Here is another update from Catherine White, an HIV-AIDS activist who has been helping on the ground in Cape Town with the immigrant and refugee communities:
Hello Friends,
Things seem to be settling down in Cape Town in terms of violence, but there are now over 10,000 (and I think that is a conservative estimate) displaced people. People are still leaving their homes because they don’t trust that they are safe, and the various organisations that are working to manage moving people to safe locations are struggling to find places to send them.
Four large refugee camps have been set up, but with that comes problems. Diseases are spreading like wildfire (diarrhoea) and the infrastructure is less than ideal.
On a much happier note, another woman that we have taken in had her baby last night. I went to visit her in the hospital at 8 and she was still having contractions. Visiting times finished so I went home and literally 20 minutes later she had a beautiful 2.86 kg baby girl. Amazing.
On another happy note, I have managed to get PayPal to work. It seems I couldn’t receive funds with it listed as a South African account (something to do with not being able to receive foreign funds in SA). Donations can be sent to either my Canadian account or to PayPal (my email address).
Much love,
Catherine
Donations can be sent via PayPal to Catherine’s e-mail at catherineawhite@gmail.com. Go to www.paypal.com and click on the ‘Send Money’ tab. Catherine will send you an itemized receipt of your funds.
Author Manu Herbstein wrote FictionthatMatters with an update about his work Ama - A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade:
Wits PhD student Senayon Olaoluwa’s “Facing Up to Horror: Of Passion, Multiple Complicity and Survival in Manu Herbstein’s Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade” has been accepted for publication in the Selected Papers of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the African Literature Association (2007). This 10,000-word paper examines the novel in terms of Jacques Depelchin’s Silences in African History: Between the Syndromes of Discovery and Abolition (2005), “which seeks to unsettle and radicalize established perspectives on African history.”
Senayon presented another long paper, “Beyond Disability: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade And Female Heroism In Manu Herbstein’s Ama” at a CODESRIA conference in Cairo a few months back, but I’m not sure whether, or when, that will be published.
Visit the novel’s website here.
Here is a moving report from my friend Catherine White, an HIV-AIDS activist who has been helping on the ground in Cape Town with the immigrant and refugee communities:
Hello Friends ,
My faith in humanity is slowly being renewed, though slowly. There are some incredible people, doing incredible things. A group of grade 10 students started a facebook group on Friday and have mobilised food and other donations and dropped them off at SHADE today. This was contrasted by two frightened Zimbabweans who were seeking shelter at the office because the safe house they had been promised ( and were willing to pay for ) was denied them. This happened after dark and only after they had moved all their belongings from their house in a township in the Southern Suburbs (Khayelitsha) to the house in town. The couple and their two month old baby (so frightened), had unloaded all their belongings from the transport from Khayelitsha to town, and then had to stand with their stuff on the sidewalk and defend their possessions from passing opportunistic thieves. While the couple were trying to find alternate arrangements, people were passing by and looting from them. Can you believe people!! It makes me sick.
Eventually a passing man on his way to work saw them trying not to have all their stuff stolen and loaded what he could into his car and drove them to our offices. The woman and baby was separated from her husband and when they were finally reunited it was beautiful. Sad though that the man had to do an inventory of what he still had, and what was stolen. Fortunately, the important things weren’t taken.
I also helped organise 25 individuals who had sought refuge at the woodstock police station to find safety. We found a Methodist church in Pinelands ( another neighbourbood in Cape Town) the pastor opened his doors. When we got to the church we then realised the 25 individuals had left their children in safe houses and we now needed to organise transport to return their children to their parents, and ensure accomodation (bedding, toiletries, baby formula, diapers, food etc) for an additional 25 people. All this is utter insanity, but beauty does emerge from horror, as I am learning.
So, while I am still not proudly South African, as I am ashamed of what people are doing to their neighbours, I am bouyed by the efforts of the individuals to bring hope to this horrible situation.
Sending love from this side of the world.
Catherine
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin.
Produced / Directed by Bennett Singer & Nancy D. Kates
DVD, 2008
Quaker leader Rufus Jones once intoned that pacifism is the “fiery positive”. A pacifist does not sit idly by, according to Jones, but directly engages in the affairs of the world. Bayard Rustin was the very embodiment of the fiery positive. Raised as a Quaker, the African-American Rustin excelled in academics and sports, reciting classical poetry to his football teammates after a hard tackle on the field. He went on to become one of the greatest American human rights activists of the twentieth century. Yet Rustin’s life has not been celebrated for one reason: he was openly gay.
Read the full review here.
Several thousand immigrants and refugees have been the victim of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa. Owing to my background of working with the targeted community, I sent a letter to the editor of The New York Times, which was posted on May 24, 2008.
The violence has now spread to other parts of the country. Colleagues on the ground in Cape Town report that immigrants and refugees are fleeing to temporary army camps, which are filling up more quickly than they can be built.
I have a friend who is working with SHADE - a faith-based organization - to help displaced victims. You can contact SHADE directly at www.shade.org.za, or if you would like to work with my friend Catherine White, an HIV-AIDS activist, she will ensure that your donation is properly spent and give you an itemized receipt. I am actively researching longer term funding solutions as well.
Contact me directly at olukotun@gmail.com.
–Deji Olukotun
Read the letter at The New York Times here.
Alternatively, read it here on the FictionthatMatters.org website.
