EUSEBIUS McKAISER: A BANTU
IN MY BATHROOM

To write what he does, in the way he does, Eusebius McKaiser has to be a man who understands exactly who he is and what he believes. So he writes with a refreshing frankness, putting his experiences under the microscope and finding meanings that have given him a greater understanding and appreciation of the circumstances under which he lives.  As he is a South African, his insights help us all to hold the spotlight up to our attitudes and beliefs.

In A Bantu in my Bathroom, McKaiser shares with us his thoughts about many issues that concern us in South Africa today. His book is divided into three sections – Race, Sexuality and Culture, and he deals with controversial issues under each heading.

Under Race, he discusses the difference between racialism and racism, our understandings and misunderstandings of affirmative action and he takes up the assertion that blacks can’t be racist.

Under Sexuality he examines the issues of homophobia, rape and problems regarding the disclosure of one’s HIV status.

Under culture he illustrates the myth of the Rainbow Nation, examines people’s reaction to Brett Murray’s portrait, “The Spear”, and discusses what it means to be a “coconut.”

He presents all issues in terms of his personal experiences and that makes his book delightfully easy to read – despite the fact that it deals with deep philosophical issues.  It is such a pleasure to find an academic who is willing to step outside of his exclusive domain to converse with us ordinary mortals in a language we can understand.

In the last chapter “The funny revolution” he presents stand-up comedians as the real revolutionaries who, in disabusing us of our illusions and delusions, will carry us forward. If we don’t take ourselves so seriously, we have a better chance of making it into the future together.

And I agree with him.  A sense of humour is a sign of sharp, flexible intelligence and creativity. And why not have leaders who make us laugh and enjoy life?

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Empowerment

History is a vital form of empowerment. Studying our own history gives us a foundation for understanding who we are and where we are going.  Without knowledge of our history:

                               We are the hollow men
                               We are the stuffed men
                               Leaning together
                               Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
                                                        (from The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot)

I quote from T.S Eliot’s poem because I am a product of colonialism.   My “headpiece” being “filled with straw” i.e., a foreign culture, makes me a hollow person. That is why I quote from an English poet, not from a poet who is part of my people’s history. I am stuffed with European culture. And not being connected to my roots, I am a hollow person. I am a disempowered person and I belong to a disempowered people. 

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
                 (from The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot)

Without an understanding of my history, I will always be a disempowered person. I will always act without the backing of community, never fully understanding who I am.

Colonialists (Apartheid was a form of colonialism) understood very well the value of history.  They stuffed our heads with their histories and we came to depend on their cultures for the bases on which we stand. In adopting their culture, we lost our independence and looked to the dominant cultures to give meaning to our lives. We revered their culture, hankered after it, yet at the same time, we despised it for disempowering us. That is why we call black people who act like whites, coconuts. The truth is we are all coconuts. Coconut, for me, is the same as Eliot’s hollow people.

Even though we are coconuts, we could not be fully integrated into the dominant culture, so we became aware of and accepted our inferiority. That is why it is so easy to reduce us to stereotypes.

The study of our history, even if it is a history of colonisation, will give us back our power. In encountering the reality of the ways in which we were dominated, we will overcome the external hold on our psyches and we will make real progress.

Unity
Unity is strength. 
But as colonised people, we are divided within ourselves and against ourselves. Within our psyches, there is the constant battle between the desire for human dignity and the sense of inferiority imposed by a dominant culture. And this sense of inferiority manifests in a desire to relegate others of our kind to a status of inferiority – a kind of neo-class struggle.

All our ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, political and social groupings are in competition to prove their superiority over the others. And the more we think we approximate to the dominant group, the greater the conviction of our own superiority.

We have to understand and abandon notions of superiority and inferiority which are manifestations of the divide and conquer strategies of colonialism.

The study of the history of human experience, not simply a political history, which is what most history tends to be, but all history –
cultural, social, economic and political, will help us to identify the spuriousness of our assumptions. The study of history, built on all aspects of human experience, both of ordinary as well as powerful people, will help us to discover truths about our situation and to build the respect for one another that is a necessary condition for unity in a community.

Embracing our history requires an honest search and a
willingness to recognise the humanity of all those who live in our community.

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RAPE UNIVERSAL

“rape” 
the word automatically connects
with brutalising acts of prurient sex
and we focus on the physical violation
images of blood, murder, mutilation
pierce our eyes with shame and horror
at the act of love turned to torture;
act essential for all life – perverted; 
all are sullied; all defiled;
all protest and demonstrate
against their vulnerability
against the depravity
against the hordes of men
for whom the penis is a weapon

but eyes wide shut, and in silence,
we give ourselves to raping violence  
everywhere, every minute of every day;
not individual, sexual, obvious rape;
but pervasive rape, persuasive rape
rape of the mind, rape of the soul
by those to whom we give control                                         

they smile at us from television sets
catching us in their commercial nets
conditioning us to getting and spending;
and in co-operation with big businesses,
assist in the economic rape of masses

politicians with smiling promises
once elected, forget their pledges
in the race to rake in the takings
of their positions of power;
corruption: the gang rape of voters
by political-industrial leaders 

all wars of invasion–intervention
nothing more than rapist abduction;
slavery, holocaust, foreign domination –
rapist signatures of power perversion;
war lords, militias, soldiers, celebrate
conquest and victory in subjugating rape;

powerful multi-national forces
plundering natural resources
raping the environment
decimating whale, rhino, elephant,
deforesting in wild abandonment
ruthless international plutocrats
shutting down earth’s thermostat

rapists of the upperworld
no different
from rapists in the underworld
abducting and trafficking
men, women, and children
to use, abuse and abandon

rape,
nurtured in all aspects of culture
produces
rabid rapists in every sector;
rape-murder predominant feature
of any country’s history –
making all of history,
primarily,
a record of rape and murder

penile rape
blatant expression
of truth in repression

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Why School is Failing.

We must open our eyes to the bigger picture. School is failing, and it is failing all over the world, because it has not kept up with the changing needs of society. The type of school that most of us attend comes out of the Industrial Age and is based on the factory model.

We must understand that the factory model with its standardised curricula provides generalised skills that lead to certification of individuals to seek work not create their own employment. It does not provide entrepreneurial skills because people’s ambitions are being moulded towards dependency, finding work, getting a job. The factory-type school turns out units for labour.

School-leavers look to others for employment: in private sector and government institutions, They are dependent and helpless because they have been brainwashed to believe that with a matriculation certificate they can get employment.

But we have moved into a different world, a computerised world. Today factory-type labour is becoming increasingly irrelevant. 
Machines are rapidly replacing human labour. One day we may not even need a military – with the development of unmanned weaponry, robot bombs and drones, we will not need soldiers. So the kind of mass employment that emanated from industrialisation is becoming antiquated. And because a matriculation certificate does not equip one for self-employment, there will be increasing joblessness and unemployment. And our rape statistics, the highest in the world, and our crime statics, will grow out of control because we have a society of disempowered people.

We have to be realistic. What the society needs are people with specialised skills not a generalised education with a Matriculation/General Education Certificate that is an affirmation of a lack of skills and a statement that further education and training is needed.

Why are we wasting twelve years of schooling on education for DEPENDENCY. A generalised academic curriculum is not the answer. Schools should become smaller and cater for specialised interests and skills, entrepreneurship and on-the-job training.  And specialization should begin once children have acquired high competency in reading, writing and numeracy. Then their particular talents and interests should be identified and they should be sent to specialised schools, where in addition to their specialization which must be accompanied by on-the-job training, they need to become computer literate and also be inducted into entrepreneurship.

We have to get rid of the factory school because it is preparation for dependence. And societies need enterprising, independent individuals who will build the society and its economy. Factory-type schools turn the majority of students into beggars; people begging for employment and when they cannot find work, literally become beggars.

And we have to stop inculcating snobbery. We have to rid ourselves of elitist notions of work. The society does not need people waving matriculation certificates, it needs people with skills: technical and technological skills. We need technicians, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters, painters, far more than we need corrupt politicians. If we truly believed in equality, we would not relegate any form of work to inferior status. Democracy means respect for all and that includes every individual’s skills, from the skills of a domestic worker to the skills of a scientist.

The schooling system needs radical change. But we are so inured to the idea of the factory-type school that we are terrified of change; instead we cook the books to produce better matric results and continue to deny children an education for independence.

If we haven’t read Alvin Toffler’s books, we need to read them. Future Shock, The Third Wave and Power Shift provide us with analyses of human development and contexts for understanding the upheavals that we are experiencing.

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