A Passion to Understand: Recent

Tuesday, 21 May 2024

Could South Africa’s ANC Lose Parliamentary Majority for the First Time Since 1994?

Thirty years ago, on 27 April 1994, South Africans voted in the first demographic general election in the country’s history. The National Party of the Apartheid regime was replaced by the government of the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela became president.

Next week, South Africans return to the polls. This is the seventh post-apartheid election in South Africa, including the inaugural democratic election in 1994. For 25 years, the African National Congress (ANC) government dominated polls, obtaining a parliamentary majority in each election, but that majority has been waning since its high of 2004.

1994	1999	2004	2009	2014	2019
62.65%	66.35%	69.69%	65.90%	62.15%	57.50%

In 2024, there is such uncertainty regarding the ability of the ruling party to obtain a majority that conversations are starting to revolve around President Cyril Ramaphosa not receiving 50% of the votes and what that means:

The ANC is still expected to win the largest share of votes, but if it receives less than 50% as predicted, it will need the help of coalition partners to reelect the 71-year-old Ramaphosa

- South Africa braces for what may be a milestone election. Here is a guide to the main players [AP News]

Why Is the ANC’s Popularity Waning?

For many South Africans, the ANC and Nelson Mandela represent those who fought for and won freedom for the majority of the population. Given the damning legacy of Apartheid, that emotional connection to the ruling party has been difficult to break.

Poverty, Inequality & Unemployment

Yet South Africa repeatedly draws attention for being the most inequal country in the world in terms of income and wealth. A 2022 report by the World Bank stated:

The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), comprising Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, and South Africa, is the world’s most unequal region. Based on Gini coefficients of consumption (or income) per capita, South Africa, the largest country in SACU, is the most unequal country in the world, ranking first among 164 countries in the World Bank’s global poverty database

- Inequality in Southern Africa : An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union [World Bank]

For every gated suburb in South Africa, there are areas of extreme poverty and deprivation. This is compounded by an unemployment rate of 32.9% in Q1 2024, currently the highest in the world.

According to StatsSA, the number of unemployed South Africans surged by 330,000 to a record 8.2 million in the first quarter of 2024… In Q1 2024, the official unemployment rate rose to a dismal 32.9%…

The situation is much worse for young South Africans, with unemployment rising to 59.7% in Q1 2024. Therefore, for jobseekers aged 15-24 who are not enrolled at educational institutions and are actively looking for work, only four of every ten have jobs…

- South Africa has the Highest Unemployment Rate in the World [ActionSA]

Failure to Invest in Infrastructure

South Africa’s infrastructure can most accurately be described as crumbling. Potholes are scattered across roads in such volume that it is often a case of more sand than tarmac on roads. Clean tap water has still not been extended to the full population, with people in rural communities being most disadvantaged. Waste collection can be described as poor at best with residents in informal settlements being especially effected by non-existent or unreliable services.

Perhaps the most significant of the infrastructure challenges is the South African energy crisis, now entering its seventeenth year.

South Africa is in the middle of a deep electricity crisis. In 2023 the public, many of whom are voters, experienced the worst loadshedding to date, losing power for an average of five hours a day

- South Africa’s electricity crisis: what political parties say in their election manifestos about solving it [The Conversation]

In a sign of the increasing importance of the electricity crisis to South African voters, the ANC, Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters now dedicate 10% of their election manifesto to the crisis, up from 2% in 2019. Indeed, Thabo Mbeki’s 2008 admission that the ANC did not listen to Eskom’s warnings is doing the rounds again, further eroding ANC confidence in an increasingly impatient population.

"When Eskom said to the government: 'We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation', we said no, but all you will be doing is just to build excess capacity," he said in a speech.

"We said not now, later. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong."

- Thabo Mbeki, 2008; Mbeki: Eskom was right [News24]

Further reading: this is an exceptional article on many of the issues discussed above by S'thembile Cele: "Africa’s Richest City Is Crumbling Under Chaos and Corruption" [Bloomberg]

Corruption

State capture is usually a concept reserved for Gerard Butler films yet it happened in South Africa. The Zondo Commission of Inquiry Into Allegations of State Capture demonstrated that Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family began a process of state capture immediately on Zuma’s election in 2009 which resulted in widespread corruption and economic disaster for South Africa.

The evidence before the Zondo Commission demonstrates that the state capturers were able to: (i) appoint willing collaborators in all kinds of key positions; (ii) hobble the law enforcement agencies, even making some of them complicit in corruption; (iii) weaken parliamentary oversight; and (iv) capture parts of the independent media

- How and Why Did State Capture and Massive Corruption Occur in South Africa? [PFM]

The Zondo Commission resulted in the resignation of President Jacob Zuma and the promotion of Cyril Ramaphosa to the position. Ramaphosa won the election in 2019 but it was already clear then that confidence in the ANC was waning.

Contenders in the South African 2024 Elections

Jacob Zuma and the MK Party

It’s a sign of the rapid change in South Africa at present that AP News published an article, "South Africa braces for what may be a milestone election. Here is a guide to the main players" on 19 May 2024 and it is already outdated by 20 May 2024. In the article, Gerald Imray listed Former President Jacob Zuma’s MK Party as one of four main contenders in the election but yesterday the Constitutional Court of South Africa (the highest court in the country) ruled that Zuma’s 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court disqualifies him from serving in parliament.

The BBC reported that "MK secretary general Sihle Ngubane said the party was disappointed with the ruling, but it would not affect the party's campaign for the 29 May election". Given the infighting rampant in the party, it is possibly unlikely that they will do anything but dilute the ANC’s votes.

Economic Freedom Fighters

Julius Malema was a former member of the ANC Youth League and formed the EFF in 2013 following his expulsion from the ANC. The party has risen to become the third biggest party in South Africa and are inspired by Marxist ideology. They focus on workers’ rights, the nationalisation of mines and redistribution of land, noting the lasting impact of Apartheid on the economic well-being of Black South Africans.

The Democratic Alliance

Since obtaining a 22% share of the vote in 2019, the Democratic Alliance has been rocked by several scandals including pro-colonialism tweets by former leader Helen Zille and racist remarks from the increasingly conservative current leader John Steenhuisen.

The DA harps on about its track record in keeping Cape Town clean and tidy, but does so at the expense of the city’s townships and informal settlements. Now seen as the party of the privileged classes, most of which are white, the DA has entered into into the Multi-Party Charter for South Africa to try reduce support for the ANC, EFF and MK parties. The founders of the Charter represent centre, centre-right and right-wing parties including the DA, Inkatha Freedom Party, Freedom Front Plus, ActionSA and African Christian Democratic Party.

This post will serve as a time capsule, both preserving the situation in 2024 and listing the possibilities for the years ahead. Public pressure has so far not made an impact on the rampant inequality and poverty in South Africa and it may be that the only way to effect change will be for voters to make their mark. Will the ANC lose their majority? Will the next government, no matter its composition, effect real change in South Africa? Only time will tell.

The Longest Road (2016): A Journey To Help Yazidi Refugees

In a world completely desensitised to images of violence and suffering, I suddenly realise that despite knowing about it, I haven’t seen much of what is actually going on in ISIS controlled territories. I’m watching The Longest Road, a documentary by Matthew Charles Hall and Jennifer Salcido, and a painter is showing his artwork to the camera. He has created incredibly detailed scenes of unimaginable horror and violence and somehow, perhaps because it has come from his memory and not a camera lens, it is all the more horrifying with the removal of that artificial barrier.

The Longest Road details the project that Matthew Charles Hall and Jennifer Salcido embarked on with a group of American veterans living on the other side of the world. Iraq War veteran Richard Campos had served in Iraq, trusting that he was working for the greater good without actually being able to see the fruits of his work. Now retired, he has committed himself to returning to Iraq and actually making a visible difference.

Gold Star father Kevin Graves joined him on his mission. Head of Some Gave All: The Joey Graves Foundation, he lost his son on a mission just outside of Baghdad. Desperate to see the land where his son paid the ultimate sacrifice, Kevin agreed to join Richard on his project.

What started as a basic mission to fund a hospital in Iraq turned into so much more when the team travelled to the frontlines and were able to witness the atrocities committed by ISIS. There they meet a Catholic nun and Dr Nemam Ghafouri, a Muslim heart surgeon, as well as scores of Kurdish and Yazidi refugees.

Filmed over a period of three years, on two continents and in four languages, The Longest Road documents encounters and conversations with individuals who have stared evil in the face and the efforts of the team to make the smallest difference in their lives. We witness the transformation that the team went through and the manner in which their project grew into a major humanitarian effort.

The Longest Road is incredibly powerful. For so long, politicians have hijacked the refugee crisis for their own means and the continuing atrocities in Syria and ISIS-controlled territories somewhat distract us from the fact that human beings, men, women and children, are suffering under appalling conditions in Kurdistan, Iraq and Syria. This documentary breaks through the disaster-fatigue to remind us that why we need to continue fighting. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Screening

The Longest Road will have its UK and Europe premiere at the Dalston Rio in London on Saturday 18th February at noon. There will also be a Q&A afterwards with the directors and Dr Nemam Ghafouri, a medic who helped the American veterans in their mission to aid the two million refugees trapped in camps in Kurdistan and who is featured heavily in the film.

Facebook event – Eventbrite – Website

Trailer

Book Review: Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring by John Esposito, Tamara Sonn & John Voll

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the descent into war in Syria, one question that arises time and again is this: is Islam compatible with democracy? It is a question that John Esposito, Tamara Sonn and John Voll promise to answer in their book Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring.

It is difficult to review a book and to rate it when it clearly doesn't do what it promises to do on the cover and while this book has a lot to do with Islam and democracy, it has little to do with the Arab Spring (with the exception of the final two chapters). One of the questions that most interests me is the events leading up to the Arab Spring, some of which I attempted to explore in the series Before the Spring.

Events such as the Iraq war and the Second Intifada were pivotal in the development of a shared Arab consciousness that transcended national borders as was the rise of Al Jazeera and social media.

In focusing on countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Senegal, I was hoping that Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring would continue in a similar vein - picking up those similarities and exploring whether those countries were also ripe for a Spring-like uprising. Or at least exploring similar factors in the various countries that so emboldened the Arab Spring protestors to take action and topple governments.

It doesn't quite manage that but what this book does do is take an in-depth look at the rise of Islamic governments in seven countries and how issues such as equality, democratic participation and the economy were shaped by world events and the relationship of each country to outside forces.

The book includes a fascinating profile of Iran and the lasting impacts of US interference, such as in the 1953 coup. Likewise, the chapter on Turkey provides an insight into current political events and gives some background to Erdogan's political motives.

As a series of essays on the rise of Islamic governments, it would have been more accurate had the book been titled A Political History of Islam in the 20th Century. Judging it on that basis, it's quite interesting and the difference in writing styles between the various authors keeps it so.

As a resource further exploring the roots and enduring consequences of the Arab Spring, there are better volumes, such as Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren's The Battle for the Arab Spring.

Book Review: Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievitch

I was 12 years old when the Chernobyl disaster happened and I remember being quite aware of the dangers of nuclear events - I'd learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the enduring impact of the atomic bomb. Chernobyl was something else. It was a catastrophic and unprecedented disaster; we didn’t immediately know what the lasting effect would be but we knew that they were in trouble.

It was little surprise then when the years passed and we learned that Pripyat and surrounding areas had become ghost towns, areas that would be unfit for human habitation for another 10,000 years (or so estimates go).

But people do live there. They cut through fences and snuck past military patrols to resettle in their homes or to make new homes, surrounded only by the ghosts of the tens of thousands of people that once lived in those towns and the ever-present spectre of radiation.

Svetlana Alexievitch, Belarusian investigative journalist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015, spoke to those people and indeed, to people from all walks of life who were effected by Chernobyl. She spoke to widows and survivors, liquidators, contractors and military reservists who were called to Chernobyl in the days after the disaster. She spoke to families who had been evacuated from Pripyat and surrounding areas, to those who returned and to those who fled the war in Tajikistan to settle there because they had nowhere else to go.

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster reads like a dystopian novel, or perhaps a post-apocalyptic survival story. First published in Russian in 1997 and expertly translated by Keith Gessen, Voices from Chernobyl is the fruit of hundreds of interviews that Alexievitch obtained over a three year period. It is an incredible and page-turning volume with accounts as fascinating as they are obscene.

It’s difficult to put into words how much of an impact this book has on the reader and any attempt will be nowhere near as eloquent as the accounts themselves. The lack of understanding of the dangers that people faced, coupled with a massive campaign of disinformation is perhaps most notable. In the aftermath of Chernobyl, they sent cranes from East Germany and robots intended for the Russian Mars exploration. Even robots from Japan made it to the site but the radiation interfered with all their workings and so they resorted to sending human beings in rubber suits instead.

There were 340,000 personnel despatched to Chernobyl but those working on the roof of the reactor got it the worst. They were wearing lead vests but the radiation came through their boots.

Despite the massive loss of life and how many disaster personnel succumbed to radiation poisoning or ‘Chernobyl cancer’ that took years to emerge and yet more years to eventually kill them, many of the interviewees displayed a nostalgia for the Soviet era and for the heroism of a bygone era. Time after time, interviewees would explain that they did not know the danger but they would have responded in the same way even if they had. It was their duty and they would have fulfilled it.

And then, throughout the book is the ever-present reminder that the Chernobyl disaster happened to a population less than 50 years after the Second World War.

Gulag, Auschwitz, Chernobyl. One generation saw it all.

What impressed me the most is that many of these people survived the Leningrad blockade only to suffer devastation again in Chernobyl. They spoke of the terrible winters during the blockade where people froze to death on the streets and one man mentioned, perhaps in jest, burning his belt so that the smell could stay his hunger.

Voices of Chernobyl is a study in the various shades of trauma. Some interviewees expressed that they couldn’t talk about the blockade, it was too traumatic, but Chernobyl they could talk about. Despite the catastrophic loss of life and livelihood, the events of Chernobyl still felt less traumatic to many of them than the blockade.

I cannot recommend Voices from Chernobyl enough and was so impressed that I have ordered Alexievitch’s latest book Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets which was shortlisted for the 2016 Bailie Gifford prize for non-fiction.

Book Review: The Chibok Girls by Helon Habila

On the evening of 14-15 April 2014, Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 female students from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. The girls became known the world over as the 'Chibok Girls' yet surprisingly little is known about who they are, what their families are going through or the context in which this crime occurred. To date, in December 2016, almost 200 of the original abductees remains missing and the little that we do know is that their lives with Boko Haram are ones of untold horror, violence and sexual slavery.

Helon Habila is a Nigerian born author and professor of creative writing at George Mason University, Washington, D.C. In early 2016, he returned to Nigeria to take a road trip to Maiduguri and Chibok to speak to people not only about the events on that fateful evening in 2014, but about the long wait for the girls to return home and the present climate of war and strife in the region.

Habila has produced a chronicle of his time in Nigeria in the short but incredibly insightful The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria.

The book begins with accounts of the events of 14 April 2014 from parents and relatives of the girls who were taken and those that escaped. The residents of Chibok had received warnings that the town would be targeted that day and they had every reason to believe it. Massacres, assassinations and terrorist attacks have become ever more prevalent in what locals have begun to call the war with Boko Haram.

Just 9 months before the abduction of the girls from Chibok, Boko Haram militants entered a secondary school in Mamudo, Yobe State and killed 42 people, most of them students.

After spending time in Chibok, Habila moves on to Maiduguri and the heart of Boko Haram territory. He speaks of the effects of the civil war and how a divide was created between Christians and Muslims as successive governments misused state resources, culminating in the declaration of Sharia law in the area in 1999. Perhaps most chilling is the description of the rise of Boko Haram from a modest force to one to be reckoned with following the Boko Haram uprising in June / July 2009.

Moving back to Chibok, Habila collects yet more first-hand accounts of the fears and devastation of a community who have lost their daughters, sisters and friends.

Woven throughout the book is the story of the girls and the accounts of those who have escaped. Perhaps to be expected with the youth of the girls and the horrors that they experienced, there is very little in the book about their time with Boko Haram. Indeed, with so few escapees (and being that the book was in production at the time 21 girls were released in October 2016), we are but depending on the narratives of a handful of very traumatised girls.

Confronted with their reticence in the face on ongoing questions about their experiences, Habila notes the following:

Hauwa, Ladi, and Juliana were ordinary girls, young enough to be my daughter, who had been raised to almost mythic status by their extraordinary experience – Helon Habila, The Chibok Girls

Insightful, powerful and intimate, The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria is highly recommended for those interested in gaining a more in-depth perspective of the lives and people effected by Boko Haram activities.

The book is out in the States and will be released in the UK on 15 December 2016.

#ZumaMustFall, White Privilege and the South African Spring

The 16th of December is a public holiday in South Africa. It used to be a racist Apartheid holiday marking the Day of the Vow when Afrikaners swore to God that they would forever commemorate it if He allowed them victory over the Zulus at the Battle of Blood River in 1838.

Today the 16th of December is the Day of Reconciliation, a day dedicated to healing South Africa's fractured past. Or to sitting in the sun and drinking in the hot African summer.

Today, the 16th of December was marked by protests around the country for the #ZumaMustFall movement. It was a day that made me proud to be South African and which I thought might finally be the start of South Africa's Spring. I don't expect the crime to suddenly end but I do live in hope of an end to the poverty and corruption (which I see linked). More on that later.

There was a very good article in the RDM today.

Link: #ZumaMustFall: A reconstellation of racist myths whites tell themselves [RDM.co.za, 16 December 2015]

This is an interesting article. In many ways he is right - we expats have all had awkward moments when we've had to explain to other South Africans that we don't share their racist views. You will not believe the racism amongst South African expats and the white middle classes. Or maybe you will.

And he's not wrong when he observes that "[i]n focusing singly on Zuma, white South Africans expediently ignore the role of unsurpassed privilege — and their refusal to relinquish those alienable components of it — in explicitly marginalising black South Africans".

The problem is that he is ignoring that Zuma is hugely flawed, that he laughs in the faces of his corruption. And he is ignoring that something is seriously wrong in a country that hasn't begun to tackle abject poverty twenty years after the installation of 'democracy'. Compare Britain in 1965 and South Africa in 2015 and tell me again that it's impossible to put a roof over people's heads in the aftermath of devastation.

Every day South Africans of all colours land up on the streets but a vast majority of black South Africans still live in shanty towns and slums with no running water, no sanitation and communal washing facilities (if they are lucky). In December 2014, I visited Mzimhlophe Hostel in Soweto where some of the worst violence took place in the 1990s. After all this time there was no running water or sewerage and one set of latrines and washing facilities for every six to eight families. There were also no plans to improve the lives of the residents there.

In October, a friend of mine died, leaving his wife and child in utter poverty. They have nothing now that the breadwinner has gone and there is no safety net, no social security and nothing to stop them landing up on the streets. There are so many South Africans in need that there is simply no charity that will take on their case. That falls to their friends and employers.

Compare this to a R246b upgrade on the President's private residence. Move beyond the corruption, nepotism and cronyism to the wealthy elite who drive past homeless people in cars worth more than they will earn in a lifetime. Heck, some of those cars are worth more than I'll earn in a lifetime.

There is something very rotten in South Africa, a seemingly insurmountable discrepancy between rich and poor and I don't see anything being done about that.

Apartheid caused what is happening in South Africa today but South Africa today is sustaining that legacy.

So is the #ZumaMustFall movement solely the domain of white privilege and racism? Today I didn't witness my fear-mongering, often racist Facebook pals at the #ZumaMustFall marches, but the most liberal, forward-thinking and genuine of people. I know that smacks of "not all whites" but the truth is that South Africa cannot be free until all South Africans are free and if the movement does smack of privilege then it needs to move beyond that.

Three years ago, I was reading The Battle for the Arab Spring by Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren and I was blown away by the similarities by the situation in Egypt prior to the Spring and that in South Africa. Massive youth unemployment and poverty were paired with massive state corruption, embezzlement, cronyism, nepotism and gerrymandering. I remember remarking to myself that the only factor that set Egypt apart from South Africa was that the latter had not moved electoral borders. Yet.

Is the time right for a South African Spring? Yes, I think it is. I think that a massively popular movement needs to be played out across social media and in the streets and that South Africans need to demand housing, education, jobs, adequate healthcare and poverty alleviation. Those were the basic promises of the ANC in 1994 after all. It's one thing to support a party that liberated the country but if the ruling party has lost their way then the population needs to guide it back on track.

Warriors (2015): Maasai Cricket Warriors Take on FGM and HIV/AIDS

Hunters. Warriors. Cricket players. Maasai culture is fiercely guarded, beautiful and distinctive from the outside yet like many cultures, rigid and opposed to change on the inside. In a world of change, the Maasai adopt a strong cultural identity and adhere to age-old traditions, beliefs and values. Recently, a wave of change has moved through a remote region of Kenya and at its centre is the Maasai Cricket Warriors team.

With an estimated one million cricket teams in over 106 countries, there is but one team made of Maasai warriors. Warriors is their story. Directed and produced by Barney Douglas and produced by Michael Elson, Warriors is a powerful documentary that tells not only the story of this group of young Maasai warriors, the formation of their team and negotiation with tribal elders for a patch of training ground, but also the astounding way in which they challenged beliefs about female genital mutilation (FGM) and HIV/AIDS.

Illustrated by sequences of brilliant animation, we learn that the principles of hunting and fighting are not all that different to cricket and so it is that the Maasai Cricket Warriors play in their warrior clothes and connect their sport and culture. This is a team that emerged out of nothing yet somehow convinced tribal elders to donate a patch of land which the British Army helped level and develop into a cricket training ground. For these young men, nothing can stand in the way of their dreams.

If you try to awake the lion sleeping in you then you can do whatever you have ever dreamt of doing.

If young Maasai men can smash through cultural boundaries and realise their dreams, it is another story altogether for young Maasai girls. Circumcised and married off from as young as 8, 9 or 10 years old, young Maasai girls have little access to secondary education and even less say in their own lives. Even worse are the prospects for girls who conceive before FGM – they are considered disposable and worthless to their fathers, incapable of earning them a dowry.

While many cultures would see boys triumph on the repression of girls, the Maasai Cricket Warriors are different. Determined to include girls in their sport and spread the word about both the dangers of FGM and its links in the transmission of HIV / AIDS, the team is one cog in the wheel of progress that is bringing change to this remote region.

In an incredible tale that sees the team visit London to participate in the Last Man Stands cricket finals we get to see Maasai warriors on the Tube, in Trafalgar Square and on the London Eye. Their performance in the tournament isn’t as successful as they’d hoped but their experience helps to open the eyes of tribal elders and earns them a new found respect.

The Maasai are very skilled people and there are a lot of things that white people have seen us do. But there are some things that spoil us, like circumcision of girls.

Warriors is a visually stunning film captured primarily in the dusty plains of Kenya. It is a tale of hope and determination and the power of dialogue in bringing change. The film is accompanied by an energetic and eclectic soundtrack featuring “Falling Down” by Oasis, “Heaven, How Long” by Mercury Prize nominated East India Youth and “Neon Citied Sea” by Cosmo (the solo project of Felix White from UK number one band The Maccabees). Kenyan artists Jimi Mawi & Afro 70 are also featured. The animation in the film forms a powerful connection between the mysticism of the Maasai warrior and the achievements of the team – my favourite sequence was the soaring of the eagle as the team’s plane embarked for London.

Powerful and inspirational, I have no hesitation in recommending Warriors to crickets fans, activists and other interested human beings.

Warriors is available on DVD and iTunes from 25 January 2016.

Warriors Film Website | Twitter | Facebook | #WakeTheLion

From Lynchings to Police Brutality: The Words of W.C. Handy ResonateToday

I'm reading a book called Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired "Stagolee", "John Henry" and Other Traditional American Folk Songs.

In the book, author Richard Polenberg describes the effect of a particularly brutal lynching on American composer W.C. Handy and his subsequent decision to leave the South.

Handy reported his reaction, a mixture of horror, anger and depression: "All the savor had gone out of life. For the moment only a sensation of ashes in the mouth remained." - Richard Polenberg, Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired "Stagolee", "John Henry" and Other Traditional American Folk Songs

In a later incident, recounted by Polenberg in the book, Handy recalled appealing to a law enforcement authority for protection, whereby he was scoffed at and his attacker was assisted instead.

Handy moved to New York in 1918, almost a century ago, but I'm struck by the significance of these events today and the similarities to the Sandra Bland case. Black and brown people in America, the UK and around the world are still being subjected to racial violence; they continue to witness these attacks on fellow citizens (through the medium of film and social media, if not in person); and they continue to suffer a form of post-traumatic stress due to the relentless nature of these attacks.

Just as Handy described his devastation, so people today are overcome by the pervasive, racist and violent attacks in our society today.

Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired "Stagolee", "John Henry" and Other Traditional American Folk Songs is published by Cornell University Press and will be released in November 2015.

Living the Lessons of Srebrenica (Event at Wiener Library)

Tonight we attended the "Living the Lessons of Srebrenica" event at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide in London. It was one of hundreds of events taking place across the UK this week to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995.

We first heard from Munira Subasic, president of Mothers of Srebrenica. Ms Subasic spoke through a translator but I'd like to record some of what she said.

On the continuing struggle to locate, identify and bury the remains of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide:

If a human being doesn't have a place to show where they lived, it doesn't show that they existed.

Ms Subasic talked about reaching out to other mothers' organisations but those who did it won't admit it, won't admit there was a genocide. Without admission, there can be no reconciliation.

"Many women who were abused are not able to have their own children or have relationships with men. A whole generation is disappearing".

Ms Subasic mentioned that the people who committed the crimes are still there, still abusing them.

"People say things are moving forward but Mothers of Srebrenica wish they had two lives: one for waiting and one for enjoying our lives".

When asked whether it would help if lower level perpetrators admitted their guilt, Ms Subasic explained that after the Holocaust, it was accepted that it happened. With Srebrenica, they are dealing with such total denial that no one is admitting it happened.

"They found only two bones of my son. It is very difficult to move on not knowing how he died. They dragged him from my arms".

"Those who committed genocide think they are national heroes. I am very happy with who I am today. I'd rather be a victim than a war criminal".

The next speaker was Dr Gill Wigglesworth who spoke about the lessons from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She gave a fascinating overview of the legal situation and the different levels of proof required by the ICTY and ICJ when hearing genocide cases.

Dr Wigglesworth mentioned a different level of justice, restorative justice if you will, whereby Serbia or Croatia issues an apology for the crimes. Serbia has done so but that was only because they want EU membership whereas Republika Srpska have no such impetus and therefore there is very little chance of an acknowledgement or apology.

Alex Buskie of the United Nations Association UK spoke next on the responsibility to protect.

She examined how the United Nations learned from their mistakes in the 90s and 00s and how the Responsibility to Protect doctrine came to be adopted in 2005.

She mentioned that failures in the past stemmed from inattention, indifference and misjudgment or a perceived contradiction between the desire to protect a population vs the desire to protect a group of individuals. One concept that Ms Buskie reiterated several times was that the UN is a meeting of nation states, that they have no specific power as an organisation and they can only go so far as their members allow them.

Ms Buskie then took us through the three pillars of responsibility to protect and what we are protecting against (ethnic cleaning, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity)

Finally, Ms Buskie admitted that the UN is struggling and that the R2P has only recently been adopted. Having watched the UN reaction to Syria and the continued yet fruitless motions, I found this especially frustrating. Ms Buskie dis highlight how the security council should have briefings earlier on in future and how the organisation needs to adopt a company-wide commitment to upholding human rights but they have a long way to go.

Finally, Jasvir Singh of City Sikhs UK spoke about his own visit to Sarajevo and Srebrenica and how moving the experience was for him.

He spoke of the parallels to be drawn with the Sikh genocide and how friends and neighbours turned on each other. Mr Singh had an important message about how easily a situation can deteriorate and he hinted that such a situation is not impossible even in the UK. He highlighted the role of interfaith organisations in establishing commonality and ensuring that communities can maintain their faith while living in peace with those of other faiths.

The event was then wound up with a very interesting discussion. I was most impressed with how we tackled some controversial topics with respect and consideration.

This event was organised by Remembering Srebrenica, City Sikhs and the Wiener Library. We received a copy of the excellent “Remembering Srebrenica” publication which I was very pleased about.