Jacana

Contributors to TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa and representatives of Gender DynamiX, a Human Rights organisation promoting freedom of expression of gender identity, with a focus on transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming identities, have added their voices to poets, Yvette Christiansë and Gabeba Baderoon, in expressing their concern at Minister Lulu Xingwana’s reaction towards lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi’s work.

Special to the Jacana Media blog, Robert Hamblin and Caroline Bowley speak on this topic with passion and conviction:

***

Gender DynamiX is deeply concerned about the policing of bodies by the State. A very large part of our work is centred on examining the practices of the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and their unethical activities towards Transgender people. We are now faced with the question whether this is becoming a government trend.

Has the Department of Arts and Culture now joined hands with the DoH and the DHA in their discriminatory practices towards gender variant bodies? Minister Xingwana’s recent behaviour regarding the work of gender activist artist Zanele Muholi adds to the gravity of what seems to be a growing conservative trend in state departments.

“Immoral, offensive and going against nation-building,” said Lulu Xingwana, the Minister of Arts and Culture about Muholi’s work. “Immoral and offensive” speaks to the old “art vs. porn” debate, as well as to peoples’ personal opinions. The point of advocacy art is not aesthetics. It is to educate, to stimulate debate, to object to it if you wish, and to give people a platform from which to voice opinions. When Xingwana publically gives an opinion, she’s doing it on behalf of us all. She is a government minister and so in condemning it outright in essence, she claims that of the entire nation echoes her opinion. It most certainly doesn’t, as recent reactions in the City Press, the Times etc. clearly show.

“Nation building,” according to our very fine constitution, includes lesbians, transgender, gender non-conforming people, and so on – and it certainly includes artists. The constitution even has room for reactionary and conservative opinions like Xingwana’s – but not as our national representative of arts and culture in this country and worldwide.

Zanele Muholi is the kind of artist you would never have experienced in the bad old days of apartheid. She’s black, she’s a lesbian, and she has very clear messages for her community – for us. Her photography tells truths many people don’t enjoy – that there are black lesbians and gender variant people in South Africa. Her work also tells us that we are allowing the ongoing rape of black lesbians in order to “cure” them and all too often, their murders. Zanele Muholi is a symbol of the inclusiveness of the constitution.

Xingwana has publicly and officially expressed her personal negative feelings about gender variant peoples’ bodies and how they should interact. The figures in Muholi’s work are clearly not engaged in sexual activity. We interpret it as the minister’s policing of bodies and the behaviour of those bodies.

There are disturbing parallels between this and the way the Department of Health discriminates against gender variant bodies, noting that discrimination is taking place in the form of exclusion / gate keeping for treatment at most government hospitals. At the Department of Home Affairs there is a clear trend where the Department is not implementing the Amendment of Act 49 of 2003. Act 49 explicitly allows trans and intersex people to amend their documentation without requiring genital surgery. This law was amended partly because of the lack of access to, and gate keeping at State Hospitals.

Gender DynamiX would like to see government officials and especially Xingwana embrace our diversity, and make a concerted effort to sensitise themselves to gender variance, to educate themselves about art activism, and to acknowledge that gender variant people too are part of the rainbow nation that we are building!

In addition, Gender DynamiX demands public acknowledgement by the Government Ministers concerned, of the vulnerability of our constituency, and of the ongoing prejudices lesbians, gays, transgender and intersex people, artists and many other marginalised groups are facing on a daily basis.

Book details

• TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved
  EAN: 9781920196226
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Forthcoming from JacanaA Tapestry of Human Sexuality in Africa is a colourful and intricate examination of human sexuality on the continent. All too often, sexuality in Africa is examined through the lenses of epidemic and disease. In this volume, individual strands of the vast tapestry that make up human experiences of sexuality in its various forms are examined in their own right.

This collection of papers intends not to be the last word on the subject. Rather, it takes cognisance of the fact that this is an ever-changing and multifaceted area of enquiry, whose margins and colours shift and change along with the African people and their continent. These authors imagine a more accepting, understanding world, that embraces the many filaments of human sexuality.

The voices are fresh and individual, and speak about often understudied aspects of human sexuality. Examinations of such microcosms as the coverage of gender-based violence in Kenyan print media, the experience of sexual violence by Nigerian students, and the way the Internet can be a valuable tool for communicating important messages about sexuality to Muslim people, provide lessons that can be translated into a greater understanding of sexuality on the continent at large.

About the editor

Dr. Oka Obono is Senior Lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and is a habitué of the international lecture circuit. An activitist, scholar and methodologist, he has been Principal Research of a multi-year year project aimed at increasing male responsibility for safeguarding reproductive health at individual, household and community levels. He chaired the multilingual Dakar-based network of African researchers monitoring governance trends in West Africa, coordinates the National Working Group on Accountability, investigating popular forms of accountability in Nigeria. His writings and advocacy stress the need for a plurality of voices in the discourse of everyday sexual and reproductive life.

In this project, Dr. Obono provided training and mentorship for the Sexuality Leadership Fellows from conceptualization of individual projects to the reporting stages. He is at present conducting research into the long term factors responsible for HIV transmission in African societies.

Book details

• A Tapestry of Human Sexuality in Africa edited by Dr. Oka Obono
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  EAN: 9781920196264
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Image courtesy John Abromowski / PSTC African Alumni Conference

The City of Cape Town is heading for disaster: indeed, it’s already in deep crisis if one cares to look closely enough. The recent proliferation of public construction, public squares and public housing along the N2 towards the airport is little more than a mirage compared with the direction of more underlying trends.

Cape Town’s grim future is born out of the confluence of the globalised economic and ecological collapse that is fast becoming the defining feature of the twenty-first century. It is manifested most starkly in the dire situation that faces the majority of the city’s residents, who are excluded from the formal economy and must rely on substandard public services and their own makeshift shelters. The scenario is serious enough to draw everyone’s attention but should be set against the broader issues of long-term economic resilience and environmental sustainability to achieve a low-carbon society – so we have our work cut out for us.

The purpose of Counter Currents, edited by Edgar Pieterse, is to demystify these challenges and present readers with a creative portfolio of thinking, practice and strong vision to show that we can find alternatives – and, moreover, that these alternatives are already emerging in (marginal) sections of the state, civil society and the business sectors.

Contents

• Introduction – Edgar Pieterse
• Reflections on Leadership and Governance in Cape Town – David Schmidt
• Jane Alexander: Hunger Artist – Ashraf Jamal
• The Right to the City – Abdoumaliq Simone
• Karen Press
• The Cape Town 2030 Initiative: A contested vision of the future – Stephen Boshoff
• Towards Urban Infrastructure Sustainability – Wendy Crane, Mark Swilling, Lisa Thompson-Smeddle, Martin de Witt
• Public Transport: Tackling Cape Town’s Achilles Heel – Herrie Schalekamp
• Making Public Space in 21st Century Cape Town: An idealistic planning construct or a catalytic city building project? – Barbara Southworth
• Cape Town Central City Strategy – Andrew Boraine
• District Six Development Framework: Prospects for urban and social sustainability – Lucien le Grange
• Oude Molen: Imagining sustainable human settlements – Nisa Mammon
• Kosovo Informal Settlement Upgrade: Sustainability towards dignified communities – Mokena Makeka
• An Experiment in Public Housing – Luyanda Mpahlwa
• Photo-Essay: Social Integration in Cape Town – Tau Tavengwa
• Nurturing Creativity: The Spier experiment – Tanner Methvin
• A Development Plan for Paardvlei, Somerset West – Dave Dewar & Piet Louw
• Space & Transformation: Reflections on the new WCED schools program – Iain Low
• Regionalism and Sustainability – Sue Parnell & Greg Clarke
• Dealing with Sustainability – Mark Swilling
• Why Transformative Change is so Elusive: A conversation – Edgar Pieterse, Mokena Mokekwa, Mark Swilling, Gita Goven, Andrew Boraine, Catherine Stone and David Schmidt
• Conclusion: Re-imagining Cape Town through the rebus of identity, economy and ecology – Edgar Pieterse

Don’t miss this important public-policy read: your future may depend on it!

Book details

• Counter Currents: Experiments in Sustainability in the Cape Town Region edited by Edgar Pieterse
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  EAN: 9781770097957
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From a public culture perspective, South Africa remains mute on the issue of transgender people. TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa breaks the seal of silence. Contributor Timonty Trengrove-Jones sheds more light on the subject in the Sunday Times:

From apartheid to the over-used reference to “the new South Africa” and on to former President Thabo Mbeki’s proud assertion of “I am an African”, issues of identity have been crucial in our national self-assessments.

South Africa’s transition has itself largely focused on redefining questions of individual and group identities. In the afterlife of apartheid, sexual identities and preferences have become touchstones for measuring the quality of our national transition. Partly, this is because the 1996 Constitution enshrines protection against unfair discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. A raft of jurisprudence relating to gay and lesbian citizens has allowed gays and lesbians to enter what recently-retired Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs has called “full moral citizenship”.

• Read the complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved
  EAN: 9781920196226
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The co-author, most recently, of The Poverty of Ideas, shares his thoughts on why South Africa needs to invest more in education – starting now:

Education is the single most effective black economic empowerment strategy, or redistribution tool, to reverse the crippling apartheid legacy of deliberately under-developing black communities, to lift substantial amounts of the poor out of poverty. The continued slide in black education entrenches apartheid patterns.

A minority that are in private schools, mostly white, and a small black middle class, can access education that can compare with the best in the world. The majority, overwhelmingly black, gets the worst education imaginable, leaving them without the skills to navigate the world of work.

At this rate, blacks will continue to do the menial work, and whites will manage the sophisticated parts of the economy. But the lack of skilled blacks is not only a drain on the economy, black resentment, anger and powerlessness because of the economic marginalisation is a ready time-bomb.

• Read the complete article at Pambazuka

Book details

• The Poverty of Ideas: South African Democracy and the Retreat of Intellectuals by William Gumede, Leslie Dikeni
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  EAN: 9781770097759
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William Gumede and Leslie Dikeni caused quite a stir with the publication of their The Poverty of Ideas: South African Democracy and the Retreat of the Intellectuals. Some have received the book as a timely critique of our democracy whereas other have questioned its main thrusts. Here is an excerpt for those keen to decide for themselves:

‘Now, it is a fact that an intellectual is someone who fails to mind his own business.’ Jean-Paul Sartre

The debate on what constitutes the role and responsibility of the intellectual in South Africa generates much acrimony. We believe that it is appropriate to revisit this debate at this moment in the life of our new democracy. Our starting point is that active and engaged public intellectuals play a crucial part in the ongoing life of democratic societies, perhaps even more so in new democracies like ours. As Barney Pityana has said, the capacity of a nation to conduct public debates is an important foundation in building a democratic society. ‘In such debates the nation examines its shortcomings and strengths, surveys the infinite variety of views and opinions and treats everyone with respect, exercising tolerance and promoting meaningful communication’.[2] But instead of active engagement, intellectuals in South Africa have increasingly since 1994 beaten a retreat.

Until the ANC’s national conference in Polokwane in December 2007, the space for debate, dissent and public dialogue was significantly narrowed during the Mbeki administration. Even mildly critical patriots were seen as disloyal, as opposed to the ‘people’. Sadly, some intellectuals resorted to ‘nativism’, to exclusive, rather than plural, definitions of South Africanness. Criticisms were assessed on the extent of one’s blackness, on whether one was on ‘our side’. Such was the hostility to new ideas that critics wondered whether they would have their passports confiscated and their citizenship revoked.

• Read the complete excerpt at Pambazuka News

Book details

• The Poverty of Ideas: South African Democracy and the Retreat of Intellectuals by William Gumede, Leslie Dikeni
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781770097759
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Just a few weeks back at the Whale Well in November an exciting new book, TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa was launched at a fantastic party.

Amidst the array of fascinating speakers on the night, Robert Hamblin took the podium. He introduced himself in the form of a poem. Enjoy it here:

MY NAME IS

My name is Robert Hamblin.
I am an artist.
I am a photographer.
I am a part time grass roots type of activist
and the chairman of the board of transgender organisation.

I live in a house in Melville. I have my own business.
I am a Transgender man.
This means I used to be seen as a woman.
This transition has taken five years.
I use men’s toilets.

I was asked to come and tell you about Transgender people.
I decided against that because it would be
a bit like telling you about humans.
You get too many kinds of humans.
There are many kinds of Transgender people.

So yes, to change one’s gender you need to
get help from doctors,
take hormones to change your looks and give you the right perspective,
and sometimes people have surgeries.
But as I said, I am not going to tell you about TG people…

There are too many kinds.
I am going to tell you about me.
Then you can say I once met a Transgender guy.
He was extremely handsome, clever and charming…
I wonder if other Transgender people are similar.

I am Robert Hamblin. I am an artist,
a photographer, a part time gender activist.
I have my own business.
I have a mother who loves me and accepts me as a male.
I have a father, but he died. My stepfather does not like me much.

My brother, who is younger than me, humiliated me
and threatened my life when I told him that I was going to transition.
The rest of my family love me.
I drive a BMW, an old one, dolphin shape.
It’s paid for.

I am engaged to a girl who has curly hair and freckles
and a pale skin. She loves me a lot!
She will marry me in May next year.
She leaves poems and chocolates in my suitcase when I travel.
Her father said I am the best man he could have wished for for his daughter.

I have hair on my back and chest.
I am 40.
People say if I am a man and I live with a woman
I am heterosexual.
I say if they say so…

I am a feminist because I believe men and women are not equal in this world.
I would like that to change.
Some feminists say I cannot be a feminist. I still am.
Some people say I am not a real man
I still live as one.

People ask me why I changed my gender.
I now tell them because I am Transgender.
It’s a bit like being Afrikaans.
I just am.
Transgender people change their shapes.

After that guy on Oprah told the world that he used to be a girl
but that he was having a baby
people asked me if I could, or if I would?
I said no, I don’t like that part of my body or the way it works.
I also said I think he is wonderful for doing that.
Trans people should have reproductive rights too.

I try everyday to be happy that I live in a country where
I am free
to be an individual.
I am happy that I am free to be strange to others
and ordinary to those who love me.

I am Robert Hamblin
an artist in love
I am not crazy,
I don’t hurt children.
I don’t have a criminal record. I don’t do crime.

People ask me if I am happy now
I say everybody has a chance to be happy
if they get to be who they are.

I am Robert Hamblin.
My mother loves me with a smile
I am not crazy.
I am successful.
I am 40.

I take testosterone injections every two weeks
If you are going to ask me questions about my private parts,
you have to buy me drink and maybe kiss me first…
My name used to be Adele, but I can advise you
it is rude to ask Trans People their old name.

When I was small I did not understand
why people kept telling me
the clothes I liked to wear
the way I used to play and the fact
that I could stand and pee was wrong.

They told me girls don’t do that.
I wished I knew then, that those things were just…
well, what I liked!
I am Transgender.
I changed my shape because that is what Transgender people do.

I am Robert Hamblin.
I have gay friends.
I have strait friends.
I fall in love with women.
I think men are sexy but that confuses them.

I eat food. I live in a house.
I want people to be tolerant of one another.
I run 5km’s a day and work out three times
a week with Bonny.
I don’t shave because I look good this way.

I am Robert Hamblin.
I am lucky.
I am loved.
Sometimes my life is hard.
Sometimes I am in danger.

I am Robert Hamblin.
I think I might be more like you than different from you.
I work with an organisation called Gender Dynamix.
We help people who want to change their gender.
Not all Trans people are privileged like me.
I do this work because I want this to change.

I am Robert H.
Just Robert to you by now.
I sleep in a bed.
I don’t have a grandmother any more.
My grandfather was a bad dude to women.

Some people say what I did
is against the laws of nature.
I tell them about Parrot fish
and five other kinds of animals
that change their gender.

I have a friend who is a priest. He wears glasses.
He says sin makes us sick and uncomfortable in our bodies.
He says God gave us technology to fix that.
I don’t know about that but I admire him for understanding
The possible scheme of things.

I am Rob.
Some gay people distrust me because they think I am strait.
Some strait people distrust me because they think I am gay.
Some feminists distrust me, because despite my background,
I now have a patriarch’s face.

I tell them I am not like that.
You need to get to know me.
Then you will say, Oh, you are Transgender, I accept you.
Some of my best friends are Transgender
and then we will laugh!

• Robert Hamblin Photography

• Gender DynamiX Website

• GALA (Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action) website

Book details

• TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved
  EAN: 9781920196226
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Don’t miss the Khanya College launch of William Gumede and Leslie Dikeni’s The Poverty of Ideas – a book that storms South Africa’s intellectual citadels:

Event Details

• Date: Saturday, 12 December 2009
• Time: 11:30 AM for 12:00 PM
• Venue: House of Movements, 123 Pritchard Street
  (cnr Mooi)
  Johannesburg | Map

Book Details

• The Poverty of Ideas: South African Democracy and the Retreat of Intellectuals edited by William Gumede, Leslie Dikeni
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9781770097759
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

William Gumede and Leslie Dikeni have co-edited a book that’s as timely as it is astute in its observations. The Poverty of Ideas questions the apparent dirth of intellectuals in South Africa?

Prof Jonathan Jansen, in the news recently for his decision to allow the Reitz Four to return to the University of the Free-State, argues that intellectuals are often either intimidated or censured by government unless they toe the party line. Zukile Majova examines this argument in The Sowetan:

University of Free State vice-chancellor and principal Jonathan Jansen has blamed the ANC government for the withdrawal of university-based intellectuals from national dialogue.

Writing in the book Poverty of Ideas by William Gumede and Leslie Dikeni, Jansen says though the new rulers encourage debate, there have been notable incidents in which they have intimidated intellectuals who opposed their views.

The timely book comes in the era of public ridicule of intellectuals who are seen to be opposed to ill- informed decisions by the state.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• The Poverty of Ideas: South African Democracy and the Retreat of Intellectuals by William Gumede, Leslie Dikeni
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781770097759
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Image courtesy Times Live

“The inhospitable Cape has reared its ugly head once more,” said Premesh Lalu speaking at the launch of Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008 edited by Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo.

“This ugly head has taken the form of the politics of blame which is clearly unforgivable.”

He said it was vital to hold a critical intervention at this crucial point in the discussions that are happening in southern Africa, particularly in relation to Zimbabwe.

“We ought to have a far more sophisticated reading of what is unfolding in the region. Becoming Zimbabwe flies in the face of rather banal and ahistorical formulations on Zimbabwe, particularly those that have proliferated in the print media and more generally in the public sphere. This book is more meaningful than one might automatically anticipate for South Africans; one that opens onto a very important set of questions about how we think about this region.

He said the lesson in this book was for South Africans and the entire southern African region to always historicise. “I suspect,” he said, “that what’s happening in many of the discussions unfolding over the last while is a refusal to do just that – to follow the injunction to always historicise.”

He said it had been a privilege and pleasure to have Brian Roftopolous at the Centre for Humanities Research at UWC for the past year. “He encouraged us to always think about question of the present historically.” Lalu welcomed the book which challenges one to think differently. He acknowledged the District Six Museum that was “always a hospitable place” where one could open up difficult topics, like the discussion around the issue of forced removals.

Fanie du Toit, the Director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, said they were delighted to be part of the project. “We see history as fundamental to coming together and learning to share an understanding of the past. We’ve been working in that field and this book is the result of a long and ongoing conversation between us. Brian took the initiative and drove the project, producing an outstanding work of scholarship.”

He said, “We all know that there is an importance to some sort of liberation history that brings people together after conflict. But the danger of such a liberation becoming hegemonic in itself is always a huge spectre hanging over such a discourse. We are grateful because Zimbabwe testifies to the danger and the possibility of this, and, in terms of this discourse, the solution to this crisis. To form historical common ground without becoming hegemonic is the challenge. This book opens the debate, not with slogans, but with solid scholarship.”

Du Toit concurred with Lalu on the aptness of the timing. With the current situation in De Doorns this book offers a way of making sense of the bigger issues.

Brian Raftopoulos acknowledged the support he received from the Centre for Humanities Research, which he’d experienced as “extremely enriching”. He spoke at length on the chapter he’d written, and the paradoxes that are Zimbabwean issues and the issues of the region. He said the book tried to understand how people come to see themselves as part of a nation. He noted that the idea of the collective “Shona” identity didn’t exist in the pre-Colonial period. This became a political subjectivity much later.

He suggested that Zimbabwe was a domestic issue for South Africa.

“It’s on your doorstep. It’s here, in your face. It’s been one of the central problems of both of the previous presidencies and remains so for the current one. In both defining South Africa’s relationship to the region, as well as defining the ANC’s relation to its own traditions it remains a problem, because in the manner in which it has dealt with Zimbabwe also reflects the contested debate within the alliance about the future of the ANC.

“As I’ve said before, Zimbabwe is extreme, but it’s not exceptional in its problems. These problems can be found in many forms in many parts of the region, thus Zimbabwe is an important place to study and understand.”

Gallery

Book details

• Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008 edited by Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo
  EAN: 9781770097636
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