Linn’s Year Ablog

Listen Hear, a radio show I helped start at Grinnell, ran this “audio postcard” yesterday:

Listen to MP3

I’ve pasted the transcript below, too.

September 22nd, 2008

Dear friends,

I’m writing you this postcard from an agitated newsroom in a northern suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. As you might know, there’s been big political news here lately-which means, thankfully, a brief reprieve from US election coverage. President Thabo Mbeki‘s party just ousted him from power, and the press is chattering about nothing else.

I find myself in Joburg, I should say, because I’ve recently started a Watson Fellowship related to investigative journalism, and I’m interning at newspapers, non-profits and journalism schools for several months here. I’ll be doing the same thing in India next spring. I mean, that’ll be India’s spring. See, being in the southern hemisphere at this time of year, means that I’ll have three springs in a row this year, before hitting an autumn.

Apparently Johannesburg got snow earlier this winter-a rare sight for this scrubby high-desert area-but 4AM at my suburban house has sounded like spring ever since I arrived.

[birds]

I’m away from our house for most of the day, however, and I’ve been getting a good feel for the city. In face-to-face conversation, you’d think that Joburg was a little town in Iowa, actually, not a brash megalopolis of nearly 8 million busy, busy residents. But in the car, all the friendliness normally offered to strangers flies swiftly out the window. Drivers have flashed me the bird more times in the past month and a half than in my other four years of driving combined. Changing lanes in traffic can be trickier than Twister, and pedestrians be damned.

[honking cars]

Because I do a lot of driving, I also listen to a lot of radio.

A plethora of stations overlap each other’s frequencies and mix awesome music with news, talk and the occasional weekend drama.

[radio samples]

One of my favorite stations, whose tagline is, “good music, good friends,” also does its own news and broadcasts a prime-time talk show hosted by a prominent journalist. And I listen to a lot of talk shows here – because they’re actually informative and balanced.

[more radio samples]

Naturally, other parts of this country could use more balance; South Africa competes with Brazil for the highest income disparity of any country on earth. On one side of the divide are the fancy cars and slick malls of San Diego. On the other side are the dusty streets and tin shacks of Tijuana. And they’re often separated by little more than an invisible line in the dirt. I live on a quiet, tree-lined avenue, in a suburb that looks every bit like middle-class America, albeit with six-foot walls and razor wire, rather than hedges and picket fencing.

[sounds of a suburb at night]

Ten days ago, on a whim, I decided to break out of the big city for a while. Jacob Zuma, the popular leader of South Africa’s ruling ANC party and almost surely the country’s next president, was going to be in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg, and I wanted to see some drama. Zuma has been mired in corruption charges of late, and the court was ruling on whether a technicality prevented him from facing trial. Zuma’s supporters, meanwhile, said he was just a political target of President Mbeki, after defeating Mbeki in the ANC’s internal elections last year. In the end, the High Court judge would side with Zuma, by the way, and Mbeki’s political downfall over this past weekend certainly has something to do with political score settling in reverse.

Anyway, it sounded exciting. So I got on a double-decker, Greyhound sort of bus at the station downtown, and enjoyed free coffee, free biscuits and blissful silence for the six hours to Pietermaritzburg. The next morning I followed the sounds of commotion and music to the courthouse. Before the judge’s ruling was piped over speakers, there was live singing and pounding beats.

[Man standing next to me:] “Can you dance with this music? … Just do like this.”

I walked around to do a few interviews, and talked to Zuma supporters…and skeptics. At one point, I started talking to two guys who said they were members of the ANC and Communist Party youth leagues, which have been under criticism for their militant support of Zuma and less-than-civil comments. These guys didn’t disappoint, saying they were prepared to die for Zuma and that his trial was not only masterminded by the President but by Western governments as well.

As we talked, Zuma’s theme song, “Mshini Wam,” came on in the background, and it fit It’s an apartheid-era protest song, which the international press is quick to mention and translate in news reports. “Mshini Wam” means “Bring Me My Machine Gun,” and it’s a relic of the days when armed resistance seemed like the only way to bring down an oppressive and uncompromising regime. Now, “Mshini Wam” does little more than remind voters of Zuma’s anti-apartheid credentials…and inspire dancing.

After we’d talked for a while, the youth league guys shook my hand. We wished each other well and went to listen to the ruling. In SA politics, I think, bark is usually bigger than bite.

No one was allowed inside the courtroom without a press pass, but being outside among the crowd was much more fun anyway. As the two-hour-long judgment was read out, some people continued dancing, selling ANC gear and cooking food, but most of the one or two thousand who’d gathered were listening quietly. Given that the previous night’s rain-the first of the season-had made the ground soggy at best, the crowd’s endurance was impressive, as were the quantity of historical and literary references in the judge’s ruling.

[Judge Chris Nicholson:] “The great Greek historian Thucydides in the fifth century BC wrote that the question of justice only enters where the pressure of necessity is equal.”

And:

“Like a blinded Samson he threatens to make sure the temple collapses with him.”

And:

“These allegations are a modern echo of what the Cardinal Richelieu, Chief Minister of the French King Louis the Fo- Thirteenth, once said in the seventeenth century when he observed that in matters of state, ‘the weakest are always wrong.'”

And:

“There is a ring of the works of Kafka about this.”

After standing for two hours in the mud, the crowd was rewarded with a favorable judgment.

[Judge Nicholson:] “I therefore grant the following orders: A, It is declared that the decision taken by the National Prosecuting Authority during or about 28 December 2007 to prosecute the applicant [Zuma], a copy of which is annexed to the applicant’s founding affidavit as Annexure A thereto, is invalid and is set aside.”

And, just like theatre, Zuma and his chums came out for a bow and there was more singing, chanting and foot-tapping music.

[Chants:] “Amandla!” “Viva ANC, viva!” “Viva Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, viva!”

I did a few more interviews, wiped off my shoes and walked down the street to my hostel. The owners grilled up some delicious braai, which means barbeque, and I soaked up the afternoon sun in the garden.

I don’t envy your cold fall winds, Grinnell, but I’ll miss you in the spring.

With love,
Linn