Join in celebrating the memory, people of District Six
THIS is Eusebius McKaiser’s third book, and he is growing in stature with each collection of essays he brings us. These are works to be treasured by a brave intellectual who is astute and innovative in how he grapples with complex issues in South African society. With this book it’s racism and specifically anti-black racism.
I was a young editor in my first stint at the Cape Argus about four years ago when I received a very angry phone call from a young man called Eusebius McKaiser. I had never met him before but had read and admired his work and loved the temerity he had to call up a newspaper and challenge the editor.
He was right to be angry. I had handled a very delicate matter of racial tension boiling over between black and coloured people over resources in a municipality near Somerset West, in a very callous way with an over-the-top front page presentation. We spoke for a while and Eusebius agreed to write a piece about the tensions.
The piece was incisive and refreshing. But most of all it was Eusebius’s clarity of thought and candid views on race and race relations that made it memorable.
I am happy to say that in Run Racist Run Eusebius is at his incisive best and he writes as clearly as he thinks about a tough topic – the subliminal racism (or the nonbloody type, less in-your-face type) we have all been guilty of trying to avoid or sweep under the carpet. So we find ourselves in District Six tonight. How apt. It was here that black and coloured people lived in racial harmony before the apartheid government so violently kicked out our families and bulldozed their homes.
In District Six, where nothing stands, remains a painful memory of what could have been. Our people were scattered across the Cape Flats – in places like Manenberg, Gugulethu, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha. In the latter, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha, our people – coloured and black – live next door to each other yet are worlds apart.
Eusebius reminds us in Run Racist Run that the distance
Eusebius McKaiser (centre) spoke at the launch of his new book, Haupt (right), associate professor of media studies at UCT and Cape Argus editor Gasant Abarder. between us is down to the racist design of apartheid – a divider and conqueror. I asked journalist, photographer, fashion designer and social media activist Victor Dlamini about this recently.
He said: “It’s very difficult to get people to coalesce around politics because it’s typically divisive. But when people coalesce around the culture there is a lot that they share. I really think that part of the magic that has to be rediscovered in Cape Town is the shared culture, the shared suffering.
“Anyone who goes to District Six understands the shared uprooting. Right now there’s a sense that race has become the predominant thing. Are you coloured? Are you black?
“And when you take out the context of a common deprivation, but also of a common sense of uniting around a UDF led by people like Popo Molefe, Trevor Manuel and others, then it’s very difficult for people to remember that the last 10 years do not define race relations.”
He says, “It’s very difficult for people to remember in the 80s there was a sense that this UDF was almost the model of racial harmony, when there was unity among the oppressed. Now when I read all these letters and complaints, I almost can’t recognise the new Cape Town. And I think it’s disheartening.”
So why did the Cape Argus partner with Eusebius to launch this book? Eusebius aroused in my colleagues and me a new openness and consciousness about racism and race relations that at times we were guilty of storing in the recesses of our minds for fear of upsetting the status quo.
This is an important conversation he has started and for me, in order to make it relevant, I want it to be the starting point for those once united in their oppression, to find each other again.
I want to do all I can with the platform I have to start breaking down the divide between Bonteheuwel and Langa, Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain – until we find more in our common humanity that unites us rather than keeps us apart. It is the kind of consciousness that Eusebius has helped shape in our dialogues. It is also the kind of revolutionary thinking that represents the new Independent Media – owners of the Cape Argus – which gave me the freedom recently to cede half of my editorial authority to student coeditors so that they can tell their story in their own voices in what was celebrated as groundbreaking in newspapers. What Eusebius and the students have in common is that they have challenged our laziness– and I include myself in that latter category as having been lazy.
Tonight, we are fortunate to have Eusebius with us in conversation with Adam Haupt, associate professor of media studies at UCT.
Among others, Adam is the author of Static: Race and Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media and Film.
He occasionally writes for the Mail & Guardian, Thought Leader, The Guardian UK, Africa is a Country and City Press.
He has also worked as a freelance journalist, dabbled in TV and video production and experimented in music, the spoken word, and poetry performance.
Eusebius has worked in radio, is a newspaper columnist, and political commentator, master of ceremonies and is a champion debater who is very tjatjarag on social media. ON DECEMBER 10, 1994, the District Six Museum opened Streets: Retracing District Six in the old Methodist Church at 25A Buitenkant Street. Since that seminal exhibition, it has charted its steady course through sometimes precarious waters, continuing to be inspired by a clear sense of purpose.
Having its origins in the “Hands Off District Six” campaign of the 1980s, the Museum has emerged as a leader in the “Hands On District Six” movement, ensuring that the memory of the past and the protection of people’s rights are always taken into account when designing the future of the District Six community to be rebuilt. Also, working hard to ensure that Capetonians beyond the District Six community, past and present, are able to own this as a Cape Town story.
December 10 also has additional significance in that it is International Human Rights Day, marking the day on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN in 1948. In addition, in 2013, it was the National Day of Mourning following on the passing of past president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. District Six Museum invites the public to join it in celebrating this important milestone.
The birthday celebrations will take place in two parts. The first will be today, in the Museum – the place where the first exhibition opened. It will start at 6.30pm, and a light supper will be preceded by reflections by Judge Siraj Desai, a trustee of the museum, on the significance of the work of memory in a context of human rights.
Judge Desai has been involved in the struggles for the return of the displaced people of the District since the campaign started in the ’80s. Live music will be provided by well-known musician Trudy Rushin. She herself has composed songs dedicated to the people of District Six.
The second part of the celebration will take place on Saturday, and will take the form of a matinée snack dance. The venue for this will be the museum’s Homecoming Centre at 15 Buitenkant Street, starting at 2pm.
The band Rendezvous, led by District Six musician Joe Schaffers, will provide the music for this occasion. Lights snacks will be provided, but people are invited to bring their own platters. Some refreshments will be on sale. Tickets cost R21 for Seven Steps club members (R1 for each year of the museum’s life) and R42 for non-members (R2 for each year). A birthday cake will be cut at both events.
Please book ahead to help us with catering and seating arrangements, by calling Zahra or Nicky on 021 466 7200. Email reception@districtsix.co.za
Bennett is the director of the District Six Museum