These have been a long time coming. As you will see, they are poems on which I have been working. I have also been working on various others, but don’t want to put them up just yet.
Much love to everyone!
Si


The corner of the road version 4
for SH

The corner of the road
was where his house stood
when he was fourteen years old
and his father was the
do-it-yourself man
on the corner
of the road
at the top of
the hill

he learnt to drive on that hill
he bought a licence from
his neighbour, the traffic
officer, the year before
he got his first car

it was a Peugeot 403
painted and re-painted
it wouldn’t start unless parked
at the top of a hill
to run down

the car seats rolled down all the way
so he could lie in his seat and
hold Tracy’s hand as they
shared papsak in the back-road
fields of Stellenbosch
where he studied

and when he was done with it
the car sat at the top of the
road in the corner
where the house was
before his father moved
to Uitenhage and greyed

and the tattoos on his father’s skin
their ripple in muscles on arms and back
had slowed, their colours begun to fade
before when his father stood straighter
when he wasn’t angry or daft
and unable to mourn his dead wife
who everyone had loved more than
the man who drank,
was tattooed, stank.

Now, his father dead,
staring at the block of flats
where his home once stood
at the corner of the road
he points and says


“I lived there once”
he turns and looks down
to the river mouth
that’s moved back and forth
the length of the beach
to where it was when he was fourteen


where the lagoon gathers
a reflection of the moon
and the sparkles in the sea
could be fish or stars

looking up he picks out the stars
he loves in the night sky
“Charlie’s Pot is the real name
of Orion’s Belt” his
father told him once

“and the stars above it
are the steam, the smells of
all Charlie’s memories as
he cooks in his pot.”


Sea Point Sea Front June 2007 version 3

There’s a beach on the
Sea Point sea front
that cuts out of the ocean
an isosceles triangle
a bight of rock and sand.

Eroded walls
pocked pumice
protect the steps
to the rocks below
to the gritted sand.

As a child I’d
descend the stairs
feel the rough bits
of shattered shell
or discarded glass

Rubbed opaque
by sand grains
beneath my feet
as I tumbled my way
to the tidal pool.

I’d stand in soft shallows
in the glitter of ground perlemoen
scared of the seaweed-stained deeps
where my father plunged.

He’d arise from the seaweed beds
as a monster from the dark under spaces
his black hair shaggy and wet,
to leap out, chase me screaming
as I scrambled over the boulders
to the steps, and up beyond the walls.


Love Haiku
1.
detumescence: just
reward for this witness, who
refused your caress

2.
this late night harvest
of kisses from your wet lips
- tastes of dried apples

3.
your lying languor
hair your outspread wings, you perch
possessive falcon

4.
your breasts, scalloped shells
empty into my hands, I
bury them in sand

5.
before departure
lips scamper across my brow
firm eyes-closed adieux

6.
sharp-winged kestrel flight
the heat holds us up, we plunge
to earth-body’s grip

7.
dapples – leaves on snow
your fingers’ cadence across
the skin of my back

8.
rain prattles with roof:
late night lovers’ pillowtalk
rhythmic crescendos


Flying on the foreshore version 2 2007.06.14

My first flights took off
from the incomplete flyovers
by Buitenkant Street.

In his clapped-out BM my dad
would drive us toward
the broken roads
then before the turn
tell my sister and me
to close our eyes

he’d drive faster and faster
tell us we were flying
over Cape Town.

We tried to giggle and
scream at the same time
it was so joyous to fly!

He’d brake to tell us we’d landed
and we could open our eyes.
It was a crash landing back
onto the road, back to traffic.
We’d bounce up and down
on the sprung seats, their tic-tac
leather clinging to our skin.

* * *

Now, new buildings have grown
from the gravel and
concrete in my memories -

steel chasses
shells of towers
still to be built
metal monsters made in
the place I learnt to fly

hotels with fountains
lit from the inside shine
through my lidded eyes
to blind me when I try
to spread my arms
lift off the ground
in dreams where I drive off
the end of the road
to fly over Cape Town.



On the apron version 2 August 1, 2007


There’s a carcass of a cow
caught in the bed of wires
of a sliced up fence nestled
on the apron of grass
beside the highway.

Oh, but it’s not dead. No, it is.
The cow’s calf is crying
as if from dying lungs, but it’s
scabby-recent born, braying
knocking its nose into its

mother that lies cut-up
on the bed of blades
protective razor-wire.
They worry about all kinds
of dangers here: someone

sleeping on their land, foreigners
from beyond the border crazed by hunger
descending on this lot of land
held by reservists gripping rifles
in hog-like, hairy hands.

They look like meerkats on the backs
of their bakkies hopping up and down
at the slightest sight of uitlander kaffirs
asking for passes as though apartheid’s
reinstated on this stretch of land by Beitbridge.

But right now, I’m looking at the cow
her calf nudging her gently, knowing
there’s no more milk in her nipples
except for the red oozing from her chest
where the calf licks, licks then lies down.



South Coast Driving version 2 2007.07.05


It’s night-driving.
The kind where
the road doesn’t exist
beyond a few white hyphens
in the middle of the road.

Where patched grass marks
the receding hairline
of a dark landscape
that’s beyond reach.

Out of sight fires rouge the
lips and cheeks of the low hills
visible in the flames’ distant light.

The moon, caught in the clouds
isn’t so much a circle
as a red sickle of light caught
coming out of a cut
in the night sky, congealed
a scab on a knee.



Shucked version 2 July 2007


You stood in the centre of the room
wearing a tight-fitting green dress.
It was cold and the tiled floor
did nothing to help your shivers

As I undressed you, I saw a mielie
I was peeling, tearing off
tight-woven green fibres to
reveal dimpled paleness beneath

Your dress fell to the floor
in the final shucking
the shrug of your shoulders
released the last clinging strands.

I bit into the flesh of you
as into pale corn
as if your goosebumps were
the dimpled pods of its body.

Afterward, I wrapped you
up once more, a restoration
to unshucked beauty
enclosed in bed sheets.



Bomb Scare version 1 August 2007


Being ten, I was aware
something was awfully wrong
when people began to run
past me after the siren

my brother, just three, scrunched
his little fist in my grip
tighter than before as though
feeling the sound in his limbs.

A woman stopped beside us
to say “You must get outside.
It’s a bomb scare.” I thought
of cartoon bombs with red-

white smiling faces scared of my
hand-in-hand brother and me.
“Get. Out. Side!” It wasn’t
the bombs that were scared.

I picked up my brother, who wouldn’t
couldn’t run, he was heavier
and lighter than ever before
his fists still clenched.

A man shaped like a crowbar
tall, thin, head tilted down
at ninety degrees to speak to us
wheezed “You ok little boy?”

The steps up were high, my
foot kept catching on the lip
and my brother on my hip made
me look like a three-legged dog.

From behind me, my mum ran
up to us in panting concern
her hair in sudden windy disarray -
a vase of fallen flowers

dispersed across the floor.
I felt I’d have to lift her
pick-up-stick carefully
as she, down on her haunches,

looked at us with flit-flit
fearful eyes and “let’s go”
in her hands pulling us up
hefting James, holding me close.

Later, a dog tied to a lamppost that I
scratched behind the ears. We sat
on a park bench. Talked about scared
bombs. Mum hugged us till we got cold.



I remember your fingers version 1 August 2007
for nana

I remember your fingers
as they rummaged
through a jewellery box
to divulge rings, necklaces
and brooches, each pregnant
with stories of finding
and why-I-wore-them.
I recall red and blue biscuit
tins that you opened early
each morning, your fingers
dexterously twisting, prising
open rusty cornered lids
at the lip where you

could slip in your fingers
to get your biscuits for
Tesco tea, and talk to me
in the morning dark about
the thin, grey-stubbled man
who brought you biscuits.

I remember your fingers
most of all clutching to
white bed sheets, your index
finger clamped in white plastic
to monitor your heartbeat
the draining thrum of machines
that kept you momentarily alive

in the moments when you’d sit up
and rub your index finger like
someone rolling dough to ease
arthritic pain and how even then
your fingers were strong and running
through my thick hair as I stood
at the side of the bed and remembered

your fingers with rings of amber
or holding the face of Mary-mother
or you licking off crumbs when no one
but me was watching them. Unlike now.
When all we can watch is your hands.
They clench the white sheets and look
like broken quail’s eggs in their
spotted brown and white, the wrinkles
looking as tiny breaks in the you that held us.

And when, in that final moment
I knew I’d never see you open
anything again, it wasn’t your eyes
out of which your soul left
but out of your fingers as they
loosed their grip on the sheets
and now hold only memories
you’d collected there for me.



Some Tanka
i.
dry grass clasps the hills
my eyes linger on your back
cut rivers of light
from blond hair tied up in knots
melted to glass in the heat


ii.
leaves burnt in autumn
flecks of ash freckle your face
black ash landscapes form
in your irises’ blue seas
they float, leave in streams of tears


iii.
petals of bursting
bougainvillea settle
on the plaits of light
caressing your back, neck
each a momentary sunrise


iv.
footprints in drenched sand
the rain led your every step
with its tiny feet
as the storm recedes it leaves
a map of my loves on the beach

I’m sitting at my laptop, late at night with a rugby-injured shoulder which is preventing me from falling asleep. I should be writing an essay I have due for Prof Haresnape, but late night letter writing is far more entertaining (for me and for you I assure you – unless of course you want a diatribe on the aesthetics of structure and form.,or their lack, in contemporary South African poetry). I have been bombarded by the following in the last week or so: Don Imus vs. The Scarlet Nights (‘Nappy-headed ho’s’), The David Benatar – Martin Hall Transformation Debate, Cho’s Virginia Tech Massacre, Smith vs. Pietersen (read South Africa vs. England), Wolfowitz and Shaha, fallout/defence of Gordon Brown’s tax plans, and then of course there’s the fairly consistent Obama vs. Clinton, but I must say, I’m kind of bored by that one right now.

So what the hell does any of this bombardment have to do with a letter for Speakeasy? Good question. Ten points. All of the stories above are driven by personalities, not by any appreciation of literature or writing. That is what drives their relevance. One of my frustrations, as yet another in the horde attempting to complete a Creative Writing degree, is the almost inevitably problem that exists between ‘having a following’ (read: having a market) and being a rookie trying to come around the outside. For someone in poetry this is doubly problematic as so few people these days seem to take any interest in this form of writing except for academics and those who flock to Off the Wall on Monday evenings in Observatory.

Last year, while doing a seminar on South African fiction it was put down to us to read a ‘sampling’ of contemporary South African fiction. We read everything from J.M. Coetzee to Rayda Jacobs to Mary Watson to Koos Kombuis. We took to this smorgasbord like little piglets to the trough guarded reverently by the Professors who attended us. However, I stopped going. It was an extra for me and I had become dreadfully bored. As a ‘young’ South African there is nothing more frustrating than coming across yet another book telling some tale about the dynamics of race relations in apartheid or post-apartheid South Africa. We’ve read Richard Rive, Njabulo Ndebele, Athol Fugard (ok, not strictly fiction), Sol Plaatje, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer – we’re told (not in so many words) “This is the canon! You must read and appreciate those in the canon.”

Problem: if they are in the canon does that mean we have to like them? The problem is often one of endorsement – because we read Rayda Jacobs in a creative writing seminar, does that make it ‘good’? Does this validate the writing, the ploy, the dynamics of the story? Should we aspire to this? Do we want a place in the canon?

What amazes me is that the concept of a canon of South African literature was ridiculed prior to the end of, and immediately after, apartheid. However, now that sufficient time has elapsed those who criticized the ‘canon’ and the very concept of a canon wish to appear in a ‘new’ canon. This canon being one that is ‘representative’ and which doesn’t ‘give credence to white hegemonic distributions of power in writing’, rather it is non-normative, reactionary. But it’s still trying to establish a canon, which is therefore normative, hegemonic and therefore problematic. If the counter-hegemony becomes the hegemony then they have simply become that which they detested. Blah!

Why? Why? Why? Why? Must literature follow in the footsteps of South Africa’s politics? Must those who previously ascribed to communist dogma and who are now staunch neo-libertarians have their counterparts in the worlds of fiction, poetry and theatre? No! I object. Screw the concept of a canon. Screw its recreation and the channeling of a canon to people who are beginning to find their own creative expression. Do not let the canon dull your voice!

So what do those first few lines I wrote have to do with any of what I wrote subsequently? Well, to me it’s all about the people. We get caught up in the people involved, we become emotionally enmeshed in their lives and consequently read what they write rather than because of an actual appreciation for the writing. This is an awful way to think about literature and to get people to read books (marketing people will tell you otherwise, but I dissent). So, no ‘canon’, Thank you very much. No reading people simply because they were or are political. Read because the writing is good and, for non-fiction, if the arguments they create are decent, logical and well-thought out. Thanks.

Below is something I was planning to submit to 'Speakeasy' but then I got carried away and it got slightly longer than I intended. I wrote it a while back now, but all well and good.

For a few mornings as I have driven up to my office at the University of Cape Town, I see the little sign for the filming of Disgrace on the highway before the Rosebank turnoff. “Ahah!” I think, “How are they going to portray David Lurie well? Will Mr. Malkovich play the self-pitying and communicatively-hobbled Communications Professor with a decent accent? With an attitude or choler that approximates his South African, upper-middle-class, white apathy and self-pity? I don’t know. Should be interesting to see though.

Notwithstanding the filming of the movie, or my ruminations as I pass that sign each morning, seeing the sign begs the question: Can they pull it off? Not only in the sense that the film and its crew need to approximate the horror and disgraceful nature of the Coetzee book, but will the film have a similar reception to that of the book? Will feminists be up in arms about the role of the female as raped and burdened? Will we be able to pursue the role of language and communication as avidly in the film as viewers as we could in the book as readers? In fact it is this problem of language in the book that inspired me to discuss the problem of language in this forum: briefly, anecdotally and somewhat personally.

I am pursuing my MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UCT while working as a researcher in Economics here at UCT. One of the problems with which I have had to deal recently is that of the suffusion of my life into that of my writing. Specifically the problem of violent encounters in my life and that of my family and friends and my attempts to translate that into a communication that is neither trite nor self-pitying but endeavours to grapple with the issue at hand: how do we as South Africans communicate and deal with the violence and the egregious violations with which we are faced every day? Yes, as an approximation of Disgrace I am working at a tertiary institution, earning decent money and part of the white upper-middle class. But no, I am not middle-aged, nor a Professor of Romantics (cum communications) nor am I engaging in undercover affairs.

However, I have been held up at gunpoint for a mugging and a hijacking respectively. My parents’ home has been robbed (not the CT one). My brother has been mugged twice at knifepoint. My neighbours and close friends have experienced any of: hijacking, rape, murder and mugging. I am not saying this as an appeal for pity, nor am I saying this as yet another re-statement on ‘the state of crime’, this utterance is to do with the changes in language and expression when individuals are confronted with violence in everyday circumstances.

When I went to my post-crime counselling for the hijacking (as my psychology studying friends advised me to do) at the Rondebosch Police Station the counsellor was appreciative of my responses. I had written in my journal about the experience, I had begun writing poetry about it. I had attempted to begin the wording of its violence and violation in order to ‘deal with it’. All well and good. On the other hand, my girlfriend had cried a lot, had (and has) bad dreams, struggled to sleep and hadn’t wanted to write or talk about it all that much, even though everyone we encountered wanted to hear the story again and again. Which leads to my first anecdotally observed point: violation leads to the demand for retelling of the violation.

Concomitant to this I have a general belief that I will do my best not to perpetuate racist ideologies. If ever anyone asked me about the incident I did my best never to bring up the race of the individuals involved because I believe that people conflate race as an observable characteristic shared by a group with an individual’s chosen activities. They aren’t the same thing and never will be. Statistical discrimination aside, I generally prefer to steer away from perpetuating racist dogma. Hence, the race of the persons that committed the crime remains unstated. Thus violation led, for me, to the exclusion and omission of information, the shading of stories. (Note: this excepts of course the problem where the ‘not mentioning’ or the absence of something highlights that something, oh well I’ll just have to deal with that).

Recently, having moved back home before going overseas for my Ph.D., my step-father, whose affection for David Bullard’s columns has consequence, decided that we would have to upgrade the security system at home and that our own preparedness for potential burglars was paramount. We now have several systems in place: the ‘garage system’ and the ‘if they jump over the wall’ system. In the first, each of us with our handheld garage openers doubling as personal alarms should set off said personal alarm and scream if attacked. Anyone else in the house should run to the entrance between the garage and house and start yelling and opening-slamming the door as we patiently, although manically attend ADT. In the second scenario, we ensure that most of our doors are locked at all times so that we can funnel any burglars-attempting-entry to one possible entry point. We reviewed potential weaponry: the stools on which we sat, the kettle (preferably containing hot water), our bodies. We concluded that if anyone entered our homes with a firearm they would most likely leave us for dead (the no-witness rule) hence we should do whatever possible to remain alive. Having played a fair amount of rugby, I should be prepared to dive-tackle any unwary would-be burglars. Throwing random kitchenware was also thought to be a valid response. Panic button pressing: of paramount importance. My step-dad was pleased to have this resolved. We are also planning to get laser beams for early warning, a bigger dog, additional panic buttons, and large bolts on bedroom doors. Just in case. So yes, violation can lead to a language of preparedness, strategy and equally a language of absurdity (all very Dubya of us).

Lastly, there is the language of inevitability. Previously, I believed, in the way that youth believes itself invincible, that I would remain unaffected (notwithstanding my father’s multiple burglaries). I would walk blissfully through my South African life with my car being broken into on occasion when I wasn’t there (that phenomenon reached double digits some time ago). However, this was not to be. An encounter with violence, with the experience of violation is inevitable as a South African. Again this is not said so that people pity us as South Africans, or so that we doom ourselves to a cesspit of self-indulgent self-pity in a vicious cycle, but rather a statement of inevitability, of the way that every individual living in the country will be affected by or affect a crime. Think of the ‘tends to’ sign in math. As t→T, p_c → 1, or in English. As time spent in South Africa tends to the length of one’s full time, the probability of you being personally affected by crime tends to 1 (or 100%).

The thing is that I am not at all prepared to do what Lucy, David Lurie’s daughter in Disgrace says, "Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept, to start at ground level. With nothing…” I am not prepared to accept nothing. I am not prepared to believe that I have to retell my story on demand. I will do so at my pleasure. If I choose to I will lie and omit and if not I will tell people what I think. I will strategize if I want to and laugh at the absurdity of it all: the absurdity of laser beams, of poverty, of the extremes of violation in literature, film and life in general and our responses to it. Lastly, I will meditate on the language of inevitability of the fact that if you’re in South Africa eventually you’ll be faced with criminal activity and violation and you’ll have to deal with it. How you accept it though is something else entirely, I don’t propose starting at ground level with nothing, I propose instead a grappling with the language, with the form of expression that you choose so that your writing, your communications, no matter how blunt, oblique, truthful, mendacious or whatever finds you in a capacity able and willing to fight for and to accept more.

So I haven’t written about my recent experiences in Northern KwaZulu Natal. It’s all be fairly mundane in terms of work. Mostly I have been pent up in offices with various people trying to find specific files in folders several volumes long. All I need are 3 files within these larger files – the PIRs, Designation Memos and List of Beneficiaries. Don’t worry about what that means, or why they’re relevant to me.

In Vryheid I had the wonderful experience of arriving and basically spending three hours trying to get one random admin person to understand what I needed and why and yes I had communicated with his superiors and yes this is a copy of the emails and could he just help me! Communication was strange, I had to ask him to repeat things office because his accent was thick. We had one conversation in which he wanted to ask me how much money I made ‘in theh pryvaat sectah’. I explained carefully (again) that I wasn’t in the private sector. But he didn’t seem to get it and asked how much money I was being paid in my ‘pryvaat sectah johb’. I didn’t tell him how much, just simply said that it was decent. He wants to go into the private sector and build a business rather than be in government. He likes the idea of his spawn (my word, not his) taking over a company he has built from scratch. ‘You cahn’t hev femilly coming into johbs when you ah in govennment.’ Well, at least he’s not a sponsor for corruption. That day and the next were very long. And I haven’t even mentioned that they were having their offices re-carpeted and consequently I spent most of those two days high (relatively speaking) on glue fumes.

Other highlights in Vryheid:

Being the only white person in the KFC – I found out later that most white people went to ‘the other KFC’. I found that very funny and had to do my best not to laugh.

Running the main road in Vryheid, dead pigeon, beer bottles, so much littering the grass you’d think you were in Greenpoint after a concert in the stadium. Very odd.

The odd people in the bar. A trio of bikers. A trio of Americans, one of whom was a woman with ‘blonde’ hair, and who swore in every sentence. Her commentary on fishing and the nuances of the taste of fish (“No, that one’s really shitty”, or “Shit I wouldn’t eat that”, or “That one’s fucking good eatin”). Several regulars. A middle-aged/post-menopausal (you have to have post-something) couple who were getting drunk together, both of them were rosy-nosed and you could see this was ritualized, mutual reinforcing alcoholism. They were very friendly.

The lady at the reception of my B&B (really a hotel), the Shonalanga Lodge, who was definitely a poppie-waiting-for-a-man-to-take-her-away. For some reason her hair was grown down to beneath her bottom – almost like she was hoping to be an Afrikaan Rapunzel about to catch some city man with her hair and her odd (khaki stripes, navy with stripes, etc) suits.

I had to get up at 5:30 the next morning to be at meetings in New Castle starting at 7:45. That was fun. The drive was uneventful, although occasionally misty.

Poignant moment: children walking to school in groups, looking about 6/7 and older, to ensure that they get to school on time. Skipping through the mist.

New Castle was way more efficient than Vryheid. Thankfully. However, almost all of the staff had to be at meetings at 10am which meant that my ‘interviews’ had to be done at hyperspeed. Again got some information. Very useful. Marveled at the Zulu/Xhosa/Nguni generally tradition of referring to people with a ‘u’ prefix– you know uMandela, uSimon and so on. Marveled also at the number of employees who have passed away (not of old age, I didn’t ask further questions). Which brought to light the massive problem that this is in South Africa, with the death of people their knowledge of projects, institutions, and so many other things vanishes. Sucks. This is purely the Econ-Simon talking, not the emotional one who is like ‘My Word! Their families…’ but we won’t get into that.

Left New Castle and made my way to Ladysmith. Ahh yes, Ladysmith of the Battlegrounds. The Battlegrounds seem to be what Northern KZN is famous for, I drove past several routes to Blood River and many signs for ‘Battleground B&B’ or ‘Battleground Camping’. Hmm… So very pleasant, let’s celebrate war! Yay! Mutual Killing of Brits, Boers and Zulus, Yay! WTF? Don’t get it.

I was surprised by the number of strange toad-women I encountered in Ladysmith, receptionists, administrators, cooks and the like. I call them toad-women because of their, well, surprising similarity in form and shape to toads. They all seem to have this odd propensity to be quite capably vast (i.e. they expand their waists with incredible capability), not only that but they spread out in such a way that it makes it look as though they would leap at you and squash you in their capacious bosoms at the drop of a suitably alluring cupcake (or some such), but also because they have this strange wobbling, squatting walk. Toad-women. However, this image can be suddenly shattered when you hear one of them talk, if it is a high-pitched, accented, squeal of a voice then the juxtaposition of the frog image on this vocal oddity can be quite scary. Terrifying in fact.

Moving away from terror, but extending the animal imagery, the restaurant manager at the hotel provided me with another interesting animal to consider. He looked rather like an overgrown and overplump pug dog. It was almost as if his father had repeatedly dropped him on his face as a child, or alternatively if he had repeatedly met with fights at school. Either of these would suffice to result in the squashed flat visage with which I was so frighteningly provided. Moreover, the moustache on his top lip and curling slightly around his mouth helped to cement the image, making him look even squishier and pug-like. Odd. Moreover it solidified the sensation of terror that seemed so pervasive in Ladysmith.

So I slept in Ladysmith in ‘The Royal Hotel’. I think that the ‘Royal’ was meant to be some insistence by the progenitors of the establishment to insist that Ladysmith and its neighbour Harrismith were linked to British royalty, or at least its nobility. The owners also showed their willingness to extend this by using decorations in the mode of the ‘British Pub’ (monolithic concept that it is). So there were numerous dimly lit areas, wood was pervasive and poorly patterned carpeting and curtains were the requisite ‘final touch’. Ahhh feels like… um… poor taste. The bed was bad. However, there is a redeeming feature. Personally, I judge establishments, hotels/b&bs specifically, by their showers. If they have piddling showers that have no pressure and drip as incessantly as an incontinent octogenarian, then they are relegated to the ‘unsalvageable’ category. However, if they have potent, virile, pressured, striking, get the dirt off of rugby-player showers, then they are redeemed (if they were in the dog box prior to that), or they are further lauded (if they are already to my satisfaction). So yes, this hotel was partly redeemed because of its wonderful shower.

Oh yes, at dinner, being bitten by fleas leaping onto my unsuspecting legs from their abodes in the carpet did not stir up my loyalty. Silly them for allowing a hotbed of fleas to develop in their kitschly chosen ‘Brit-pub’ carpet.

Sleep = arb. Heard squeaky bed next door late at night. Heard boere-bakkies (they are a special breed that make more noise than any other bakkies in existence) churning oil and chuckling out smoke at about 5am, probably the valiant steeds of boeres looking to be on farms early in the morning. Woke me way earlier than I would have liked.

As a result of seeing some women at breakfast a question begged itself of me. Why do highlights seem so incredibly out of place in a black woman’s hair? The vision: her hair relaxed, then dyed-highlighted, the shaped with mousse. The problem: it looks rather like a bush buck’s tail with the remnants of excrement staining bottom half, and the top half golden or white. But all of this had somehow made its way to the head rather than the arse hole on this specimen of womanhood. Ho hum.

I had my fresh fruit and my yoghurt with muesli. A note: it requires incredible self-discipline not to have the eggs/bacon/sausage thing that hotels offer for breakfast. Even when you know it isn’t going to be as good as you yourself would cook, simply because it is there, often in the company of stodgy muffins or scones and tomatoes that have lost their red, you feel the urge to consume them. I have resisted it! I didn’t have it on this trip. I did on my previous one to Port Shepstone and it was a bad decision, but I managed to resist the urge this time.

One of my last experiences on the trip was the Virgin Active gym in Durban. I managed to get myself in free of charge and have a work-out, something I had been craving for the past few days. Jogs, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges, etc have nothing on a good cycle followed by an upper body work out and a decent shower and KAUAI! Wow it felt great to do good exercise and eat good food. I felt restored. My parents would be proud.

Right now I am in Durban International Airport. I tried to master my map and find a route to the airport. It took longer than expected and at least a few U-turns. They were quite thrilling – U-turns in the face of oncoming traffic at high speed. Lots of fun!

I decided to treat myself to a waffle and ice-cream at the coffee shop here as I had arrived far too early to go past the gates. However this treat has been more like an attack of ignorance about what waffles are meant to be like. It is not hot. I had to send it back because it didn’t have ice-cream. I then had to ask for syrup/honey/something to do the waffle-thing. Oh well. Moral of the story? Waffle is bad. I shouldn’t have gone on as long as I have.

Love you all and can’t wait to be home.

Well, I’ve just arrived in Durban again. This time I got to drive into Durban proper, rather than simply take the N2 directly out of the Airport to Port Shepstone. Tomorrow I drive to Vryheid.

The flight here wasn’t too eventful, except for being over-populous as a result of the Cape Argus Cycle Tour. No aisle seat for me, I was squished between a madala type in a green suit, tie and hat and a Zulu woman with stick-out-backwards hair. All very cool. I was reading Bret Easton Ellis’ Rules of Attraction interspersed with an analysis by Brodskey of Robert Frost in a collection called Homage to Robert Frost. Apart from a bit of turbulence the flight was delightfully uneventful. The turbulence sent me on a stream of consciousness hypothetical story about the plane, something along the lines of:

the plane lands safely the plane hits the ground the brakes screech the rudder rattles the passengers feel the force of it but they arrive safely the wheels hit the ground and the craft begins to aquaplane the brakes engage eventually the arrive safely the wheels hit the ground the craft aquaplanes it hurtles towards the terminal the driver controls it but sacrifices some of the people on the plane by crashing into a petrol-truck standing by which results in an explosion he is cremated on the spot the pilot engages the plane’s landing gear one wheel doesn’t come out properly they don’t know and still try to land the craft aquaplanes and spins spins spins somehow gains speed smashes into the terminals causing massive destruction death calamity the plane lands safely the plane feels the water dripping from it

Anyway, arriving in Durban and upon egress from the plane I was assaulted by the typical, tropical mode of Durban: heat and humidity. You walk for fifty metres from your aircraft and you begin to sweat. Not pleasant, especially for a silly person of pom descent such as myself who suffers in this type of condition. Oh well…

I got my rental car – Toyota Corolla. Again. White. Drives decently. Importantly: AIRCON! I had to ask directions to the City Lodge (where I am typing this) of the lady of Indian descent who was at the Budget Car Rentals. She duly provided me with a map and described my route. I managed not to follow her directions but still arrive at the City Lodge. Go me.

At the Lodge I had a funny series of misadventures within the first few minutes of arrival. Luckily, the receptionists (or service managers, or whatever they’re called these days) were holding my booking form in their hands (yes, both of them were simultaneously holding it – I think they were in the process of an exchange of sorts). Signed forms, gave numbers. Blah. Get some change to get a much-needed chocolate – can’t have any during the week, last chance so to speak. At the vending machine I see the courageous Bar One that wishes to assuage my craving (anthropomorphized by the power of said craving, and actually having agency and preferences, such as fulfilling its Simon-given purpose) and I slam in my five rand coin. The Bar One does not jump down to the bottom as it should. I begin to question its commitment to my craving. I think, ok, fine, price differentiation and all that, I’ll pay ten rand for my bar one. I put in another five rand coin. The Bar One moves forward slightly but once more decides that the vending machine slot for us humans to harvest the wares is not its optimal locus. I get the service managers to help me - both of them again leaping to my aid with alacrity and joie de vivre oozing from their every pore, well not actually, but I was thinking of making this into a musical and the stage directions I’d provide for my troupe. They give me two Bar Ones after hearing of my travails.

I waltz up to my room – Room 219 in the ‘Non-Smoking Wing’. It looks as though their ‘Smoking Wing’ is larger than their ‘Non-Smoking Wing’. This concerns me. Unlucky for me I have the room at the absolute end of the passage. Quite please that, for the first time ever, I have my very own (I’ve shared one before) door-swipey-card-thingy I suavely place it into the slot. Hmm… the yellow light blinks twice. Internal Monologue: that’s not meant to happen. Solution 1: Read the instructions on the back and follow said instructions. Perform Solution 1. Blinky yellow lights. Solution 1 doesn’t elicit required result. Solution 2: Perform ‘Solution 1’ slowly. Blinky Yellow Lights. Solutions 3 – 5: Perform ‘Solution 1’, but with the nuance of repeatedly jamming the card into the hole. BLINKY Yellow Lights. Result: Solutions 3-5 fail miserably. Solution 6: Realize I am being filmed and go to ask for help. Hmm… I am not being filmed, but I still go to ask for help. The service manager (only one this time) encodes a new card and accompanies me to my room commenting appositely on how far it is from reception (Image: Simon lugging bags to Room 219, the room farthest from the reception. Again).

Once in my room I was sweating (refer to last image). I looked for the Air Conditioner of Joy. It turns out not to be the Air Conditioner of Joy, but rather the Air Conditioner of Making-a-Massive-Racket. Which leaves me with a conundrum – do I wish to fall asleep and wake up because I feel hot and sweaty? or, alternatively, do I wish to simply lie in bed, but not sleep because of the noise? Hmm… difficult one… Catch Twenty-Two comes to mind, but in a far more mundane, and only personally annoying sense.

Ok, time for me to end this arbitrary post. Life she is hectic. Wow.

Traveling is interesting. In any of its aspects it is. I am not particularly accustomed to getting up before 5am to get to the airport before my flight leaves, but I did that this morning in order to go to a regional land reform office to do work on the Quality of Life project on which Malcolm Keswell and I are working for the DLA. Rocking!

I arrived in Durban and it was 24 degrees at 9am. Thankfully the car that was booked for me is air-conditioned. I then drove directly to Port Shepstone. I’ve never been to ‘Sheppie’ before. I took the Northern offramp to Port Shepstone and drove down a regional road with trees overhanging the road on either side. It is so incredibly lush here, massive tracts of land covered in pale green sugar cane, dark green skinned avocadoes being sold on the road by hefty mamas, the bright greens of the banana trees. Some of the trees that overhung the road were a more sullen, deep green. KZN can give you several definitions, several ideas of what constitutes ‘green’.

I felt as though I had really come to another country, rather than just had a 2 hour plane flight to another area in South Africa. It really appeals to me that SA hosts such a multiplicity of regions with their own micro-climates.

Anyway, back to Sheppie. What I found also to be particularly interesting and somewhat strange (not having seen it before) driving down the main road here was that the beach on the left hand side as you approach the town breasts a sea that is a damp and sandy brown. It was low-ish tide and there is a river mouth in the bay which is why it is so brown, but I hadn’t seen the river yet and it looked as though the see was a churning mass of brown, rather than the customary steel and dark blue one attributes to the sea.

Sitting in the office, the electricity keeps on switching off and then on again – it messes with productivity like you wouldn’t believe. Luckily I am on a laptop and things work ok for me, but these people whose computers keep on switching off and then on again, it creates havoc for them.

* * *

Other than that, I was staying in a pokey two star place called ‘Venture Inn’ (ha ha…ha). I walked into my room and immediately started to have Simon Halliday allergic reactions to dust mite overpopulation – puffy eyes, closing chest, itchy & scratchy, etc. So, I found someone who told me where to find a pharmacy and I duly bought antihistamines. They were called Laura, I teased the lady at the dispensary asking her why she was trying to sell me the pill (Diane - Laura…?).

Got back and went for a run. That was good – reminded me how ‘nature’ (that monolithic thing that we categorise as nature at least) seems to be very different in South Coast KwaZulu Natal than it does in Cape Town. In Cape Town our nature is tamed, even at its wildest in suburban spaces, say Klaassenbosch, we still have things labeled and signposted. In Sheppie on the one side of the road you have squat, brown & red facebricked house (it goes from one colour of brick to the other, with an icing of plastered and painted wall - it seems as though that is an attempt at diverse ‘style’) and on the other you are presented with these leaves, grasses, browns, greens and wildness. It reminds me of the origins of the word savage – that which comes from the forest, is of the woods, that which is wild (hence also satyr if I recall accurately).

* * *

Something else that was oddly surprising about my pokey abode was the food. Included in the stay there are dinner and breakfast. The dinner menu was comprehensive and meaty. I had the best spare ribs I have had in a long time at this hotel (two stars, random shitty rooms with dolphin print duvets and run-all-night toilet plumbing (unless you are cunning and know the basics of how to lift the lid and organise the inner workings)). They were honey basted and MASSIVE! I couldn’t finish them. All good though.

While eating on the covered verandah of the hotel I sat at my table (in those dodgy plastic chairs that are prone to breaking if you swing on them) with its lino-base cover and watched, felt, heard, sensed the rain as it came down. I don’t think rain is ever something one just can feel the touch of, it is almost an entire bodily experience, which is why I like rain, in fact part of me would love to do the prancing-in-the-rain-naked thing. Although that requires very few people to be around and freedom to prance, but I digress. It was storming as I ate. Another couple were there for a birthday dinner (what a treat!?) others were trying to get the name of the waitress correct (“Moyi, tog so, like ‘Prrretty in Afrrrikaans? Moyo?”). It was quite futile – rather like watching a pea attempting to climb a plate in a dishwasher (peas have agency, I promise).

After drugging myself with anti-histamines and getting ever-closer to the end of Midnight’s Children (Saleem had left the Sundarbans, joined his uncle’s family, left his uncle’s family, and met Pictureji), I feel promptly asleep. Pre-5am mornings are not good things, in fact there rather like Helsinki – Who goes there?

Morning: I had the semi-hang-over of a part-doped, part-hay-fevered individual. Choleric almost. Well not quite, but fun to say. Yes, choler – in that kind of terrifying, Roman, Propertian manner (Wow, it’s sometimes so much fun to over-write things).

Breakfast was heinous.

The rest of the morning at the regional DLA was productive. I managed to change my flight, drive to Durban international and fly home. The trip was energizing, exciting and draining at the same time. I have gotten a better sense of what is required of me for this project, what is going to be required on the ground later on, and various other things. It’s all quite hectic really.

Anyway, I fly out to Durban again on Sunday. I drive to Vryheid on Monday, then Ladysmith on Wednesday and hopefully back on Thursday night (holding thumbs), nevertheless if I need to be there longer, then so be it. This project requires WAY more work than lecturing ever did, but it is far more exciting as a result.

I have a niggling hate that has become more and more obvious as time has passed. It is a hatred of split infinitives. For those of you who don’t know, an infinitive is a “to ___” word, i.e. the verb in an ‘infinite’ form, such that it can be applied readily to anyone or anything. There is no object and no subject.

In languages other than English, the infinitive is normally a single word, hence it cannot be split. For example the words ‘avere’ in Italian, or ‘avoir’ in French translate into the infinitive ‘to have’ in English. Thus, in these Latin-derivates, you cannot split up the infinitive with a heinously placed adverb. For example you can’t translate ‘to boldly go’ into Italian or French, it will translate as either ‘boldly to go’ or ‘to go boldly’.

These days people using English, specifically Amer-english, tend to split their infinitives willy-nilly (as an example, ‘to willy-nilly split their infinitives’). It is pervasive. I read academic papers and they say ‘to rigorously show’, or ‘to adequately prove’. THIS IS HEINOUS! It is incorrect. I know people go on philosophical rants about “whose right is it to honestly choose (ha ha, get it?) what the right English is? Hey?”

I say, “Screw ‘em!” The correct English is that which obeys most readily the accepted linguistic rules. I can excuse 2^nd/3^rd language English speakers when this occurs. When I am not concentrating occasionally I fall into this colloquial speech trap (so devised by Americans to get us to speak as they do. Well… not consciously, but it is a driver). However, if I am reading a statement (by SASCO for example), or a journalistic piece of writing, or something else which is making every attempt to be ‘accurate’ then this bugs me. Just thought you should know. I dislike split infinitives. Irrational, but true.

Wind-blown

The Cape bears the scars

of cling-wrap beaches

tight against its shores

curled grotesquely into coves,

that interrupt the language of rock

the speech of sea anemones.

Stalks of brown kelp

all broken yolk slimy

and stamped on by the

pale feet of Cape Town’s

pick-'n-pay packet children

colour the sand off-white.

Discarded heads of rope

and the pecked-empty skulls

of once screeching gulls

make a mausoleum of the coastline

bucket and spade headstones

and sand-inscribed epitaphs.

A blue and white plastic bag

floats about in the wind that

drives down the crinkle-cut coast.

It could be waiting to become

a boy on the beach. Methodically,

he’d tie the laces of his shoes

scrape off sand and salt.

Highway

Driving the N1 is a baptism by fumes:

Total immersion in the smoky viscera

of internal combustion, their invasion

of your nostrils turns your snot black

and gritty as last week’s left-over ash.

It was midday on a Friday in December,

and the traffic was thick as turning yoghurt

left out on a summer’s afternoon.

My fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly

the bruised leather of its contours

stuck to the skin, adhered to my

knuckle wrinkles like old, viscid malt.

* * *

Rub your thumb against your index finger

when your palms are slightly sweaty.

You should get the kind of squeaky,

frogs-croaking-at-night,

“No, I don’t want soup”

Hot

that inhabited my car

(small, white, no aircon,

the tyres going bald)

Yes, you’ve got it

– that kind of hot.

* * *

I was driving the N1

out of Cape Town.

It was holiday time.

dogs of war (revision)

the dogs

(of this war)

are weakened

they’re without food

they’ve devolved to water ripple ribs

to necks so thin they look

like they’ve grown fins

I see them skulk

Langa's streets,

the other orphans of this

filial affair

sanguine and loyal

they’re left behind

without caregivers

sans family

amidst the real orphans,

the opal eyed glue-sniffers

the cup-your-hands-to-catch-

water-from-a-tap beggar boys

bent on catching something,

even if it is aids and

“they’re far too young for any of this”

and “I agree” and “it happens”

and it just doesn’t make

sense that we can’t do anything

about the fact that dogs are the

survivors of families dead by aids.

There are dogs dead

and dogs dying in the street.

That’s just the dogs.

People are doing the same thing.

And white people I know seem to cry more

about dead dogs (flies buzzing)

than lots and lots of dead,

poor, unemployed, black, people.

‘same difference’

some of them say.

the salt of lost oceans

in a kiss

I taste the salt

of lost

oceans

on your lips

one Day crafts another

Sunrise starts

its claim of Dawn

a steady consonance

the coalescence

of rays of the sun

their ocean reflections

their shimmers in rivers

their clasp on glass

form sunlight’s shackles

on Daytime

yet the lock’s decay is steady

the Aurora of night

slip the chains,

and Day is released to Darkness

Nighttime stakes its claim

unreflective, unshimmering,

but clasping and bright

as a changing Moon

that relights the night

then relinquishes its hold

as Sunrise starts

its claim of Dawn

a steady consonance

the coalescence

of rays of the sun.

just so

as we lie in the half-night

your teeth and tongue

make playful chiaroscuro

of its darkness and light

your lips cross-hatch

your mouth, your teeth are the

paper-thin white that sits

beneath every charcoal sketch

none of them have had your face

tight against this black and white

blanket, your back up and down

with night-breath, and the slight

curve of your shoulders as you clutch

the pillow to your breasts: pale,

caught by moonbeams that cleave

the curtains and tie you with the such

enormous strength of the night-time,

silk slivers of ropey darkness,

that bind to a sketch of you in bed

in the half-light, the sublime

just so you are caught in the artistry of dreams

The height of care

was the sagging skin

of my grandmother’s elbow

dipped carefully

into hot bath water

She would dip and stir

dip and stir

as she patiently awaited

the perfect temperature

she would gently sing

‘til the folded-in skin

of her elbow said:

this is right, bathe him now.

She would lift my

brother by the hefts of

baby-skin beneath the armpit

and slowly settle him down

into the water: his vetkoek feet

then his lumpy legs and

plump tummy ‘til he sat in

the bathwater solid on his bum

she soaped him with method

to end she would pour the elbow tested

water over his head,

he’d chortle. She’d laugh.

The importance of ice-cream lids

Over the back-seat

front-seat separation

a father hands his son

the lid of an ice cream tub.

The boy, held back by the

black seatbelt, strains to claim

the lid from his dad’s hands.

Finally, he nabs it,

grasps the booty and takes a moment

before slowly licking the

circumference of the lid

The circle of chocolate

diminishes in the face of

his concentrated ministrations.

And afterwards, left with a half-moon of

melted chocolate ice-cream,

face and fingers all dirty brown

and a once-white T-shirt

He smiles. His father in front,

who should be angry at the mess,

instead laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

And I

And I’m sitting inside this

Big house in Bishopscourt

And I’m hungry and my food

Hasn’t arrived

And the doorbell rings

And I think at friggin last

And I go out to the gate

And there’s this delivery guy

And I was going to tip him

Just under 10%

And his wife and his little baby

Are inside the cold car

And it’s raining, and it’s wet

And I have my food

And his wife and his child

Are in the idling car

And I give him over 20%

And I leave feeling slightly…

And I have so much

And he’s a delivery guy

And it’s a Friday night and his wife

And little boy are in the car

And my meal gets cold

And I eat it like that

And it still tastes ok.

Of late, I have become more and more aware of how many people are misguided about how poverty works. I don’t mean this in the arbitrary sense of choosing poverty lines and such (re: relative vs. absolute poverty measures), but rather a nuanced understanding of what poverty is, what it does, and how we can respond to it. Much of what I write here will come from the recent book Poverty Traps edited by Bowles, Durlauf and Hoff (2006). It is all based on freely available academic theory on poverty.

Ok – so poverty traps, i.e. factors which influence the perpetuation and robustness of poverty-centred equilibria, are induced or determined by three major factors:

1) thresholds

2) institutions

3) memberships theory

Each of these constitute individual reasons why poverty traps may exist and in combination they constitute a dramatic challenge to any policy maker wishing to engage with and challenge poverty.

Before we go any further, what is poverty and what is a poverty trap? Poverty can be thought about in many ways – it can be thought of purely in income terms (i.e. the amount of money to which an individual in a household has access), or it can be thought of in capabilities (a la Sen) the result of which is that poverty can be viewed as the inability to act in a certain manner, such as obtaining food, attaining an education, provide material goods for one’s family and so forth. Poverty traps therefore are factors that reinforce these situations, factors that sustain situations in which individuals begin poor and remain poor in perpetuity.

Onto thresholds. The basic idea here is that in order for an individual, a group of individuals (local small groups, or economy-wide groups) to move out of poverty they may need some basic threshold of capital in order to move from one state, or a poverty-reinforcing equilibrium to another rich-reinforcing (or possibly just a median income reinforcing) equilibrium. There are similar applications to educational attainment – individuals and groups need to reach a certain average level of educational attainment before the mean level of income, or the mean capability to provide for oneself and one’s family is taken beyond a certain point of poverty.

In terms of institutions there are several institutions factors that can affect whether an individual or an economy as a whole moves out of poverty. What are these institutions? These institutions are anything from patterns of behaviour that are effective for an individual (but not socially optimal) in a given environment, to norms of kin-altruism and kin-favouring, to hysteresis effects resulting from economic policy as far back as 17^th century that have resulted in given institutional outcomes now.

Lastly, there are neighbourhood, or memberships, effects. To me these are the most interesting as they tie into the social network theory with which I worked on my master’s dissertation. The basic intuition here is that ‘neighbourhoods’ constitute given groups from something exogenous such as an individual’s race (notwithstanding the social anthropological view of the constructedness of race), to characteristics that are economically determined such as education and the area in which one lives (I hesitate to use the word suburb because it is difficult to classify some of the areas in which people live as ‘suburbs’, i.e. a township is probably not a suburb in the classical denotative definition thereof). Peer groups are the larger groups of which an individual is a member. The characteristics of such groups can pre-determine inter-generational transfers of factors that determine welfare outcomes: an individual’s race, their education, the area in which they live are often correlates of their welfare outcomes, from some as basic as life expectancy (or QUALYs - quality adjusted life years) to income. In Economics we try to capture these effects, but we have difficulty identifying whether a ‘suburb’ is actually a decently identified variable (the long and short of it is that there could be self-selection into/out of specific groups which leave us with selection bias, but let’s not go there). Role model effects can also be prevalent. These persist when there is literally a lack of role models within a community. In terms of education the basic intuition is that if there are no role models within a community of individuals that have used educational opportunities to modify their labour market aspirations (i.e. get a better job and more money from higher education) then the average educational aspirations and attainment of the average individual will remain low. As a consequence the labour market participation, or the average income (or wage received) by individuals in a community will be low and the cycle will be self-perpetuating because individuals will only see low income opportunities. Thus peer and role model effects can result in poverty traps.

This last characteristic is the main reason why I am supportive of policies that promote either or both of

a) Urban/Inner City Government Boarding Schools

b) Subsidised (and randomized) relocation of families to wealthier areas.

Regardless of the individual freedoms upon which we may infringe in the process (i.e. of a parent to claim that they have a right to determine their child’s schooling and so forth), it could be argued that removing a child from an environment of poverty where there are poor, or negative peer and role model effects and relocating them to urban boarding schooling with ‘good’ role models could constitute a viable solution to this. How? Use well-paid teachers and other providers of educational services with good educational backgrounds.

It is most important however that if introduced this program should be a randomized one (in as significant a way as possible). The implementation of such randomization would be nightmarish, but in the ideal world it would be possible (even if it is randomized at a cluster level that would be better than no randomization). In terms of the relocation project, there would be similar problems (e.g. with housing in SA if some families suddenly got randomly allocated to Rondebosch and Fourways instead of re-developed Nyanga and Soweto many would probably cry wolf and say it’s unfair, when in actuality it would be a random selection process and thus entirely fair (depending of course on whether you believe such randomization to be a fair process at all – which then comes down to your arguments about equality)). However, I believe that the rewards to these individuals could be massive – the large relocation and subsidization could quite possibly create far greater impacts than marginal and smaller interventions at a lower level. The ethics of this is admittedly complex, but I would argue that if government could come up with a randomized project that could begin to assess the impacts of such reallocations in SA then we could begin to see long run impacts down the line. There would also definitely have to be additional interventions for those others however who are not moved – simply relocating some does not mean that housing projects cannot continue, nor additionally that credit market interventions and other such should be pursued. Controls for these would simply have to be added into later research (somehow – again an issue, but this is possibly where ethics trumps rigorous econometrics).

I know this warrants more thought and definitely requires greater analysis, but I sincerely believe that several of the topics discussed above could be decent solutions to many problems. Contained in the above is also the discussion of whether education should be segregated, whether there should be emphasis on behavioural education processes (i.e. stimulating the behaviour of students in order to facilitate learning re: some new projects in the US that are focusing on just this – they go from the mundanity of slouching being disallowed during class, to ensuring that all students look at the teacher/facilitator/educator while they are teaching). Anyway, so much to write and research, so little time.

David Brooks of the New York times wrote two columns in December last year to give out his Sidney Awards (named for Sidney Hook) – his selection of the top magazine articles in 2006. They are meant to represent good writing, interesting subject matter and as a result also be representative of the underlying zeitgeist. Here, I’ll take some time to extemporize on their nomination and their relevance to us here in South Africa.

The articles span topics from the heinousness (I would like to call it crime) of Holocaust denialism, to the growing problem of casual and emotionally uninvolved teen fellatio, to the quirks of poverty mis-measurement to letters from Iraq. Herein, I focus on two articles, one by Alan S. Blinder of Princeton University called Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution and a second by Matthew B. Crawford of Virginia University, Shopcraft as Soulcraft. The two have an interesting alignment, the intricacies of which I later divulge.

Blinder’s discussion centres on society’s progress towards a third industrial revolution – the information revolution the result of which is the offshoring [from America] of services. The reason this is important is because of the transformation of society from agriculturally based to manufacturing based (first industrial revolution), then to manufacturing based to services based (the second revolution) and from this to a hypothetical third revolution involving the knowledge economy and the ‘information revolution’. These are not new concepts. However, he clarifies that this third revolution is centrally about whether a service can only be delivered face-to-face or whether it can be provided over a `phone line, or over the internet. Hence Blinder separates services into two new categories: personal services and impersonal services. His argument advances that the prices of personal services will continue to rise (people will always need mechanics, doctors, to look and do things here), while those of impersonal services, in the face of international competition should decrease (the comparative advantage of the developing world being the lower wages that we are willing to accept for various work – skilled and unskilled). Impersonal services can be traded freely, personal services can’t.

However, one issue with Blinder’s argument is that he doesn’t cater at all for movement of persons. One of the practices that seem to be on the increase by South African doctors is secondment to the UK. They don’t feel that they can make a decent income here, so they trundle off to Blighty in order to make some cash at far higher wages, but wages still substantially lower than most British doctors would prefer. Thus our doctors, highly qualified and with a great work ethic, get jobs that possibly could be held by others. Expand this to a situation where you have highly skilled plumbers, mechanics, and others and the over-concentration of first world education (proclaimed by Blinder) on management, commerce and services and you have situation in which through movement of persons the wages of ‘personal’ services could be challenged.

This is where the intersection with the second article begins. Crawford’s thesis is that the removal of shop class in American school curricula is indicative of a fundamental flaw in education. This flaw is twofold. Firstly, there is a growing under-supply of hands-on or craftsman style work in the US. Secondly, there seems to be a widespread social under-appreciation for the cognitive capabilities required to do this (craft) work well. His argument is that the movement towards management as a (mock) scientifically based process has undermined the cognitive appreciation required for mechanical or craft work.

From the movement to a Fordian production line system we gained speed of production by workers without significant skill (or arguably pride in their work) and lost the possibility to ‘meet the man’ who made the, generally higher quality, item. No longer was an individual responsible and accountable for quality, but the manager that is not actually at all engaged with the production itself is held to some greater or lesser degree ‘accountable’. In fact, if something goes wrong the managed often manages to shift the blame – it’s the fault of the ‘system’ or the ‘process’ definitely not him. Crawford asserts that there needs to be a restoration of pride not only in so-called blue collar, or craft-based work, but also to service-based or white-collar work which has come to mirror the cognitively disengaged production processes of the assembly line.

The question therefore is how does any of this affect us in South Africa? Firstly, I applaud the government’s engagement with vocational training. Individuals have propensities, both learned and intrinsic towards specific activities. On a personal level mine happen to be staring at numbers, writing things and standing in front of a group of people talking. For my dad it happened to be working with screws, plans and making loud noises with drills. I’m an economist. He was an electro-mechanical engineer. What makes us both enjoy what we do though is the pride in the end-product, the belief that we have done something well. On a micro-level government needs to engage educators and policy-makers with the idea that work at whatever level, must be focused on production with pride and with a goal of personal excellence. This can be self-contained – from the production of high quality plumbing work that other plumbers will admire and appreciate as ‘good’, to number-crunching and report production that is of high quality and on which peers favourably comment. Pride in work is non-randomly distributed through the population – it’s a skill like any other and can be taught, facilitated and socialised. Similarly for a work-ethic. We in South Africa have a unique opportunity as a developing country to attack the problems posed by both Blinder and Crawford – reform of our education system to provide individuals with skills compatible with the coming (or current) third industrial revolution, as well as equipping society and individuals with the pride and understanding that work is not only about subsistence, indebtedness and alienation. It is about social achievement, embeddedness and pride. Not only will these individuals be able to use their skills locally, but they will be exportable as well!

Moreover, we in South Africa are also in the position to erode the hierarchy of beliefs about one profession over another. It is not the height of achievement to attain your Masters or Doctorate in a degree if you hate that kind of work – you are putting yourself on the road to depression. Conversely, the pejorative labels that some apply to blue-collar or craft work is inappropriate and inaccurate. High quality end-products at all levels require cognitive engagement, hard work and pride or enjoyment of the work itself. The rest, to quote one of my favourite films, will be simply ‘Shadows and Dust, shadows and dust’.