I Wrote most of this a couple days ago, I hadn't put it up though. Enjoy.

The following abridged quote is taken from The Plague by Albert Camus:

“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yes somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise...

When a war breaks out people say, 'It's too stupid,; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid', that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its was' as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

..A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and , from one bad dream to another, it mes men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others, they forgot to be modest – that was all – and though that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plagues, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views? They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.”

Now the reason that I bring this up is for a number of reasons. Firstly, the book is really good. I am only halfway through it and I am enjoying seeing where it is going, the seeming ease with which Camus wrote it and conceived of it. It should be noted that it was written immediately subsequent to WWII. Camus was a member of the resistance in France, and we see that there are a number of fairly obvious parallels between his analogies on freedom, choice and motivation in war as there are in a situation of plague. I believe that the plague of which he conceives is meant to be an ubiquitous symbol of whatever may 'plague' the individual, society at large, or whichever other grouping you choose to select. (On a more contemporary note have any of you listened to the band Bright Eyes album, Fevers & Mirrors? The lead singer chats about 'personal' fevers, granted in a much more juvenile way than Camus, but the motif is still prevalent in contemporary pop culture).

It is as a result of this commonality that I think we continuously need to consider those things which act in a plague-like manner in our society today. These may be anything from our consideration of poverty and inequality (the things that often worry me), to HIV/AIDS (an actual plague), to the possibility of moral degeneracy, to political game-playing and power-grabbing. One of the things of which I am dreadfully aware is the extent to which freedom is maligned. I know that I have expressed views on situations in which I believe that I would not mind my individual freedoms infringed if there were increases in the so-called greater good (ephemeral as that may be).

However, that is in an ideal world where government is benevolent and efficient. In the real world we need to consider the movements of government in ways that may be impinging on freedoms. The one that has worried me recently is the silencing of certain voices on the SABC. We all know that there was a whole lot of politicking when John Perlman was told he could not speak to specific individuals, and these individuals (for example William Mervin Gumede) don't like the ways in which the ANC is working. Black intellectuals criticising the black government. These are the ones that we are noticing as well. I wonder to what extent people remain silent in these situations.

Another frustration of which I have been witness is the whole issue surrounding crime. I have written on this already, but I do sincerely believe that something more needs to be done about it. When I, as an individual, have to repeatedly phone the fingerprinting services, the police, etc in order to begin to get a response, but still get nothing, that is a problem. We all know that there are issues with infrastructure, but I think that if there are such a massive number of people unemployed, and we need more people in law enforcement, surely we can find some way of employing these people. Combine this with the amount of underspending that goes on in a number of government departments, then we can see all kinds of possibilities. I know that generally you want to decrease personnel spending, but in such a personnel intense resource surely it isn't such a bad thing. I also agree (and have previously argued) that poverty, HIV/AIDS, unemployment all feed into these problems. The determinants of crime are directly linked to household income, education, employment, coherence (i.e. Single mum vs. more supportive family structure). These all contribute. To what extent is this a plague? What message does it send out when the security minister says that people who complain about crime should leave the country? I agree that we don't want people who are continually complaining, but equally we need to find creative and immediate solutions to a very prevalent problem in order to ensure a successful future. (Check again my whole multi-pronged attack idea, expensive but necessary I believe. Singular and isolated interventions are unlikely to work, they need to be well-coordinated at a high level - Mbeki's cabinet wouldn't be bad at this incidentally, their communal brain power is formidable, Netshitenzhe alone is significant...).

Anyway, there are a number of other things that are worthy of consideration in this context. I think I'll write on some more of them another time. In the interim, if you can, read the book The Plagueit's a good read. Again, this is somewhat rant-ish as well as retreading ideas I have covered before in too shallow a fashion, nevertheless their reintroduction and possible sparking of debate is worthy.

So below, we have one re-working of Bath, as well as a couple of other poems. The one, Shoelaces as Time Travel is basically some fun I was having with and image and in idea as well as just playing with rhyme schemes. It's just fun, don't take it too seriously. The other two are just there.

Bath 30.06.06

Twice in two days

I have drawn baths.

Immersing myself

in loud silence

My heartbeat is

playing its song

its evidence

that I'm living.

My heart

striking

hitting

beating

a flesh

and blood

cacophony.

My blood

stream mind's

once wild

current

in calmed

water

tranquility.

My advice if

you're overwhelmed:

draw a hot bath

immerse yourself

hear your heart beat

prove you're alive.

Why is the word balaclava? 03.07.06

Why is the word balaclava?

When it sounds so unassuming

when it's seeming is not about

violence or disguise or hurting

It pretends to be a Greek sweet

in my sweet-tooth ears listening

or, when I am French-ish maybe

a smart ball in the town Clava.

Then something in me says that its

about ballet, joyful dancing

the length of form, of touching,

of raised bodies, and sacrifice.

That returns me to its meaning

placed over a head in deception

hot, catching the motes of hot breath

full of intent, dark disclaimer:

I will enact violence on you

I will be fearful, you will too.

Both losing moments of living

to this vision - the dark exclaims.

the perfect crime 10.07.06

when a black bent

man and his floppy hat

droop doggedly over

the garden outside my

ample family home

when a woman wearing

a colourful cardigan

sings low to herself walks

with her one grocery bag

while i carry five

when queues of coloured

and black men decorate

the sides of our roads

in continued deference

to jobs that come their way

when a young ingemengde

owns a stainless steel

fridge, unelectrified

and warm, the centerpiece

of a nyanga shack

when these images aren't rare

and i can be arrogant

in my drawing of them

though it hurts me

each and every time i do

when i commit perfect

crimes in my innocent

depictions because

i'm blameless i'm angry

and, yes, i'm white too.

Shoelaces as Time Travel 07.07.06

Silently slipping my feet into shoes

when sitting on beds here or there

tying their laces, beginning to muse

something important's in the care

I take with my deliberate movements

intricate digital progress

in my fingers' fond love, their endearment

of laces, I find such regress

To a time when laces were new to me

(they were such a sweet novelty)

To my eyes and hands so infant clumsy

I recall it with purity.

My worm hole shoelaces such as they are

forwards in time and backwards too,

light speed, in solace from the speed of stars,

shooting past me as moments do.

Five years old and I'm tying up my laces

ready as my shoes for walking,

An infant knowledge I'm going places

smiling as I do, I'm talking

of everything I want from life, you'll see!

A fireman just like my granddad was

when I'm a grown up that's so what I'll be

Now, I fight fires of words because

when I was young, that's what I said I'd do

reminders of what brought me here

captured deep in the laces of my shoe

and, like granddad, I'm without fear

confronting all the scriptures of my past

the struggles of learning the bows

on my shoes, tying up all of the vast

matters of time in barefoot wriggling toes

confronting all the scriptures of my past

the struggles of learning the bows

on my shoes, knowing that I'm not the last

to see shoelaces as time's flows.

Something that has been plaguing me of late is the idea of structure and form in writing and people's pooh-poohing of it. This worries me. For some reason at school we are often told that we need to be 'creative' or 'imaginative' and that poetry is something that 'is just an expression of the emotions and the imagination'. We are allowed to write free verse as though it is an underpriced commodity and told to 'let yourselves go'.

There are several problems with this, the first is an over-indulgence in a lack of structure. People these days often give cummings, Eliot, Plath and several others as their favourite poets, without really understanding why they are great. Much of what made these poets interesting was the structure from which they broke – they understood and knew these styles, they used ancient forms and brought them back to modern use (especially Eliot and Pound). Plath and Hughes were brilliant at taking forms and adapting them to their own use, to find ways in which they could re-construct terza rima (for example) or a normal quatrain to their own uses.

But people see free verse, subsequent to Walt Whitman (the man who invented first used free verse in English poetry after observing vers libre in French poetry) as something that they just write without any idea of the constraints of free verse itself, the necessary consideration of the rhythms within words, the syllabic content, the inner workings of the poetry which is being written. Free verse still has a consideration of lyric, of stanzaic structure and of internal and end rhymes. These make much of the premier free verse as good as it is. We can see much of this in work by Seamus Heaney – he takes landscapes and translates them into poetry, finds ways of making us feel the landscape through what he has written. This is what can make free verse great.

The 20^th century in both modernist and post-modernist literature has also seen an upsurge in attempts to look at poetry in translation. Poets like Federico Lorca, Yehuda Amichai, Czeslaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Hans Enzensebergen, Wislawa Szymborska, or Martin Espada have translated their own work or had their work translated into English. This has led to a whole array of work investigating the idea of poetry in translation, of the idea that poetry can be translated – the gain and loss of meaning. In addition to this works that have been translated have challenged the translator to ensure that the translated poem has a similar structure, meaning and rhythm than the original.

An example:

So Little - Czeslaw Milosz

I said so little.

Days were so short.

Short days.

Short nights.

Short years.

I said so little.

I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary

From joy,

Despair,

Ardor,

Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan

Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores

Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world

hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don't know

What in all that was real.

To me this serves as an example of a poem that, in translation, brings us a wonderful sense of how English can interpret and give us poetry from other languages. The ways in which adherence to free verse, to a freer movement in the beginning, with couplets of idea-images towards the end can be a beautiful use of free verse – it has an intent and the intent is mirrored in the voice of the poem (some of you may think I am being abstruse here, but I hope you get what I intend).

Moving away from that example, and from translation in language – Picasso is a typical example in visual art of how an individual firstly mastered the methods of the 'masters' (he is acclaimed for his command of lines of his continuity). From this he was able to then identify the rules and break from them, move away from them towards his cubist work, to his adaptations from ideas such as négritude of African modes of art. It is this idea, which others such as Whitman in English poetry (and Rimbaud in French if I recall correctly) or the others I listed above (several more even – I could list loads in the past couple centuries who did it well).

On this Pound commented that “The Art of Letters will come to an end before AD 2000” on which Stephen Fry commented “It might be tempting to agree that 'the art of letters' has indeed come to an end, and to wonder whether a doctrinaire abandonment of healthy, living forms for the sake of a dogma of stillborn originality might not have to shoulder some of the responsibility for such a state of affairs.” (2005:174-5). He is even more scathing on this later where he speaks of an indoctrination in which form is 'a kind of fascism'. I agree with him to a large extent (which is to some extent probably why I read the book in the first place). In fact I agree with Strand and Bolan (2000: xiv) when they comment that “The true and final power of form is not societal: poetic form, when it comes from deep feeling, is deeply human.” They also argue that the changes in form in the last century or so should be seen as 'a form of dialogue' with historical forms. This I believe is the crux of what I personally believe – a command and understanding of forms of poetry allows us to engage with this conversation on poetry without this knowledge, without this understanding we could not do so.

The reason that this comes up for me is as a result of a consideration of my own relationship with form. I predominantly write in various free verse structures adhering to specific stanzaic or rhythmic/metric forms when I think them necessary. Sometimes people have asked me why I do this, why I don't write 'freer'. The interesting thing for me is that through an understanding and an adherence to specific ideas in form (say if I wrote a sonnet) or to meter, syllabic structure or stanza in free verse I can actually go about liberating myself to do things I would not have done otherwise. Bad free verse is often self-indulgent, over-written and lacklustre because of some vain attempt to be 'free' or to be 'unconstrained' by 'the rules of poetry'. The thing is in many cases it is the understanding of these rules that makes us able to appreciate good free verse and to be able to appreciate poems that continue to adhere to formal structure.

It should be noted that I write this fairly late at night and that I may have over-stated my intent and my argument, or not outlined it well enough – it happens. I was asked an interesting question recently by my supervisor, Ingrid de Kok, she aske “Why poetry?”. She wanted me to interrogate why I believe that I want to do my Masters in Creative Writing specifically in poetry, what makes poetry that appealing to me, what demands to I place upon myself to write poetry, why poetry? If I have ideas, why poetry? I'm not going to give you my answers to her, maybe we can discuss that at some point over a good bottle of wine while reading good poetry and then we can begin to attempt an understanding of the significance of this question. And it is awfully significant. It is one of the most important questions for an aspiring poet to begin to answer, quite likely the answering of it will end up in the poetry that they write (or they will stop writing altogether because of being unable to answer it, which may be a good thing in itself). Nevertheless, it is something to consider and something which I have had to consider and to which I have begun to relate on multiple levels. Why poetry?

So yes, this little essay thing has rambled, has tickled and has strung its way towards a point at which it says that poetic form is a good thing, so is free verse, poetry in translation is intriguing (try to write your own poetry in another language then translate it back to English and see what happens). Finally ask yourself “Why Poetry?” Why do you read it? Why do you write it? What makes poetry the form of choice (because poetry is itself a form – once you have engaged with it prosody can educate you beyond that which you initially though plausible). Think about language. Think about rhythm. Think about sound and lyric. Think. Read. Speak. Write. Most of all enjoy it, then get back to me with what you thought, I'd really like to hear.

So, I drove for 9 hours today to be with my family in Grahamstown. It is it's usual rambunctious, yet charming self (yes I am anthropomorphising the city, sue me). I arrived while my folks were still in a show, so we got together afterwards. During that time I popped to the Village Green and procured for myself a program of the events in the festival. There is a plethora of wonderful goings on here and I am looking forward to engaging with as much of it as I am physically and emotionally capable. Granted, that capability is somewhat sub-par at the moment, but I will do my best.

I was struck by a number of things while I was taking my trip up here and also once I had arrived here. Firstly, along the N2 I was looking at these queues of people along the N2 waiting to be picked up for some kind of work. There are various funny models in economics about 'queuing models of unemployment' when there are a number of people at the same skill level in the same geographical location competing for a fixed number of jobs (or equally a number of jobs growing at at a fixed rate possibly lower than the labour force growth rate). That's not really the point. I just saw these men (as most all of them were men) and so many of them looked like one of the people who attacked Amy and I. Now, I have purposefully not brought up descriptions of these people because I inherently dislike the propagation of perceived stereotypes. Nevertheless, the parallels for me were frustrating and illuminating simultaneously. Xhosa, short to average height, slim to thin, most likely unskilled or semi-skilled (I was convinced that the guy who attacked us had no real idea of how to use a firearm) and wearing a beanie, a jersey of some sort, but predominantly nondescript and normal. The kind of guy you often pass in the street, could be poor, could equally be living in Rondebosch, but be adhering to specific social cues. Difficult one. So the ubiquity of it is frustrating, moreover it highlighted for me the ubiquity of the problems with which we in South Africa are faced.

I am working in Economics, focusing on development economics in some attempt to alleviate poverty in my own way in 'the long run' (whatever that turns out to be). However, the crime-poverty relationship is rather like the aids-poverty relationship, not only do they facilitate one another, but they each worsen the impact of the other. What this then means is that for us to solve 'the crime problem' we equally have to be solving 'the poverty problem' (and most likely 'the AIDS problem') simultaneously. We can't presume to attack one, then the other, then the other, people and social groupings don't work that way. There are such massive lags in many situations that trying to actually say, “We've done this and it should have an impact in, say, 20 years.” that is insufficient. Hence, my argument for a multiply pronged attack on all three. This also goes hand-in-hand with the problems of the education system, but I will classify that as falling under the ambit of 'the poverty problem'. I am not entirely sure how government should go about doing this yet, but I am convinced that something more dynamic than is happening now MUST occur lest all of the problems feed into one another – for example, I have AIDS, but no work and no education, what do I do to get meds and survive? I steal... From whom do I steal? Anybody really, other poor individuals, the relatively rich, there are many, many people and because of such poor police infrastructure (you don't want to hear how annoyed I was with the fingerprinting guys who were meant to come before I left). All of this feeds into the extant social problems that plague (and I say plague pointedly) our society. Something drastic must be done and it will have to be massive and involve 'buy-in' (I hate that term) from so many 'stakeholders' (another consultant speak term that annoys me). All of this is valid though.

Anyway, apart from this queueing thing I was watching, when I arrived in Grahamstown, I saw two poor black children (torn, dirty clothes) with a BB gun. I think that they had barely any of the bullets because they were meticulous about picking them up. They were unmistakeably going through a mock-fighting interchange. The guy who had the gun wielded like he was some gangster from the hood in a movie on American Ghetto behaviour, he then pointed it at the other guy menacingly, stuck out his chest do the 'you soeking with me' act and shot the other kid. He'd then pick up the BB that he had shot and they'd re-enact it. Stance, 'soek', shot. They looked like they were trying to fulfill something that they had seen played out by adults, which obviously worried me even more. Who were they watching? What were they learning from these people? Were they learning to target people? Were they doing this to impress people? Ah well... back to my multiply-pronged attack on a social infrastructure that needs dramatic reformation.

Other than all of that, James' show was good. He was well-received. It was fun. I am tired though, so I didn't stay for the next show that they are going to at 10pm.

I turn 25 in a few hours time (I was born at 8am after several hours of labour). Should be interesting. I have Amy's gift with me. For whatever reason, on the evening of the attempted highjacking the robbers didn't try to take her gift to me from us. A votive for small blessings such as this.

Other than the spelling mistakes in my previous blog (Highjacking) which in review annoy and entertain me (I think they were justified). I have been working on the following poem. It is sort of the third version of it since I wrote it.

Bath

Twice in two days

I have drawn baths.

Immersing myself

in the loud silence

only my heartbeat

plays its song.

It is proof to me

I am living.

My heart strikes

and hits and beats

its flesh and blood

as I beat the

waves of my mind.

When life seems trivial

I advise:

draw a bath

immerse yourself

hear your heart beat

confirm you're alive.

“It takes a lot out of you, you know? It's taken a lot out of me, man.”

They are sitting on damp bricks, staring at a gibbous moon. And they are comfortable.

“Violence is strange man, I didn't get it for a very long time, now it dawns on me, and I feel the sun burning the ideas of violence into me. It hurts and I want it to stop, but I also want to know, simply to know and to understand and then maybe it won't burn so much. I don't know man.”

Old friends can talk at each other. I don't know if 'I' am saying these words, or if you and I are old friends talking about 'my' psychological disposition. But the conversation is meaningful, and we're sharing a bottle of good, red wine. It's not a Merlot though. A Merlot would be too sedate. It's probably Pinotage, that's South African. Sweet and bitter at the same time with dangerous undertones that make you want to drink more of it. Yes, a Pinotage. I've just had a swig from the bottle. So may you.

“I couldn't bear the idea of her getting hurt, of something going wrong and something happening to her, equally I had to think of ways to outwit these skelms, these fuckwits trying to attack us, and, you know what, I thought about attacking them, I saw myself punching the guy disarming him, pointing the gun at him and telling him to run away. I saw myself kicking him, ducking and punching him again and again so that he would never do this to someone else. Ever! And I don't only want to cry for myself I want to cry for what I might have done to him were I that much less controlled. Were I closer to the verge of losing it and not caring. I would have hurt him and I would have enjoyed the pain that I felt in my fists for days afterwards.”

Friends know when the other is crying, has cried, sometimes needs to or doesn't want to cry. Maybe I fit into all of these categories, who knows?

“Where does empathy begin and end? What differentiates it from sympathy? Can I empathise with the criminals who threatened to shoot me? Not really. Do I feel sympathy that they maybe be in irrevocably horrific situations from which they don't know how to extricate themselves? Yes. I see the whole seen played out for me in a million different quantum possibilities. Me dying, Amy dying, me killing them, them taking the car, it never happening in the first place. Quantum visions 1 through X. Do I forgive them? I don't know. I get the feeling you often have to love someone to forgive them and I don't know if I can love these men. Maybe a part of me does. The part of me that sympathises. Another part of me empathises with desperateness, that dark space where each of us has been desperate for someone or something, a touch, food, water, a drug maybe, something tangible that we don't have but want or need. There's so much involved, so much that could have happened, could have gone wrong. We dealt with it in a very intelligent and amicable way. Most of all at the moment I forgive myself for being in a situation where Amy was exposed to that, where I was exposed to that. I have the love for that. I take responsibility for being in that situation, at that time, for looking and not looking, for shaking (literally shaking) in the moment, for thinking violence, for lying to the criminals, for working out in my head that I had the remote in my pocket and not handing over the car immediately thinking that I could outwit them. I take responsibility for all of this. I take responsibility for the risk to which I exposed Amy and I. I take this responsibility and I forgive myself.”

Friends listen to the rambling. The bricks are still wet beneath us. The sliver of moon is so bright that we can see the rest of the moon behind it, it looks hidden and shadowed. Umbra. I've always liked the shape and the sound of that word. Umbra. And beneath it our conversation could not be adumbrated by the umbra of the moon. We laugh at my silly word plays. We know that I do that. We have some more wine. You understand more of me maybe. Maybe not. Shadowed.

This evening, my girlfriend and I survived a highjacking. Seriously. It happened about 2 ½ hours ago at the time of writing this. I need to get to sleep and tire myself out, so I thought :”Yes, I'll write this up for my blog.”

I was in my mother's car, on account of the fact that I was going to be driving it up to Grahamstown tomorrow. I had just picked her, Amy, up at her house so that we could spend a 'last romantic evening' together before I left for two weeks.

Anyway, I had reversed into the driveway and closed the garage gate. Suddenly I see man in the last light of the gate (under a metre left before it closes). I initially thought I was seeing a trick in the shadows and I wondered why a person would be standing there (internal monologue – why is my neighbour trying to come and see me now and like this). That took about a quarter of a second and I realised this guy was probably trying to highjack me. I was right.

He and his accomplice, came in. The gate had stopped when he stood in front of it. One of them was carrrying a gun, a pistol, or firearm (truth be told I don't recall whether it was the first guy or the second). They told me to get out of the car. Amy was still in the car not realising what was happening until a few moments later when I had my hands up in the air for no reason and there was the strange man standing in front of me.

I had dropped the keys in the car with my wallet which had been on my lap. Both were on the floor. They told me to pick up the keys. The took them from me (although I convinced them to allow me to take my drivers license from my wallet and simultaneously stole my credit card out) and tried to open the gate with the gate remote attached to my mum's keys. As fortune (or providence, or randomness, or God) would have it, because I was driving my mum's car the remote for her home in Rondebosch obviously would not work on my digs garage. The highjackers were freaked out about this, I had gone momentarily blank and tried to open it with said incorrect remote. They then tried to kick the motor, push the gate, etc to get it open. There was nowhere near enough space to get the car out you see.

They then threatened me with the gun. Amy told me afterwards that she was really worried I would try to pull some heroic action. Justifiably really, as I told my parents and Seraj afterwards I had to restrain myself from attacking them. The reason I didn't was because of the possible risk to Amy. I couldn't put her in danger if anything went wrong (the downside of Kung-Fu I suppose is that one gets more confident in one's ability to attack opponents – they were both smaller than me, and quite obviously nervous and scared themselves ironically).

They also thought, hearing me speak, that I was a foreigner. I played on that and lied to them about not living where I was and just staying there. They then went out behind the gate. The 'accomplice' guy had received a call on his cell phone and I could hear a car down the ways. I assumed that they were going to try to get away as this was not going as planned. They walked to the other side of the gate back into the road. I had realised by this point that the real gate remote was in my pocket (where it would be because I had taken it off of my car keys). I closed the gate while they were outside.

I called Amy and we ran inside and I locked us into the house. I then hit the panic button for the alarm to go off. ADT called, I told them we'd just been the victims of an attempted highjacking. They were there withing minutes. Out neighbour, Buzz Beck (that is his name and he was wonderful) came over and phoned the police from his place, I didn't have any credit on my phone nor was I realistically in the state of mind to begin organising things. The police were there promptly. There was a whole horde of them in the house and at the back on walki-talkies buzzing here and there. Some ladies came through to take our statements (An office Klaassens if I recall correctly). Detective Inspector Jensel came and told me to park the car somewhere so that we could try to get fingerprints. Moreover, Amy had baked me brownies for my trip. Again somewhat ironically, she remembered them trying to open the tin to see what was in it, so our closest link to 'justice' is possibly contained in the potential of fingerprints on a brownie tin!

Amy's parents were wonderful, they came through really quickly. Annette almost immediately made us tea when we were being interviewed by the police. I called Seraj and he came through. I didn't really want to call anyone else to 'the scene'. I kept on calling the guys who did the crime 'gentlemen' when I was recounting it to the police, I also kept on correcting myself and I wanted to call the fuckwits, but called them 'the men'. A councilor who came to our house called them 'animals'. I don't know what I think about that.

After everyone left Seraj said he'd brought a bottle of wine (good red wine, he wouldn't have it any other way). He brought it in case we 'wanted to take the edge off'. Gotta love Seraj. My folks were suitably worried. I spent the whole time being worried about Amy and just wanting to hug her to prove that we were fine, that we were alive and together. They had taken her purse, her cell phone, my wallet, my Seiko Watch (my beautiful Seiko Kinetic, lamentation!). Again, as fortune (whatever) would have it, I had left my cell phone at home randomly before I went and picked Amy up, which meant that they couldn't get that.

The whole time I just wanted to touch her, same reasons as above. Her dad was pre-occupied with canceling her credit card and bank card. They left and Seraj and I organised my stuff for me to make moves to my parents' place, where I could park the car so that the police could test for fingerprints tomorrow.

I spoke more to my mum, dad and Steve on the phone. My uncled Brian also called. We all said love you. On the phone later, as Amy and I were talking (she was given a new number by Alan I think, already!) I said 'love you'. It is the moments like these that show us how previous the things we have are. I am not going to analyse it too much.

I don't really want to stay at that house anymore. I love the place, but it makes it more difficult to want to be there, to enjoy being there. Ah well...

Anyway, I love you all, if you're reading this, then in all likelihood you are precious to me. You are in my thoughts and I am sorry if I didn't call. It was stressful and I barely dealt with restraining my anger and yelling a 'FUUUUCCCCKKK' while the police were there, let alone calling people.

Night, night, I think I am going to try to sleep. I don't know if it'll work. We'll have to see. I've taken rescue remedy. Maybe it'll work. Although I don't particularly feel like being rescued right now, I feel it would have been better not to require rescue in the first place.

Incidentally, I apologise for how rambling this is, I apologised to the police for the same reason. I am still somewhat shaken up. This is meant to be 'therapeutic'. Ho hum... Therapy. Yes.

I started reading Albert Camus' The Outsider (L'Etranger) last night. It was incredibly beautiful when I started it, but I was simply too tired to read it (although intending to have an early night I ended up going to sleep probably around 1:30am).

Anyway, I was reading it this morning, but I realised I had to go off and run errands. So I took it with me to Cavendish. I started some of my errands, stopped for coffee at Vida and then I promptly finished the book. I couldn't help myself – it accelerated into absolute (yes this is a funny term to apply to the book) brilliance.

Having finished the story and having read the afterword by Camus I was stunned. I simply sat lopsided in my stool for about five minutes. Realised someone had noticed me and I got up. I was quite unfocused. I wondered around Cavendish in a jubilant daze, struck with both the horror and the glory of the book. It was an astonishing read, so valid. I immediately understood why he had received the Nobel at such a young age (as far as I know (and I haven't researched this properly) he was one of the youngest authors to receive the Nobel for Literature).

I don't think that everyone will have as vivid or as tumultuous a response to this book as I did (although many people claim it as one of their favourites I have been told). It is a remarkable book and deserves to be read, it could easily be read in an afternoon. I will read it again. Undoubtedly. I have this craving to read more of his work. I went into Exclusives and bought the plague, but I am going to force myself not to read it because I want to derive as much enjoyment from the reading of it, separate from The Outsider as I did from The Outsider.

I am not going to go into why I loved it so much, I will simply sponsor it as an incredible work of art and hope that my support of it will get you to read it. I know that many will dislike it, even be disgusted by it (not that there is much aesthetically wrong with it as far as I can tell), Afterwards, we can discuss it, think about it, chat, whatever. Just give it a read, it's only 118 pages.

This may sound strange, but I have been trying to write less recently. But, this has been in an attempt to edit more, to observe my own writing and to engage with it (nevertheless, I have written a fair amount, but I am giving you one random sonnet(ish) I wrote and a few other poems. Enjoy. Oh yes, the other impediment to my writing has been the leaching of the soul that results from having to mark exams. It does you know, leach your soul I mean.

Gone the fires: A Sonnet

Lament for those left uncalled alone

And me who loved irrational and bold

who cared for you, who's body was your own:

possession discarded, left forlorn and cold.

Madness of it, the righteous indignance

of youthful joys, ripping fruit flesh sexy

love our rippling flesh, every fragrance

of sex, our own mind-fucked apoplexy.

I would not call it flames, or fire or burning

but it's course was hot passing through my veins.

And found a way to staunch my body's yearning

by burning out your face, your words, your names.

Strident, you left, departure uninvolved

Still I remain, a part of you unsolved.

dogs of war 01-16.06.06

the dogs of war

are weakened

without food

I see

they skulk

Langa's streets

the other orphans

of this filial-

feral affair

Wake 01-22.06.06 (when you read this pronounce the one X as you would for 'Xhosa')

Coming in

at the back

she was thin.

Her sons: Xolisa (Peace)

Thando (Beloved)

are dead.

As so many are

the unwitting victims,

unwitting of their victims

as so many are.

Bowed praying mantis

over their graves

she was so thin.

A carcass cooks,

in funeral fire smoke

she is thin, still.

And the re-working of another poem:

Turned Hands

With upturned hands

you demand and you

plead with me.

Turn your hands down

wrists connected.

Although you've moved

freely, you're imprisoned

completely,

Your hands turned down

would display it.

I wonder. I wonder long and stringently on the role that the United States paints for itself in terms of world politics, trade and overall attempts at control. After wondering, I generally end up worrying. That seems to be the sequence of events.

For example, the buildup to the suicides in Gitmo are indicative of much of the rot that is extant in the US. The process that developed towards this point was deeply problematic. From the first, many people have been imprisoned in Gitmo simply on suspicion of being terrorists, or of having been involved in groups that were against the US. Cases which have attempted to move towards the US Supreme Court have been “thwarted by claims of National Security” (NYTimes, 12.06.06). Moreover, new laws, which some argue should be applied retroactively, may deprive individuals' rights to challenge their imprisonment. Hmm... Land of the Free... Hmm...Combine this with force-feeding programs to combat the hunger strikes, the use of restraint chairs, etc and the record becomes on which is easier to challenge.

What worries me even more is when I read the Washington Post and get told of 110 Million who have joined the “Ranks of the Free” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ok, yes some people are now free to die at the whim of US generals, to starve to death and to suffer the death of their kinsmen because the US decided that it was 'threatened'. What does this mean? Well, it means that the US felt that Al-Qaeda (that panacea-like defence claim) or 'Terrorist Islamists' (ooh another original one) have impacted on their way of life, on their liberties. Anyway, I am moving away from my initial point - in order to join the ranks of the free (to die of unknown causes maybe) you will be reconstructed in the image of the American 'democratic' state. Joy!

Combine this with the probable, if not inevitable overturning of Roe v. Wade, and with the possible dissolution of the statutes which separate Church from State in the US and we have a path for righteousness which may just indicate for us what a lot of this is about. The US believes intrinsically that its way of life is The Best, not only that, but it is The Right one. In addition, as a result of this, it can do whatever it wants to defend this righteous cause. Great.

Some recent stats on life in the third world: since the Gleneagles G8 conference at least 11 Million children of poor families have died. Many of these countries are ranked amongst 'The Free', but what's the issue? Well the US isn't that interested in dying kids of they aren't located in the US of A or unless their country has access to oil (movements by Goldman-Sachs and others notwithstanding). A response to this could be that world aid is meant to 'increase'. Valid point, but lets look at how we measure that: some $35 Billion of Nigeria's debt has been 'forgiven' and the debt of Saddam Hussein's 'illegitimate' government in Iraq has also been forgiven (OxFam 2006). Now, maybe I am a bit of a cynic when it comes to this, but there is one stark similarity between these two countries: Oil Deposits. Joy! Let's forgive debt, get rid of old governments and then we'll be able to satisfy our oil-consuming frenzy.

Ok. Then there's the AIDS issue. The UNAIDS program had a project called 3 by 5. This was meant to obtain access to ARVs for 3 million of the World's HIV positive and AIDS suffering individuals by September 2005. As a planet we hit the 1 million mark. Although 33% is judged as a fail at most educational institutions, this was still lauded as an 'improvement' (which it was by the way, I don't begrudge that). BUT so much of the progress is blunted by AIDS denialism (for which our own President, Mr Mbeki, is renowned) which seems to be gaining a foothold in the US, combined with which we have the Reagen Gag Rule, and further rules from PEPFAR which stipulate what can and can't be done with aid money (you aren't allowed to talk about abortion). Moreover, condom use is often downplayed. Abstention is the way forward (learn your ABCs). Once more, I don't mean to discredit the effectiveness of Abstention as a way not to contract HIV/AIDS, but the problem with this is that most people will simply ignore you. Most people want to have sex and they believe that they as an individual are not at risk. One of the best policy options which has been advocated by other (slightly more liberal groups I may add) is that individuals should use condoms for at least the first three months of a relationship (after which you can find out whether someone is HIV+ or not) and from then on maybe stop using them. People could conceivably do this. But would the US allow this to be adopted? Nope. Na huh. Sowwy.

Now, the reason I write this is because I am frustrated. I get annoyed because a number of people are Anti-American. I don't put myself in that camp. I want to go and study in the US, I think that in general the US has done a number of incredible and important things. However, I believe that a lot of their current policy is misguided and jeopardises the possibility of peace in any global sense, or of moving towards a world where we as individuals can narrow the gap of income inequality worldwide, and diminish the levels of poverty. I believe in Making Poverty History (but maybe not in the same way as Sir Bob). I agree that, in most senses, freedom and liberty are important, but killing thousands of innocent people in other countries to 'free' them without the assent of the UN? Less sure about that one. Thankfully for me at least, the poll ratings of Mr Bush are down. Much is being speculated about whether the Democrats will be able to Win Back Congress (Clines, NYTimes, 07.06.06). I hope that they do. Oh yes, I realise that I haven't commented that much on world trade. I don't believe that I have to except for the fact that the US (and the EU) need to come to the party there, otherwise all is lost (sorry Coldplay).

So let's keep thinking. Let's keep reading and trying to talk about whether there are going to be movements forward in the US to a state that more adequately reflects the will of a people. With 71 journalists dead in the war in Iraq, thousands of innocents dead in a few months time the US would have been involved in a war in Iraq almost as long as they were involved in WWII. Good to know. Sad to point out. I hope that things move away from the conservatism which seems to have pervaded US policy in recent years. They need to calm their xenophobia (Rivlin, 2006 and Rich, 2006, both NY Times). They need to think about alternative solutions to HIV/AIDS. They need to think of less self-interested ways that they can go about genuinely campaigning for the interests of the world's poor. America is still a powerhouse. They have the machinery to make the world move. I just hope that their momentum gets redirected and that they move in a direction that may better for the overall populace of the planet, rather than a select few in the USA. Hope, pray, think and speak. Maybe we'll get something done.

Once again we have come to a situation where people seem to self-select into groups labeling themselves the 'right' and the 'left'. I find this far from original. Nevertheless, I think that the topic at hand is an important one, one which can affect numerous of us in our everyday lives both in with respect to our constitutional right to free speech, as well as our wish to freely associate with individuals.

Anyway, the current topic is whether internet neutrality should be put into statute in the United States. Now, in the 'rest of the world' we don't have much say about this because we are, quite obviously and patently, outside of the US. Nevertheless, my belief is that the decisions taken there will affect how we interact on the internet and the extent to which we will use the internet freely and sociably.

My worry predominantly goes towards the fact that as an internet user my use predominantly revolves around access to sites in the United States and in many cases hosted by state-side servers. If there were no legislation going through and the dual highway off access (ironically, I think, as sponsored by Google (the supposed champion of 'free speech' and other morally appealing virtues) and several others) goes through then those companies with more money would be able to pay in order to increase their bandwidth and the accessibility of their sites. What this translates to is a gradation of access – you pay more, then people can access you more easily.

Now, hypothetically, this could create certain benefits to us as consumers because we would be able to download information quicker, we'd have faster streams of video, audio, etc to our home pcs using basic infrastructures such as broad band. That is all good. What is not at all good is the fact that we would be, once more, at the mercy of those who have more money. Notwithstanding that most of us use Google anyway, and already using that system there are cases that those who pay more will pop up higher on the search list, there is still the possibility of you as an individual choosing to click through the pages in order to find a specific site.

If the pay-for-your-bandwidth situation comes about though then those of us who don't pay, or who pay less for our internet and hosting, will end up being nigh on inaccessible to those people who may want to hear us.

My problem with this is many-fold. Firstly, in terms of equitable systems, this system (or the mechanism by which the system will come about) is inherently based on an infrastructure in which the person with more money 'wins' more space, download speeds, etc. This is not a good thing in world in which there is already dramatic inequality. If we saw this, then it would be a simple case of the rich buying up all the access and the poor not being able to buy enough. In a world where business is to a greater and greater extent internet-based this is just shocking! It cannot happen. Inequality will worsen and we in the third world with our horrendously low levels of relative capital will not be able to survive. The miracles of the internet age, a la Mark Shuttleworth will cease to exist. You will have to have money in order to make money. That just worsens an already poor situation.

In addition to this, there is the more heinous problem (if you are a libertarian) of the basic curtailment of free speech. It will not matter if you have the ability to speak freely if no one can hear you – what I mean here is that if you don't have the resources to buy bandwidth then people who may have heard what you had to say previously will not be able to do so. What will happen to NGOs and NPOs trying to get hits on their websites in order to increase donations to their causes? Will the pool of people patient enough simply dwindle into obscurity? Will their success be dependent on hand-outs from ISPs? In which case there could be typical preferential resourcing and allocations of funding such as there has been with PEPFAR after Bush reinstated Reagan's Gag Rule. Ah well... there goes the ability of the poor to speak out. Moreover, if I realise, as someone in control of a specific ISP, that the blog that someone has, or the site content that someone has constructed, is against what I think, or believe is valid, would I then not have the power to simply limit their bandwidth regardless? Would this then result in those companies that control the ISPs being able to profile and reject certain companies or individuals because of their politics, their religious beliefs, or their sexual orientation? Where would the ability to 'choose' be limited? Once more, free speech could be captured and tamed by the capitalist machine. This has happened time and again with the visual and printed media where only those whose views coincided with a specific opinion, or at least didn't deviate spectacularly from accepted doctrine would get published. The internet, on the other hand, has been a milieu through which the unpublished could self-publish (granted this has resulted in lots of bad 'art' going up on the internet, but hey it can't be all good all the time). In this world where people can actively participate in debate and express themselves freely, do we really believe that a government such as the US' should be able to determine not only the future of their own internet protocols, but to a large extent the models that may end up being accepted by the rest of the world? Would it be a just result to see an unregulated and laissez-faire situation coming about?

This is where the 'right'/'left' thing comes in. Generally, the right has more money than the left. Moreover, they are, more often than not, those who want to ensure that regulation of companies and corporates stays to a minimum in a 'laissez-faire' style economy. The problem with this is that it generally means laissezing the rich to faire what they want¹, such as if you have more money, you buy more bandwidth. If you have more bandwidth, all the more power to you, barrier to entry for competitors, level of competition in the market decreases, you gain more market power as others cannot compete with your investment, you gain pricing power and are a monopolist. It is the perfect situation for exploitative companies to say 'YAY!' a situation where government is not yet advanced enough to regulate us. That is unless the neutrality laws go through. The left are often obsessed with ideas such as freedom of speech (at least in some categorisations of the left I admit), of freedom of expression, etc. However, these could be lost as per the logic above.

Thus, once again, my personal opinion seems to be sitting on the 'left' with the regulators, the interventionists, the 'free speech protectors' and the anti-capitalist thugs. I reiterate that I believe that capitalism in itself is not a bad thing, it just needs to be watched, we are the custodians of capitalism and must ensure that it our systems protect not only the rights of those with money who want to make even more money, but those who want to move out of possible inferior situations into better situations. With an unregulated internet, this may be something of the past. So yes, I stand with those who want to 'protect the internet'. Read up, tell me what you think, I may be misinformed, who knows? What I do worry about though is apathy and people exploiting our inaction – once more we could be the victims of our own delayed conscious action.

Some sites FYI:

Against Net Neutrality

http://www.handsoff.org/

Pro Net Neutrality

http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2006/05/free_speech_fre.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?m=20060

harmonics 12.05.06

glancing at the sky

i see a star damaged

by the light around me

hemmed in the controlled

dispersion of our

electric lives

and I am humming an

awkward tune turning it

into a whistle

tuning into and out of

what makes the star

real in this moment

that i am watching it

seeing it and enjoying it's

damaged harmony with mine

Moving photos 14.05.06

I have photos of you

put up on the walls of

my room, slowly their

prestick-strength has

failed them and they have

peeled off, a corner at

a time normally. But

there are two of you,

black and white,

bleached sand, the curve

towards a breast as you

lie there, and these

neither peeled nor

took their time, they

simply fell. I don't want

to put them back in their

customary places, we

are no longer suited

to them being there,

nor am I sure if they should

be up any longer, grey

beaches of times when

you weren't away and

neither of us waiting

for the other to change,

for the other to stay.

Awoken dream 19.05.06

I.

Trembling child of my thoughts

do not cower

you are neither hungry

nor thirsty

quivering

boy

why do you cry?

I see neither wounds

nor scars on your

pale body, you

seem

undamaged.

Yet there is a hand

and a pointing finger

that draws in

the sand of these

thoughts

these predicted

dreams

II.

these finger sketches

made in the sands

become golem-alive

the barefoot walking

water carrying mothers

of my mind's eye

hungry fingers scratching

in the sand meals they make

held earthenware strong

the strength of these clay fingers

is borne in their daily

water-bearing, water dreaming

III.

without water, arid in

the African sun, the potter-

creators are weak and dry:

their makings cracking in

the heat, breaking in the

drought of it and once more

fading, the earth swallows

them and what was once blood

nourishes the parched land

sweet land that birthed

these golem dreams that

showed me the water-clay

children, hungry as they

were, but brought back

and dreamed at me, brought

forth, tied to me, and I, having

collected their sun-scattered

remains, wonder whether

I could have held back

the heat that so culled them.

I regret that I did not intervene,

that I watched in silence,

and bore witness to their shattering,

their last out breath.

Restoration 21.05.06

All it took was

some words, the

way you shook

your hair and a

request

from that I took

restoration

and there I had been

cowering in the

fear that the rest

that any more would

simply be shadows

you present me with

hopefulness

Interest 21.05.06

To batter against

what were the barriers

I had set up

to know that I

had erected these

structures, but be

unaware of the methods

of their de(con)struction

my god you have stirred

me up and it feels

so good to once

more engage and

be wanton for the

damage that you could

inflict on me in

letting you in

in the possibility

of your vision

beneath my closed

eyelids, to be unheard

by you, but for you

to feel the bass of

my voice against the

closeness of your skin

that would content me

Five Men 23.05.06

I scream wracked the windows

of my home tonight

and I am past the point

of tentativeness

I ran out to the calls of

“They're down the canal”

and a woman screaming

“Get the bastards!”

I had not run that fast months

my damaged knee, but the pent

frustrations of hijackings

break-ins and the muggings

of ninety-one year old women

spurned me onwards, I ran with

two men, I the biggest of

us three and I caught up

to the 'bastards' who'd

attacked my neighbour lady

five men in the darkness of

rondebosch, canal water and leaves

I stood there as they

shouted at one another

running and confused at

people chasing them:

the reverse predation

and it was stranger still

when they ran at me and
I stood my ground.

One stopped, waved a knife

and ran away. Although

I was not fearful, stupid as

that may seem, it would

have been more foolish still to

die alone there, having outrun

my friends, but I knew

I knew and I knew, that

part of me had wanted

to attack him, to make

him feel attacked, to rip

at his knife-hand with my

hands to punch him with

my frustrated fists and to

kick at the lowness of it.

Earlier I had tried to recall

synonyms. They came to me

as I ran my chase:

Dialectical. Disputatious.

And they were so damn

appropriate the dialectics

of the material, the stolen

and the gone – the paradox

the rich fearing the strength

of poverty as young men

race our streets in their

casual attempts at 'work'

of laptops and old ladies'

purses, the radios and old

shoes in cars, the left, the

lost and the alone. Gone.

A Primary School Classroom in a Township 25.05.06

Far far from the grasp of gusty seas and cling-wrap

beaches these faces the stalks of brown seaweed in

an ocean of white paint and ink-stained desks, they

are the wind-blown pick-'n-pay packet children of

Cape Town's shores blown into the overheads and

highways caught up in the barbed-wire berths that

surround the schools in which they were once sweet

once young, momentarily youthful in the bright, sunlit

corners of these too dim rooms. The boy with the

ink on his pale hands left his mark in the sand near

the school's gate, he glanced across his shoulder at

the rust tin soccer games, the gravel clean and innocent

in the face of all the running, the games and the

flagrant inaction, the careless joys of education

primary and formative as it should be. Yet it could

be more: with the ideas of carpets beneath feet, the

concepts of books on shelves and pencils in hands

or chalkboards that would meet with chalk, rather

than the drum of dull voices and their echoes on

cemented floors, the emptiness of bookless shelves

and the orchestral silence of unwriting children.

I would not claim that their tongues are not golden,

nor that their eyes could not remember the greens

and blues of beached days, but the talking, the reading

and the idea of imagination seem sparse here, it is

difficult to consider them, to conceive of what once

would have been imagined, would have been naked,

burning and eaten up by tastes gone dull from disuse

for the paper-thin boys breaking into the waves of the

smaller girls look on in shocked hair ways, eyes wide

at umlungu, eyes brighter still at how we so become

idols, how we are the moment by moment recreated

histories playing out our drums on the skin of their

ancestors, and them the heirs to lost thrones and further

gone lineages of men, bought, sold, liberated and sold anew.

Ok, so one of the guys that I tutor for, Ron Irwin, asked me to help him write an article on Affirmative Action (as this is a passion of mine, in a strange way). One of the adjuncts was that Men's Health also asked him to write on the 5 Biggest Myths on Affirmative Action and on Black Workers. I got 5 for Affirmative Action, but I didn't get further than 3 for Black Workers. I read an article by Fryer and Loury last year and a lot of what I wrote was influenced by what they wrote and my own thinking subsequent to that. Enjoy!

5 Biggest Myths about Affirmative Action

1. Affirmative Action isn’t about quotas it’s about a ‘goal of government’.

Regardless of whether you buy into Affirmative Action or not, it is about actual specific numerical goals, both in terms of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and in terms of the transformation of specific companies. Believing that you don’t have to fulfil a specific numerical quota is naïve. Companies need to fulfil quotas in order to be BEE compliant and in order to be in line with the transformation outcomes delineated in the employment equity act. It isn’t going to be anything fuzzy such as a ‘goal’, it’s a cold hard number that needs to be met by every single company to transform the economy, the workplace and the class structure of South Africa.

2. Affirmative Action Will Help the poor of South Africa

Sadly, in most cases this is a mythical ideal. Those people who are going to benefit are the people who are well-connected and well-educated. What does that mean? It’s most likely the black sons and daughters of black businessmen and politicians who are going to benefit the most from affirmative action policies. The poor and underprivileged may be overlooked because of the dramatic problems in the education system that are still prevalent throughout South Africa: the lack of throughput from Matric to technical tertiary education degrees such as Engineering, Maths and other applied sciences.

3. Race-neutral policies are more ethical and effective than race-specific ones

Again this is a myth based on a myopic view of ethics. In terms of equitable approaches to employment in the ideal world people would come from exactly the same backgrounds and be able to attend homogenous schools that rewarded hard work and intellectual pursuits. This isn’t the case. Sadly, in South Africa with a dramatic history of inequality in basic education levels and inequality in incomes (which means that if you are white your parents could pay for you to go to an even better school if they wanted), these inequalities in investment in infrastructure and institutions in specific areas are going to be felt for generations to come. In order to deal with them one of the only ways to intervene is to have ‘race-sighted’ rather than ‘race-blind’ policies. Moreover, race specific policies are one of the only ways to compensate and cater for the unethical historical treatment of specific race groups. In addition to this, Affirmative Action does not say that white people should not be employed, or that they are not allowed in specific jobs, what it says is that companies need to go about using their budgets to recruit qualified black individuals. This neither unethical nor ineffective, it is a dramatic attempt to reform the institutions in our society such that they become conducive to multiracial circumstances – an ethical and efficient outcome.

4. It should be about equal opportunities

Well, yes it should be. The problem however, as related above, is the fact that opportunities are seldom equal. In fact in most circumstances we see many situations in which the whites in this country because of the institutions that are available to them in still predominantly white areas, are at a distinct advantage in the ‘opportunities’ game. No one can honestly say that a child going to Sinethemba Secondary School (???) is given the same ‘opportunities’ as a child going to Rondebosch Boys High School. What does this mean? In many situations as a white individual in South Africa you have been given a multitude of opportunities that will increase the use of you as an individual relative to many of the black individuals in the country who are still victims of the multiple inferior institutions with which they interact on a daily basis. Government is trying to change things, but it takes time, and not just time but money and the expertise of individuals who are committed to change the system. The idea that you should then be given an ‘equal opportunity’ in terms of job availability is nigh on ludicrous, you are an overwhelmingly good candidate because of the number of opportunities that have been fed to you throughout your life, don’t claim that simply because there are suddenly Affirmative Action policies in this one area of your life that you are suddenly downtrodden and part of the exploited proletariat.

5. Affirmative Action always affects ‘me’

The short answer is ‘no’. Grow up. Every single job wasn’t a job reserved for you. Every single interview wasn’t an interview which was meant to result in a job for you. There are a number of jobs out there and the fact is that if you are a highly skilled individual you should get one regardless. Affirmative action is about getting people who haven’t been involved to be a part of the picture, and not only are they changing the look of the company photo, but hopefully they are changing the way the company itself is run; for the better. That job you didn’t get? Maybe you didn’t suit the profile. Maybe you weren’t qualified, experienced, confident, well-trained, or [fill this space] enough – all of these are reasons you would have thought that you didn’t get the job previously before affirmative action came about. These things still apply now, if not even more so than they ever did before. The reason being that previously, you or your buddy may have gotten the simply because you were white, maybe you weren’t qualified enough, but you still got the job. The tables have been turned. Go and get an honours degree, an MBA, or get involved in a project, some volunteer work, show that you are a worthwhile candidate. If you are you will be hired.

In terms of myths about black workers…

1. They aren’t as qualified

Wrong answer. They may not have been as qualified on average immediately after Apartheid, but right now there are more and more black graduates entering into the job market. Moreover, if they have been trained recently with more rigorous methods, the possibility is that they may even be trained better than you. What that means is that not only are they a black candidate, but they are a black candidate with a good qualification.

2. They don’t work as hard

Hate to say it, but wrong again. In order for a black individual to retain a high-end job they are most likely going to have to work as hard as anyone else. In fact, they are quite likely going to have to work harder than that for the simple reason that they may be in slightly over their heads. Don’t con yourself into thinking that you have a monopoly on the ability to work hard if you came out of white middle class suburbia.

3. They get paid too much

No, they don’t. This is basic economics. Currently, they are possibly being paid more than their white counterparts because of there being a high demand combined with a low supply of black professional workers. Low supply and high demand result in a high price. A high price in this instance is simply a higher wage to retain the services of a specific product – the product being the services of a black professional in a specific field. They are not being paid ‘too much’ they are being paid the price that the market has determined for them (the market incidentally which lib-dems such as most whites favour so hotly). If by ‘too much’ you mean more than you, then yes that may be true, but think of it in economic terms and it’s simply the result of basic market dynamics. Incidentally, what makes affirmative action even more important in this circumstance is that as it progresses these payment differentials will decrease because the necessity for them will have drastically diminished – the supply of qualifies black individuals will have increased lowering the price at which the market clears...