Around the World in 32 Countries: South Africa

"Typically, hair gets done on weekends (Hillbrow, 2010)"
Two women in the Hillbrow neighbourhood of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Attributed to Guinivere Pedro, c. 2015
via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

Official languages:

• English (first language of 9.6%)
• isiZulu (22.7%)
• isiXhosa (16%)
• Afrikaans (13.5%)
• Sepedi
• Setswana
• Sesotho
• Xitsonga
• siSwati (Swazi)
• Tshivenda
• isiNdebele

Modern-day state formation year: 1994 (democratization)

"Dune Strandveld growing on dunes
in Blaauwberg Nature Reserve. Cape Town."
Photograph taken ca. 2010, attributed to Abu Shawka
via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Capital city: Pretoria (executive), Bloemfontein (judicial), Cape Town (legislative)

Surface area: 1,221,037 km² (larger than Ethiopia and smaller than Mali or Angola)

Currency: South African rand

Driving side: left

Main trading partners: Germany, the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom and Spain

Crops: Sugarcane, maize, grapes, oranges, potatoes, wheat, soy

Mining: Amongst top 10 worldwide producers of platinum, chromium, manganese, titanium, vanadium, iron ore

Sources:

South Africa [Wikipedia]
List of countries and dependencies by area [Wikipedia]
Economy of South Africa [Wikipedia]

***

While the history of South Africa stretches back thousands of years, I concentrated in my reading of South African books on the period from 1900 to the present.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela is a classic that requires little introduction. I am still reading Volume I. He portrays his childhood in a chief's extended family and household in the 1910s and 20s, then his education in colonial British institutions, reaching the apex of his university studies at Fort Hare. Then the life he'd envisioned takes another swing into the unknown as he runs away from his guardian, a short job at a mining complex abruptly breaks off, and he grows into work at a lawyer's office in Johannesburg. There he meets anti-apartheid activists, including Communists, and no longer just attempting to fit into the socioeconomic reality of South Africa as it approaches the Malan years where apartheid became solidified into its extremist nadir, he begins to become political. Altogether he takes pains when setting forth his own life's story to portray the different groups and milieus in South African society, to depict a bonded rather than isolated nation.

Because Albert Luthuli's life ended in the late 1960s, long before the defeat of apartheid, and he was more religious, his book Let My People Go offers the most insight into specific topics: Christianity in South Africa, attempts to bring about reconciliation between groups in the country (South African civilians who were facing apartheid in different parts of the land, urban or rural; the different White political groups and administrators; the interracial 'Coloured' population and population of Indian extraction; Communists and Anglicans and Catholics; racist White individuals and policemen and less racist White individuals and policemen), the creeping influence of apartheid on Luthuli's home ground of education, and initiatives to organize passive resistance on a large scale, in the mid-20th century.

Maloti-Drakensberg Park (Lesotho, South Africa)
by Véronique Dauge, c. 2005
via Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of UNESCO
CC-BY-SA 3.0 license

Apartheid, the volume of anti-apartheid essays edited by the exiled writer Alex La Guma to help concert international pressure to undermine the apartheid government, offers a broader spectrum view of all of South African history up to the early 1970s, when it was published abroad in Britain. It establishes a factual basis earlier in the book of the gradual introduction of racist government policy whether English or Afrikaner, details apartheid's impact in the fields of education, land ownership, military spending and even sports, and winds up with perspectives of the future that admit in some cases that violence and/or Communism may be the answer.

While the essays aren't always thrilling to read, and the earnest interspersed poetry often feels like the offcuts of better work, it remains informative even after 40 years of events have piled on top of the ones in the book. It's also interesting to me even in that bygone era of the Vietnam War, other after-effects of colonial rule, Cold War coups and invasions, etc., South African government policy internationally still had the power to shock.

"City Deep container terminal Johannesburg 2014"
via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

Turning to fiction: Lauren Beukes's novel Zoo City, set in her birth city of Johannesburg and published in 2010, gives a fantasy view of present-day South Africa. Her heroine is a young Black woman who had intended to become a journalist but had become sidetracked by the violent death of her brother, drug abuse, and a prison term, into petty crime. Even strangers recognize that she has been in trouble with laws written or unwritten, due to the presence of a large sloth by her side. This particular one appeared after the brother's death and it is linked to her by magic: a pet with a mind of his own, her external conscience, and her partner.

Crime and socioeconomic inequality in fictional Johannesburg are the focus of the novel. But, although this is by no means central, Beukes also mentions how the city (fictionalized in the book, but mirroring in some respects the 'true' South Africa) has paradoxically been a haven of sorts for refugees from violence, specifically wars in the northern African continent. 

To quote Wikipedia:

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2008 reported over 200,000 refugees applied for asylum in South Africa, almost four times as many as the year before. These people were mainly from Zimbabwe, though many also come from Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Competition over jobs, business opportunities, public services and housing has led to tension between refugees and host communities.

The author also spent time studying in New York City. Her depiction of urban crime seems like it can be applied beyond Johannesburg, perhaps as a result of that, even if it's true that in smaller cities like Berlin I do expect violent crime but not regular shootouts. What I did find refreshing is that, although for example the imaginary musical scene in her book is influenced by American pop culture, she helps make pretty clear through her descriptions that the world doesn't revolve around the US or Europe (as I'm sometimes tempted to think from my German-Canadian perspective). Most of the preoccupations, entertainment and future of South Africa are driven from within.

Beukes's writing style in Zoo City is prone to clichés and the narrator indulges in libertarian-esque cynicism that I unkindly found performative. First-person, present-tense narration is not everyone's favourite quirk, either, even if it is fashionable. But her strong characterization, scene-setting and writerly intensity made me forget and overlook these aspects, and the novel was compelling to read to the end.