Monthly Archives: June 2010

Football Mad: Mid-June 2010

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I got back to South Africa on Thursday 3rd June having spent over a month in Norwich, where Douglas was preparing for his GCSE examinations. He worked really hard, and I left feeling proud of him. I travelled on the 06.20 flight out of Norwich to Amsterdam, then took the daylight flight to Johannesburg. It is an arduous journey, but I made good use of the time, marking a PhD, and watching two films, (which are reviewed at the end of the posting). The theme is sport though.

The World Cup kicked off on the 11th June. South Africa held Mexico to a one all draw in the opening match. The mood in the country has been just amazing. The previous Saturday there was a rugby test between Wales and South Africa at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I played squash with my friend Jeremy Grest. After the game we had tea and watched the first 20 minutes of the game. I took his gardener to the bus stop and, on the way home, drove past my local shopping mall. There is, beside the road, a rather seedy bar behind massive steel burglar guards. The clientele are mainly older white people some with missing teeth and most with uncombed hair. I have been there twice and find it a bit odd. In order sit in the bar and watch the television you need to be buy drinks. There on the pavement was a group of, mainly black, car guards, delivery people and security staff, all peering in and cheering wildly as South Africa took the lead. It was truly an astonishing moment to see this engagement around what was, and still is largely, a white sport.

I had the good fortune to be invited by SAB Miller to attend the game between South Africa and the United States in Rustenberg. I spent three nights in an idyllic cottage in Magaliesberg mountains to the east of Pretoria, flying up on the Thursday evening and back on the Sunday. It was a real privilege and very intense. Let me try and bring these events together.

The first theme has to be distances, traffic and infrastructure. Everywhere seemed a ‘long way’, and the traffic made it even longer. My airport pick-up was organised by SAB and we were driven around by a team of older black entrepreneurs. They have set up a co-operative company to provide shuttles and chauffeur drive services. It was a pleasure to be driven by people who are working together. It means, among other things, that all the drivers get a decent salary and most have an investment in the organisation. I have been quite shocked by the salaries paid by the big companies, who, through out-sourcing, totally exploit their drivers.

The traffic generally was quite appalling; on Friday the itinerary had us visiting a project, going to the Indaba Hotel in Sandton for lunch and then dispersing to our various hotels to watch the opening game. We left the project site late, and on reaching Johannesburg, the traffic slowed to a crawl. It took two hours to do 10 kilometers. We abandoned the idea of lunch, bought sandwiches from a shopping centre and went into a bar to see the game. Two outstanding features were the great good humour of everyone we interacted with and the good South Africa response of “we will make a plan”. South Africa came to a standstill on Friday. Most offices and places of employment closed at 12.00 and I gave my staff the whole day off on the grounds that it was not really worth coming in just for four or five hours.

The great achievement of the World Cup (apart from the mood) is the new infrastructure, including the public transport system which is working extraordinarily well. The problem is that South Africans don’t trust it and so clog the roads with their cars. This will be a legacy for a long time.

My cottage was at Phefumula (see www.Phefumula.co.za). The site is well worth looking at. They describe it as: “Against the slopes of the Magaliesberg range is an escape from the hectic Highveld rush, a place of peace and quiet romance. A place to breathe, or just take a deep breath”. It is indeed right up in the mountains at the end of a truly appalling dirt road. Driving the three kilometers from the main road to cottages took 20 minutes in the saloon cars run by the shuttle service, and the undercarriages of the cars kept hitting the ground. It only took five minutes in a 4×4.

The second theme is the amazing feeling in South Africa. It is hard to describe the vibe in the country at the moment. Fans everywhere, the constant blast of the vuvuzelas. I traveled down from Johanesburg on Sunday and the plane, a large Airbus, was jam packed with German fans, all very good humored with occasional football chants being heard about the plane. The announcement is: “passengers are requested not to blow vuvuzela’s on the plane”.

South Africans have put their hearts and souls into making this work. Our crime problem is being addressed by very visible policing and swift justice. Near where I was staying is a lodge where Portuguese journalists were accomodated. They were held up by armed robbers and relieved of cash, laptops and valuables. The police acted incredibly swiftly: the men were arrested, tried and sentenced all within four days. The media, or at least the South African media, made a point of telling us that two of the culprits were Zimbabwean and one was Nigerian. The reason for the speed of the justice is we will only have our visitors in the country for a month and so could not ask them to return for trials. As long as this is real justice I don’t have a problem with it.

We visited two SAB Miller projects. On the Friday a bar in Duduza Township which is part of the “Men in Taverns” project. The goal is to develop responsible drinking and we sat and talked to a number of the participants who are involved in this initiative. The question is whether or not it is possible to have responsible drinking. I believe this is achievable but it is the whole culture that must be changed. I found it most encouraging project.

The second field trip was to the Masakhane Village outside of Magaliesberg. This village of 55 households and approximate 700 people comprises of farm workers who were evicted from their land in 1994. They were allocated land and built their village of corrugated iron shacks. What is unique about this is that they own title to the land and it is run as a form of cooperative. SAB has supported them in a number of ways. We sat in their brand new community hall and walked around the village. What was striking was that this is a community led initiative with SAB and other partners responding to community needs. They have water, a community center and an investment in training people in areas of empowerment and health (a first aid course but wow, it works and people feel empowered). The Masakhane Project website is: themasakhaneproject.blogspot.com.

Each household in this community has a small plot of land and on it, with one or two exceptions were shacks, made of leftover bits of corrugated iron. While what there is available seems minimal and the community poverty stricken we found this community is moving forward in substantial and substantive ways. The young men who were appointed as our guides were articulate and confident.

Nonetheless South Africa is a land of contrasts and from there we went to have lunch in a 5-star luxury hotel called De Hoek http://www.dehoek.com . What a contrast and how unjust it seems that there can be so much wealth and so much poverty right next to each other. We sat in a superb dining room; were fed a world class meal, incredibly meticulously prepared and served with aplomb and dignity by staff whom probably spends time in poverty stricken surroundings not dissimilar to those of Masakhane.

We drove from Masakhane straight to Rustenberg for the game. It was amazing. The streets were well patrolled and our movement into the stadium area went very smoothly. Of course we had parking available right next to the stadium which made life very much easier. The English supporters were out in full force with St George flags, face paints and enthusiasm. I made the mistake of saying use my forehead as a canvass and the picture is in the gallery! There were some Americans but they were in a minority. We arrived on schedule at 4.30 and discovered that the hospitality area did not open until 5.30. We waited outside, but it was all very good humored; people standing around chatting and enjoying the vibe and the environment. Once in the hospitality area we had drinks and yet more food before going in to take our seats. The Royal Bafokeng stadium holds about 42 000 people and was almost full. I suspect the empty seats were those people who had been unable to get tickets to travel to South Africa. It was a sea of colour and wave of noise. I can’t even begin to describe it. We had been very well provided for and this included earplugs. They were most necessary as the vuvuzelas are quite deafening. I was absolutely amazed by the volume. Our seats towards the middle of the pitch and just nine rows back. The game itself was scrappy as there are high levels of nerves among the teams. Nonetheless everyone was out of their seats when England took the lead and again when the USA scored an equalizer.

Traveling back afterwards was a lengthy process. The roads were clogged but it turned out that this was due to a motor accident, something that one cannot plan for. My World Cup experience has begun with a bang and I really feel that we, in South Africa, should be proud and pleased with what we have achieved to date. It is remarkable.

A few striking things. For some reason there were real glass bottles available in the stadium. This has been banned at rugby matches in South Africa and I believe in most other settings. It meant that trying to move down the row was treacherous as it was like walking on ball bearings. I cannot believe that they will allow these to be sold at future matches. The way the game is supposed to work is when the ball goes out of play one of the six or seven strategically placed ball holders around the field will throw a new one in for a quick continuation of the game. Clearly this experience was not one that the staff had had and as a result it was very funny to see a ball being kicked into the crowd and the man almost pleading that it be returned as soon as possible. The teams are transported to and from the matches in coaches and these are provided with a police escort. I’m not certain that I altogether approve of this blue light cavalcade as it disrupts traffic for everybody else.

Films

“Crazy Heart” is the story of a moderately successful country and western singer. It is similar to “Walk the Line” the Johnny Cash story. The key character is played by Jeff Bridges, who sympathetically portrays an older man, with a serious drinking problem, battling to make his way in an unforgiving world. The film ends with him having cleaned up his act, but not making it with the woman he falls in love with. It is an unusual but touching ending.

“Invictus” directed by Clint Eastwood, tells the story of the Rugby World Cup won by South Africa in 1995. It describes the astute politics of Nelson Mandela in allowing the Springboks to keep their name and their colours, in the face of opposition from the new Government. The story covers the period from the release of Mandela up to the when Francois Pienaar played by Matt Damon accepts the Cup at Ellis Park after beating the All Blacks. It is a remarkable story in terms of rugby and the politics around it

Mandela is sympathetically portrayed by Morgan Freeman. There are some little twists in the story that make it intriguing. For example there is mention of the danger of an attack on Mandela at the rugby game. A few seconds later we see a white male looking at the stadium through binoculars, but nothing comes of it. It also showed the jumbo jet flying low over the stadium at the opening match. I wonder how legal this was. This film proved to me how much altitude and wine heighten emotions. I sobbed my way through it.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is based on a children’s book. I found the film to be gloomy, odd and quite unpleasant so only watched 20 minutes.

Sunshine At Last: Early June 2010

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I have had a busy few weeks in Norwich. I started writing this while sitting at the dining room table as Douglas read me poetry. He is preparing for his GCSE exams and I am here, firstly in solidarity, and secondly hoping to be of some help. His first major exam, where he had to sit and write for a long period, was English Literature. One of the good things is that I am hearing lines from poems I had long forgotten. For example, from WB Yeats, The Second Coming:

   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

This is where Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe got the title for his first book, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, which we read at Waterford School, and found a real revelation. By then it had, I think, been published in the Heinemann African Writers Series. So it seems what goes around comes around.

Life here has been un-anarchic, albeit busy. We have been to the beach, about forty minutes away. It was most beautiful driving through the Norfolk countryside. The long winter meant the flowers have delayed their opening and all seem to be blooming together. On this road the sea appears in the distance with striations of colour: a muddy blue hugs the beach; then the aquamarine shades into gray in the distance; and shimmering patterns across the whole surface.

It was the first decent weekend and so the beach was busy. A few hardy souls ventured into the water. According to the data at the life-guard’s station, the sea temperature was only 14 degrees so I am filled with admiration. The North Sea is shallow, so there tend not to be big waves, indeed it would be accurate to say they ‘lap’ rather than break. Despite this there are always optimists who have body-boards and even, in one case, a surf board. We walked a few kilometers and went to the Beach Café for lunch. It is excellent, good food and a great view, most important they allow well behaved dogs. Didi had a great time chasing up and down on the sand, running into the waves, and pretending to be brave. The village website is www.mundesley.org and the café has a page on facebook.

We got to see the ‘British changing style’. You clutch a towel round the waist, (which usually seems rather small by this time) and attempt to put on a dry costume, or even worse, takes off a wet one. In Durban, a couple of months ago, I was sitting on the beach with Rowan, her boyfriend and one of her friends; a group of German tourists arrived. No modesty for them, it was stand in a circle and strip to put on their swimming costumes.

A week or so ago I had the crucial flying lesson. This was the third since I returned and it took me to over 20 hours of tuition. The essential goal was: learn to land. Up to four lessons ago landing was not crucial – David, my instructor, would do this. However, as we know, pilots have to be able to land. It is not easy. I was lucky, the wind was very light, and straight down the runway. I walked away from this lesson thinking that I could actually do this. I went back a few days later to consolidate what I had learnt, this time in rather a strong wind. It was gratifying to find I can, indeed, land.

At the moment I am ‘in the circuit’, which means taking off and making a 90?; leveling of; setting the power and trimming the plane; turning another 90?; flying parallel with the airfield; turning into the approach; gently putting the wheels on the tarmac; then taking up the flaps; going to full power and going round and doing it again. The whole time one has to know where one is. My landmarks are not assets to the Norfolk countryside. The first turn is over the pig farm: little tin huts; barren ground and tubular pink bodies; then over the gravel pit, a scar in the landscape with mounds of yellow soil; and finally aim at the factory chimney. They may not be attractive, but they do stand out. I have even been practicing with Google Earth.

Does that sound simple? Well it is not! There are controls, speed, angles of bank, radio calls and checklists that all have to be included. The most difficult part is the touchdown. I am supposed to fly parallel to the ground, gradually taking the power off, holding the nose up while the plane sinks gently onto the runway. This is a ‘flare’ and takes judgment and experience. It has to feel right. David had said: “I can teach you to fly, but I can’t teach you to land, this is something that you have to get through experience.” A key is to get the approach right: the rate of descent and the speed; the line-up, so the plane is actually pointed at the runway; then, at the right moment, take the power off. The website for the flying school is www.nsf.flyer.co.uk.

That describes the non-work life here. My main work activity has been to get to grips with the Political Economy of Swaziland book. There has been definite progress on this. I want to describe how the history of Swaziland has lead to the current situation with regard to the politics, economics and HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Going to see a live production of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at the Theatre Royal in the city last week was very helpful. A quote from the play on what history is: “How does stuff happen, do you think? People decide to do stuff. Make moves. Alter things.” This is exactly what happened in Swaziland and this is story I hope to tell. Over the past weeks I have been looking at the political trends in the region which have been crucial. In the 1980’s Swaziland and the other countries in the region benefited from the fact they stood against South Africa. Since then they have been quite ignored, and additionally they have slightly more wealth and so fall into the lower-middle-income country category, giving them less access to international resources.

Books

Joseph O’Neil, Netherland, Harper Perennial, 2009, 300 pages

This is a most unlikely topic. It is the story of a Dutchman, Hans van den Broek, living in New York, where he has been abandoned by his wife and child. He is a cricket player and the game comes to dominate his life. It is played mainly by immigrants from the former British colonies: the Caribbean Islands; Sri Lanka and India. Hans becomes particularly friendly with Chuck Ramkissoon, a charismatic Trinidadian entrepreneur and clearly criminal. It is his murder that leads to the reflection giving rise to the book. This book portrays a part of New York and the people living there, that is murky and subterranean. It is also a story of hope and friendship. At the end he and his wife are back together in London, attempting to make a go of their relationship. I had been looking at the book on airport bookshops wondering if I buy it, a week ago I was at the local library so I was pleased to be able to borrow it.

Andrea Camilleri, The Inspector Mantalbano series. These books have has their central character a tortured police inspector in Sicily. He is the local commander of a police station, staffed by a range of equally extraordinary characters. Camilleri is apparently a very well known Italian writer, but I have just been introduced to his books and am really enjoying them. They are published in paperback by Picador and are translated by Stephen Sartarelli. Obviously the translation is crucial in ensuring that the book remains good when it is put in another language.