This is what a literary festival in Cape Town should look like

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This is the fourth contribution in LitNet’s mini seminar on structural racism.

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While watching the audience enter the theatre to attend “Conversations with Mohale”, I’m always struck with the thought that this is what a literary festival in Cape Town should look like. Sometimes I even say it out loud.
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As a middle-class, white male South African, I feel very uncomfortable about being asked to contribute to a discussion about structural racism, but I agreed largely because it was Bettina Wyngaard, a black woman for whom I have loads of respect, who asked me to do so.

My discomfort is, I think, twofold. Firstly, the voices that need to be heard in discussions about racism are those that are discriminated against because of their race, not members of the perpetrator group. “What do I have to contribute to this conversation?” was the gist of my first, second and third thoughts. The second source of discomfort is a lot more personal, and consequently more difficult to articulate. It’s less about positionality and more about motivations. And it’s also about ego, which is always a difficult box to unlid.

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The Friday of Open Book always ends with “Conversations with Mohale” – a conversation about different elements of feminism, chaired by the brilliant Mohale Mashigo and including the equally brilliant Pumla Dineo Gqola and two or three other black feminist writers. It represents something essential about the festival and is an event that we always know will be well attended, with an audience that comprises a large proportion of young, black women, celebrating the ways in which four or five amazing black women own the stage, own the festival. “Conversations with Mohale” encapsulates so much of what my team and I have been trying to create with Open Book.

And while watching the audience enter the theatre to attend “Conversations with Mohale”, I’m always struck with the thought that this is what a literary festival in Cape Town should look like. Sometimes I even say it out loud. And at some point during the event, I will enter the theatre to witness the onstage brilliance, and with five minutes of the allotted time left, Mohale will find me in the aisle and ask me for more time for the event. It’s an annual dance we play – her acknowledgement of me in that moment, pretending that I’m the boss of the festival, when in fact she is; my pretending to be irritated, but actually swelling with pride. My Best White ego (thank you, Rebecca Davis, Best White – The Book Lounge ) runneth over at the recognition accorded me by this amazing black woman. In Cape Town, nogal – a city still so marked by apartheid spatial divisions.

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Rewind to Open Book 2016, at the height of the student protests. I chaired a conversation titled “On my mind: Whiteness”, interrogating what it meant to be a white South African. It was an understandably messy and difficult conversation, but something that has stuck with me is one of the white student activists on stage telling me that it is my responsibility as a “progressive” white South African to engage with other whites, to do the work to shift their perceptions, their politics, their racism. I remember acknowledging the truth in what he was saying, but at the same time knowing that I found it very difficult to play that role, to do “that work”. I’m far more comfortable trying to do my tiny bit in tackling institutional racism and some of the legacy problems of the book industry by trying to create and curate space for black writers.

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A white friend of mine remarked to me recently that he had felt discomforted by his whiteness in an event at Open Book this year. Surrounded by black people, he felt acutely aware of his race in a way in which he never otherwise did in Cape Town. He said that this was a good thing, which is why he’s a friend of mine. How many experiences in Cape Town does the average white person have in which they are forced to think about their race, where their race is regarded as anything other than the default?

I see so many black people come into The Book Lounge or attend Open Book for the first time with, at best, an unspoken question – how will I be treated in this space? Or, at worst, an expectation that they will be made to feel unwelcome in a subtle or not-so-subtle way.

I am a white person in Cape Town. I don’t go out much, but when I do, whether it’s to a shopping centre, a restaurant or a movie, I go safe in the knowledge that my whiteness will not lead anyone I interact with to regard me with suspicion. The only time in my life I’ve been profiled was as a 20-something crossing the border from Ireland to the UK, when someone decided I was a likely IRA activist and forced an entire busload of travellers to wait for them to finish a 45-minute “interview” with me, before the bus was allowed to continue. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to experience that kind of profiling on a regular basis.

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In the context of ongoing structural racism in South Africa, I am wondering about the extent to which I use the role I play in curating events such as “Conversations with Mohale” at Open Book as a shield behind which to hide, to deflect away from what is part of my responsibility as a white South African, that is, to listen more to the words that were said to me all those years ago – to dedicate a significant portion of my time to having difficult conversations with my fellow whites, to get beyond the defensiveness that so often characterises white dialogue around issues of race in South Africa.

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So often, what needs to be said, as a white South African, is: first listen. Then listen some more. Then listen again, before you even think about engaging on any level.
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So often, what needs to be said, as a white South African, is: first listen. Then listen some more. Then listen again, before you even think about engaging on any level. But this is obvious. Does it really need to be said? Again? Still? Obviously it does, all day, every day, because it is only obvious in the echo chamber in which I choose to live my life, surrounded by like-minded people.

Thinking about writing this piece has reminded me that it is my responsibility as a white South African to get out of the echo chamber. I don’t want to, but I need to.

Read the other contributions here.

LitNet se miniseminaar oor strukturele rassisme

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