In 101 Mintutes You can Experience South Africa's Apartheid Struggles and Triumphs

My two favorite turns of history, over the last twenty-five years, were the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of apartheid in South Africa, followed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Guest blogger Paul Schmidt [an avid fan of Africa, especially post apartheid South Africa].

Catch a Fire, the new film from director Phillip Noyce which opened last weekend, tells the true story of Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke). Born in poverty in Mozambique, he worked his way up to being a foreman at the Secunda oil refinery outside Johannesburg. He was apolitical in that time of polarization. He preferred instead to focus on his family [wife Precious (Bonnie Henna) and two small daughters], work and coaching a local boys soccer team.

As the movie opens the Chamusso family is attending a wedding in a rural village. On the drive home they are stopped at a roadblock and Patrick becomes a suspected terrorist tied to an explosion at the oil refinery at which he works. Shortly thereafter he is arrested and tortured by Nic Vos (Tim Robbins) a Colonel in the Police Security Branch. Desperate to protect his family, he unsuccessfully seeks to shield his family with a compromised alibi.

When he is finally released he barely returns home before he leaves for Mozambique to join the ANC resistance, forced by his mistreatment to side with his fellow countrymen who are committed to ending the oppression of the black majority by the white minority.

The script was written by screenwriter Shawn Slovo, one of the daughter’s of the late Joe Slovo, the former head of the ANC’s military wing and one of the most prominent white anti-apartheid activists, and later cabinet member in Nelson Mandela’s first government. He gave her the idea of this movie in the late 80’s. Shawn’s sister, Robyn, is one of the producers. Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack add celebrity to the production team.

The critics at Rotten Tomatoes generally acclaim the film giving it an 80% favorable rating….that means that 73 of the 93 critics who have reviewed it approved. Go see this movie and appreciate better the struggle that South African’s endured and that created today’s dynamic leader of Southern Africa.

Afterward, you’ll find this comprehensive Seattle Times-Intelligencer story will answer all your questions: such as, (1) How was Derek Luke affected by playing this real life, living national hero? (2) Tell me more about Shawn Slovo? (3) Is the movie story true to history? ENJOY and LEARN!

Even after having satisfied my dream of visiting South Africa in 2002, I still thirst for a better understanding of how the horrors of life under apartheid could have been been happening while I was in school and starting a family. I also marvel at, how like with the Berlin wall, so much of the man made barrier between people [and races] was diffused "in the twinkling of an eye". Catch a Fire capably portrays this period of history and its impact on the lives of ordinary South Africans.

Thanks dad for your welcomed addition to my blog. As we were talking about Catch a Fire last night I was really excited you had seen it and looking forward to seeing it as well. As far as I know it is not yet here in South Africa, ironic and wrong, and might not be here in theatres for a few weeks or months. I guess I will have to see it on DVD when I get home in a few months. Also, another factoid about the movie is that many of you might know that “Catch a Fire” is actually a song title by Bob Marley and the Wailers. Ironically, I have over 250 songs by Marley (solo and group) and don’t have Catch a Fire but do have it on one of the two albums by one of his musically talented son’s Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley. The song comes off of his 2001 album “Halfway Tree” which is a good mix of reggae and hip-hop with catchy tunes and political undertones/overtones.

What’s fueling South Africa? Driving experiences, fuel costs and small cars.

I just thought it would be interesting to share a bit about my experience so far with fuel (petrol, gas or whatever you want to call it) for cars. I will write more about this in a future blog as I really should be working on my capstone for SIT. I don’t think I have mentioned that I have been driving here off and on since about my third week here. So far I have driven to the store, driven short distances for work, gone for a ride with Marcilio to see a concert a few weeks back and driven to work with the girls and women at the center for former and current prostitutes that Linzi is on the board of and where Doug and I have been teaching speech skills for the past few weeks. In fact I will be going there tomorrow and this time all on my own. It is good to do some training with this group made up mostly of females but also with two guys who work for the center one teaching computers and the other I am not sure about but he is a poet, artist, actor, etc. You might want to look back at one of my first entries from back on July 27^th when I shared some impressions on what driving is like here in SA. It wasn’t that hard to drive on the other side of the road and it helps that the car that I have been driving is automatic. I love manual/stick but this is what is available and I can’t argue.

The car I have been using is a Toyota Camry which belongs to Doug and he was using when I first got here until it’s A/C quit, followed by it breaking down on him a few times while traveling long distances. Needless to say I will just drive it short distances and always have my cell phone with me. The specifics on the car is that it is a 4-speed automatic with four doors, a 2.2 liter/litre engine and has a fuel tank capacity of 70 liters. I just went to fill it up this afternoon as it was almost on empty and after I sat down to calculate fuel costs and compare the price between gas here in SA and in the US. It sucked up 58.78 liters which at a price of 6.06 a liter cost a whopping 356.21 ZAR (rands). I went to Pumpsandspares.com (if you know a better site to calculate costs please do share) and found out that the 58.78 liters is (about) equivalent to 13 gallons. I then went to XE.com to see what the current exchange from the rand to the dollar at about 6 PM my time was. I calculated the 356.21 ZAR that I paid to fill up the car and it came out to 46.8069 USD. Then from PumpsandSpares.com I figured out that 6.06 a liter equals 0.800117 USD and that 1 gallon is equal to about 5 liters. Thus if I was to buy one gallon here in South Africa (or at least at the Shell Station where I went here in Sandringham it would cost a little over $4. (If any of this calculation is inaccurate please let me know) As I haven’t been home in over three months I am not sure what current fuel costs are in the States but I would guess that this is between 20 and 30% more than the costs at home.

When you consider the fuel costs, the costs of living here in South Africa, the high level of unemployment and the weak rand it is no wonder that many of the cars that I see on the road are small 2 and 4 door ones many smaller than a VW Golf or Honda Civic hatchback. It really is amazing coming from the gas guzzling capitol of the world to South Africa where more because of the lack of money in your wallet most people choose small, compact, light and fuel efficient cars over the monster SUVs and other major pollution producers. It will be a shock to be back home and feel like I am the fool at the monster truck rally with my Golf. Heck, many of the cars here make my VW seem like a monster truck. I will undoubtedly write more on my experiences with energy consumption, travel and more in blogs to come.

What I do….A New Hope....

Creative title if I do say so myself. Any guesses as to why I chose this? If you think you know feel free to post a comment below with your guess. It has come to my attention thanks to my one of my greatest enemies who at the same time can be my best friend i.e. my self-conscious or Jiminy Cricket (my apologies for the Disney reference, yes Fiona this is another thing I don’t like) that I have written very little on Ripplefxs about me, my time here in South Africa and what I do here for work, fun and more. I started this blog with the idea of sharing about my time here but have found that it has been a good place to share my epiphanies, rants and random thoughts with you as well as a cathartic activity. I promise to return to the theme of “my life” from time to time.

I would like to briefly recap what I covered in my first and second entries just a month ago to share a bit of the work I do and purpose behind my 6 months here. I am working, as an HIV/AIDS consultant, for an Ashoka Fellow, Linzi Smith, who was a government nurse for over 15 years in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Linzi started Education, Training and Counselling (ETC) five years ago after a trip to the United States which inspired her to take a new approach to the HIV/AIDS situation here in South Africa. Along with Linzi, who works about 16 hours a day, I work with Douglas Smith, Linzi’s husband, and Ben Brown. I have mentioned about Doug before as he is very memorable, funny and kind and Ben who I watched play soccer my second weekend here and who has an amazing story of his own that I hope to share in a future blog posting.

Last Friday, Ben was finishing facilitating a five day training at a mining company where he was training a “select” group of employees to be certified “peer educators”. Four of the people out of about 20 that he was training disclosed to him on the final day that they were HIV positive. Ben stayed much later than normal to counsel these four individuals and he only began to start the two hour trip home around 6 PM. One of the people had only been tested last Tuesday, the day after the course started, and thus was disclosing some very traumatic and personal information with Ben who as is his nature stayed to provide the best support and care that he could. I will write more about Ben later but should get back to “my life” which is not to say that Ben, Linzi, Doug and others are not a part of it as they are a huge part and I am grateful to each of them for their friendship, guidance and all the rest.

So far my work has mainly consisted of helping around the office with various computer problems (I am not an expert but sometimes it is all relative), searching for funding sources and grant writing, marketing/sales and preparing PowerPoint presentations. Next week I am excited to tell you I will participate in and co-facilitate my first peer educator training. I will give a more in depth explanation next week of “peer educator” training in the context of HIV/AIDS, South Africa and ETC.

I am really looking forward to this training as it seems to be the seminal component to the work that is/can be done to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, protect the rights of people that are HIV + and prolong the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) through proper nutrition, exercise, medication, etc. I have been told this training is a life changing experience for many and it was for Ben, who I will have to ask to do a guest blog entry. You can look for more on “what I do” in a future blog and don’t forget to guess why I chose the title for this blog.

The wonders of the internet…

How do I spend my free time you ask? Well as I don’t have my own car so I sometimes ask for a ride to run errands but really going out on my own is tough even with an international driver’s license seeing as how South Africans drive on the wrong side (j/k) of the road you know the left side and I have to get used to driving on that side of the road. Well you say but Blake “You lived in Mozambique for over 2 ½ years and they like South African drive on the left side of the road so why can’t you?” To which I have to answer I was never the driver in Mozambique as Peace Corps didn’t allow it and even when I was there outside of Peace Corps the only thing I usually wanted to do was act like an ostrich while driving so as not to see the wild driving that often occurred by the chapa/mini-bus/taxi drivers I road with, not Annie and Charles of course, or the other drivers on the road. It really is different not taking any public transport here and being driven around by Linzi, Douglas, Jared or Ben. I am doing my best to keep my eyes open while we are going around to learn where shops, offices and other places are located to hopefully get up the courage one day to be the driver. I think my using public transport in Mozambique the great majority of the time kept me from hearing drivers in their own cars from commenting on the terrible driving by the chapa/mini-bus/taxi drivers or maybe these drivers in Mozambique weren’t nearly as bad as the reputation that they have here.

Enough for now about drivers and driving and on to the title of this blog entry which you were probably beginning to think was written and then forgotten about. No worries I did want to tell you one more reason why I think the internet is amazing (I have a long list of reasons I think it or its use rather by certain individuals, organizations or governments is terrible). I spent about two hours this past weekend on Saturday or Sunday night fixated on Google’s satellite maps at http://maps.google.com/maps. I spent some time finding my parent’s home in Portland, the ETC offices/my room here in South Africa but the majority of my time was spent locating Chókwè, Lionde, Conhane, Xai-Xai, Macia, Maputo, Matola, Boane and other locations in Mozambique. It was fascinating getting a birds eye satellite view of the country where I spent 30 plus months living, working and traveling. I was amazed at how close I could get to my houses in Chókwè (one for Peace Corps and the other for The World Through My Eyes), Escóla Agrária (the agrarian school) where I taught, the home in Boane where I had my home stay during training and much more. I will not bore you with all the details although I am sure that Tober, Aimee, Nanosh, John, Orlando, Rebecca, Jimmy, Nimi and others can relate to finding a lot of enjoyment in something like this especially in a place where so much time, sweat and patience was expended.