paperwork, and officials who manage to be simultaneously rude and lethargic. It should come as no surprise then that South Africa’s new Minister of Home Affairs has announced the proposed establishment of a Border Management Agency for the country. In his words the new agency “will be central to securing all land, air and maritime ports of entry and support the efforts of the South African National Defence force to address the threats posed to, and the porousness of, our borderline.”

Poor-bashing is the new slut-shaming: Zuma, Sisulu & the lazy nation

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

I don't know of a country that gives free houses to young people. Free housing in a few years will be something of the past. (Young people) have lost nothing (to Apartheid). If it is not clear - none of you (young people) are ever going to get a house free from me while I live. - Lindiwe Sisulu If I am wrong, come and tell me which country did as we did. Once we were free we said our major focus is to address the plight of the poor. In no country in the world have you seen government giving people houses free of charge because they are poor. - President Zuma

Running with Biko: Exploring the relationship between the world of the mind and the current social crisis in South Africa

How to write about the deaths of people who don’t matter

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

I was asked this week what it takes to tell the stories of black lesbians killed in the townships in South Africa. The answer, in some ways, lies in Ferguson, Missouri, far away from South Africa, in an American community that has been burning all week.

There is much that South African journalists and editors can learn from the coverage of the protests that have arisen in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. Under normal circumstances the shooting death of a black teenager from a segregated community in the Southern state of Missouri would not have garnered much attention nationally, let alone globally. After all, two black men are killed every week by law enforcement officials in the US – most of them unarmed. Indeed, until he died, it is unlikely that Michael Brown mattered much to anyone except those who loved him. In his death he has come to matter a great deal to a great many people in America and beyond.

A few good whites: Will civil society take Dr Ramphele back?

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

Ramphele’s assumption that she will be accepted into civil society, where she can continue her project of ‘active citizenship’ without having to be directly accountable to a real live constituency, speaks volumes. The good doctor is not wrong in this regard. Sadly, many civil society groups will accept her because the sector is not yet robust enough, not yet racially secure enough to tell prominent blacks (and whites) where to get off when they mess up.

The triumph of the technocrats: Boredom as a political strategy

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

I have learned to approach President Zuma’s speeches with low expectations. It’s a sort of defence mechanism: if I steel myself for the blunders and the boredom, then he might surprise me as he did during the February SONA where he had a good story to tell in a pretty snazzy manner.

To be sure, if the president used his speeches to lay out important national objectives, then his tone and approach, the timbre of his voice and the pace of his speeches, would matter far less. But I have come to believe that the president – and his Cabinet – are not interested in punchy speeches that address strikes and pocketbooks and the state of race relations. The abysmal speech yesterday is simply the latest in a series of deeply (albeit blandly) flawed political statements by this president and his cabinet about the nature and scope of our nation’s problems.

Limpho Hani, Clive Derby-Lewis and the power of refusing to forgive

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

In the last few days the public conversation has turned to whether or not the country has moved on enough to release Derby-Lewis. Some have suggested that he is sick and old and has served his time. The grand narrative seems to be that treating him with kindness is a marker of our maturity as a society.

This sense that society has to be ‘bigger’ than the racist killer is a defining feature of the new South Africa. Forgiveness plays an iconic role in our post-Apartheid national identity; those who forgive are revered as heroes of a special kind. More than any other trait, South Africans see forgiveness as part of the miracle of our transition to democracy.

Annual Teach-in: The 2014 Elections

Requiem for a dream: On loving and leaving the ANC

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

It could all be so simple/but you’d rather make it hard/ see loving you is like a battle/ and we both end up with scars/ tell me who I have to be/ to get some reciprocity/ see no one loves me more than you/ and no one ever will.

When I came home almost exactly eighteen years ago, this song played a constant loop in my head. I put it on when I got up in the morning, I brushed my teeth to it, I pressed play in my car and it came on, I got to work and played it in my headphones as I clicked away at my computer. I fell asleep to it each night. I lived in a fog, wrapped in a delicate blanket of misery, and this song was my soundtrack.

Sisonke Msimang on Gender equality, violence and democracy in South Africa

Cast your vote, and do it wisely

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

The opposition may be acting silly, but the decision that McBride should be head of Ipid despite the fact that he has broken our laws and despite the fact that he is a broken man who probably needs help, seems bloody and careless. It seems as though someone in power cares as little for the public as they do for McBride. Again short-term thinking trumps long-term decision-making in a country in which everyone is a victim. It has never been more important than it is this year to vote, and to do so wisely.

The police seem intent on killing ordinary citizens. They Police Commissioner lurches from one bloody disaster to the next. She tells us that police are human beings too. She is right, even though this is not the moment for her to tell us this. They have just killed a child. I forget the name of the town. I forget – as soon as I hear it – the name of the child who was killed. I am inured to the pain of others. The suicide rate amongst cops is shameful. They are stressed out and trigger happy and under-paid and overworked. Their problems are systemic, as deep and as wide as Blood River. We fear them as much as they fear us. This has always been the case in South Africa.

Cry me a river of crocodile tears

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

It is March. Anene Booysen is mutilated, murdered and raped. We are shamed into action, shaken by the brutality of the crime. We imagine our own seventeen year olds and we pray that her soul rests in peace.

It is October. Zandile and Yonelisa are murdered in communal toilets in Diepsloot. We think about our own babies, fat and brown swaying precariously on newly found feet. We wonder what their mothers would have felt. We want to weep.We are outraged.

Mandela: The man who taught me how to lead

by Sisonke Msimang, Mail & Guardian

In the summer that I was 17, Soul II Soul's Back to Life played over and over on the radio. Caron Wheeler – the group's full-figured, dreadlocked lead singer embodied a black alternative to the mainstream straight-haired skinny girls who typified contemporary music in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She spoke to a new wave of black pride.

The 1980s had banished Afros and dashikis as it waved goodbye to black power and the politics that inspired it. But somehow the 1990s seemed to usher blackness in again. I soaked it in. I wore a head wrap and hung a leather pendant, cut out in the shape of Africa, around my neck. That year I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I found I Write What I Like and fell in love with Steve Biko.

As long as we exist, we will be raped

Sisonke Msimang

Anene Booysen's rape will happen again. She was raped and mutilated because she was a girl, and they wanted to destroy her, writes Sisonke Msimang. Mail & Guardian

I read an article on Thursday morning. It said: "The victim had been sliced open from her stomach to her genitals and dumped." The radio is full of this story. Full of politicians and posers, trying to outdo one another. Like funeral criers. But it will end, the show. And there will be marches and petitions. There will be statements and rage. But it will happen again. Until we are inured to shock. It will happen again. Until our bones are worn into dust and our teeth crushed into the sand. It will happen and happen. Until we invent a way to stop being women. Until we find a way for our blood to no longer bleed between our legs. As long as we exist, we will be raped.