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While reflecting on the past six months on the South Africa-Washington International Program, it dawned upon me that I had yet not written about one of the most difficult experiences of my life, which happened to take place in Washington DC: the visit to the Holocaust Museum.

It took me a long time to make my way through the entire permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—a very long time. I was lost in that place. I could not understand what was going on. I remember gliding between the exhibits and information boards in a semi-detached way, never quite sure what to make of the images and information I was taking in, but never missing a word of text or a detail in the fabric of each item on display: each crease in the striped pyjamas, and the stiff smell of leather. Those shoes!

I felt like a voyeur; I was not meant to be there. These were the things of other people—human beings, each one of them. And they suffered. And I who had escaped such a fate by virtue of time and space, I who was alive was bearing witness to a past evil at the hands of other people—human beings, each one of them. And they suffered… didn’t they?

As I walked, it was like fiction.

Some time later, during a facilitated debrief session with a museum staffer, I entered my body and I cried. The internal conflict that raged between my disbelieving mind and my shamed body made it difficult for my heart to reconcile this Holocaust thing with Humanism. It was a crisis that I was undergoing, and it frightened me and left me in a state of deep despair.

We say, ‘Never again,’ but it happens again.

I said this to the group as best I could, but even those words—a Crisis of Humanity—were not enough. But they would do.

I am glad for my team. It was my team that expressed to me the importance of never losing spirit. Some fights are tough, and sometimes it is necessary to slay the beast thrice or four times before it is defeated, and even then it may rear its head again. And then again we must fight. Like Sisyphus we must roll the boulder back to the top of the hill, each time it rolls down. Despair is part of life; it is that part which makes happiness so beautiful. And it is our Crises of Humanity that allow us to sing in the calm.

... But dreams are not merely an illusory symbol of a fanciful future. Like our names our dreams are bound up in history. They are of no time, and they are of all time. And they speak a truth...

In South Africa this is somewhat different. As I said, the affirmation of human dignity is the foremost pursuit of our (envisaged) society. As South Africans we are emerging from a history of people’s humanity being denied. That was the effect of over 300 years of colonialism and apartheid. The Framers of our 1996 Constitution realised this and included human dignity not only as a founding value in section 1 of our supreme law, but also as a separate right in section 10.

The aim of this piece is not to compare and say that one society is better than the other, or that one Constitution is better than the other. This is merely an observation that I think is an interesting one, and one that ought to be considered if one is ever to make a meaningful comparison between those two countries.

After spending four and a half weeks in DC it’s only natural that I try to understand this place at some deeper level. Part of being able to live in a place or at least to have a more insightful appreciation of it, I believe, is understanding how that place and the people who live in it ‘tick’.

What makes societies tick? What single factor, if it is possible to name such a thing, is responsible for determining the way a given society functions? Thinking happened and then my humanist tendencies pointed me in the direction of one thing: values. Great. But what then are the values that underlie the American and the South African societies? The answers are clear: the most prized value of the American people is liberty, and the equivalent in South Africa is dignity.

As much is evident when one reads the constitutions of both countries, and from an inspection of the constitutional jurisprudence of the highest courts in each country. Yes, I know the problems associated with judging a society by looking at its laws. But the truth is that the spirit of each constitution does in fact represent an ideal held by the people for whom it is supreme law. The US Constitution came about at a time when it’s Drafters and the American people were eager to release themselves from the shackles of the British Crown. The creation of a free society was the most important goal because of the reality of what came before. And so both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have as a central theme the value of individual liberty.

Contd...

It occurred to me that the culture in the US is different, and so too is the relationship that the people of the US have with those whose job (I might say duty) is to provide them with information of the goings on of their society. Without claiming that I know this society, as an outsider, first observation is that there seems to be a blurring of the lines between news and commentary, that much is clear.

I’ll say this: I find it refreshing. When I gave it some thought, I found myself thinking that perhaps this open, unbridled First Amendment-backed media is good for this society. Perhaps it gives people the benefit of a plurality of uncensored views (which are in fact there) and allows for people to make their own choices about what they listen to and what they believe. After all, isn’t individual liberty (and individual responsibility) what American society is all about? Certainly, this argument is made by some Americans I’ve engaged with on this issue, including an educator resident at the Newseum.

But other Washingtonians that I have interacted with have said that this new way of doing news is a relatively new thing, and that it has had the effect of polarising American society further. They argue that today it is far too easy to search for and find the news that backs up your already held convictions, changing the role of the media from being a balanced source of information to being a platform from which to play at people’s sensitivities.

I always thought of myself as quite the worldly guy. I considered myself knowledgeable on many issues that affect other parts of the world and the peoples who live there. I subscribed, in part, to the philosophy of Cosmopolitanism—a school of thought propound by Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah a man whom I respect, and whom I hoped to meet when I was in New York. (Appiah’s story is not all that different from my own: he is also half-Ghanaian, and straddles the line between that world and the British of his maternal ancestry; and he too is queer.)

Coming to the United States, I experienced my first bout of culture shock, and it came from the most unlikely of sources: the news media. I was startled by what I felt was the flagrantly biased way in which the news was delivered, especially as it pertained to political matters. Two weeks ago, during the ‘Fast and Furious’ saga that rocked the office of the Attorney-General and the handling of which resulted in the AG, Eric Holder, held (wrongly, I think) in contempt of Congress, I was amazed at how the whole episode was reported by Fox News. It was so unabashedly conservative. Republican even. And then to top it off, while watching the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC, I could only laugh as I realised that she made no attempt to cover her liberal leanings while ‘ripping into’ Fox.

These two things were new to me. First, it was the first time I had witnessed news be handled by the ‘media’ themselves in such a clearly partisan fashion. It seemed so irresponsible. It offended my South African sensibilities, and from conversations I had with my colleagues, it offended theirs too. And second, I was also new to the notion of one publisher or news house directly criticising one of its competitors.

Some time ago someone I care about deeply sent me a stanza of a poem. That was a good day. It was my first introduction to the work of Alfred Edward Housman, an Englishman, a classicist, a scholar and a homosexual.

Housman’s poetry has been lauded as being of the highest lyrical worth, and its simple depth. Shortly after the trial of Oscar Wilde, a fellow writer and poet, and also a homosexual, A.E. Housman penned a poem telling the story of a young man whose ‘nameless and abominable sin’ was the colour of his hair.

Today we know that there have been many fights that have been fought and won, to different degrees. But one fight is far from over—the battle for the human rights and protections of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people around the world. Indeed in many parts of the world, and even in my own country, South Africa, and this country, the United States, being queer is still a ‘nameless and abominable sin’.

But slowly that is changing, and it takes big, public acts like President Barack Obama declaring June 2012 ‘Pride Month’, and respected people like Anderson Cooper coming out in public to change the tune of the song society sings. And it also takes small, personal acts like me, a nobody, saying 'I am gay'.

And my sexual orientation is not a crime. And the colour of my hair is not a sin.

Oh Who Is That Young Sinner

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

I thought I’d share a bit about my life in the month-and-a-bit that I will have spent in Washington DC by the time I leave July 21^st. It starts at the home.

The Lynch Home—My Home

As I mentioned in a previous post, I live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a neighbourhood just a mile over the District of Columbia’s north-western border with the ‘Old Line State’. I have the fortune of staying with the family of Tim and Kathie Lynch in a house built in the 1800s, which at one point in the summer housed nine human and four canine members of a strange international extended family: Tim and Kathie and their son and daughter Brendan and Lindsay; Brendan’s lovely girlfriend Chelsea, and their furry friend Maybe; Kathie’s dad Grandpa Jim Perry, and the intrepid Labradors Carson, Charlie and Carrey; as well as fellow interns Pierce, an American who is a friend of the family, and Benji, a member of the Washington Ireland Program, the sister programme from which SAWIP arose.

One of the most important aspects of the SAWIP programme in DC is one to which we don’t give all that much thought before actually arriving in the city: the host family. It’s not easy to enter someone’s home—their family space—and share it for over a month. It’s kind of a big deal. The gravity of that truth does only become apparent when one is actually in it.

Arriving on Williams Lane, I felt a little like that girl Goldilocks—the one from that childhood story that was used to teach little kids never to eat bears’ porridge or sleep in their beds. While I had been invited in the Lynch home—quite unlike she of the aurulent fro—I felt somewhat shy and self-conscious at being in a new space; someone else’s home—again unlike that lass-that’s-too-crass. But my reticence soon dissipated. I have seldom felt more welcome than I have felt this summer.

Life has been great chez les Lynches. I thought that there’d be a clash of cultures, but instead there’s been a cultural exchange. And so they understand me when I say ‘shame’ with a smile and I have begun writing the date using the American format (did you notice at the beginning of this post?). These minor adjustments represent the altogether more serious behavioural and attitudinal shifts that you must make when you move into someone’s space, or when they move into yours. We learn and we teach.

Goldilocks and I have our locks in common: hers were golden and mine are dreaded (pun intended, just ask my Dad). But the similarities end there. Our stories are poles apart, our experiences antithetical.

[I can never remember how the Goldilocks story ends: Does she get mauled by the Bears and have her hair turned into a weave for Rihanna? Do the Bears have her arrested and press charges? Or does GL run off with Mama Bear and live the life of a tag-team porridge-addict con artist duo?]

It’s not important how Goldilocks’ story ends; what’s important is that mine doesn’t go like hers. If I didn’t know when I was 7 years old I know now that that is Goldilocks’ Lesson: She approached the event of being in a home that was not her own with arrogance and insensitivity. I am grateful that my father taught me better than that. Had he not, I would not be so comfortable as I am now to call that bright yellow house on Williams Lane my home, and it’s menagerie of inhabitants my family.

Nobody knows what it’ll be like the first time they arrive in a new place. Yes, we often have some idea; we may know people who have visited that place before, we may have heard strangers talk about it in passing; we may very well have gone to consult the Wikipedian Oracle in search of the Divine Truth about that place. Certainly this was my relationship with Washington, District of Columbia before physically arriving here (my mind had arrived some weeks prior—fact). I knew everything there was to know: I’d studied the grid; I’d mapped out routes from my new home just across the north-western border in Chevy Chase Maryland to my work in Dupont Circle and to other sites of interest within the DC area. I was versed on the DC’s history and its actuality. Yes, I knew everything there was to know about DC, even before I knew-knew.

But nothing could have prepared me for the experience that would start with me stepping off the aeroplane at Washington Dulles International Airport nearly a month ago.

First, it was HOT. It was seriously hotter than anything I’d ever experienced in my life—hotter even than Phalaborwa! (And everyone knows Phalaborwa is hot.) Never was I so grateful for having invested in a something so supposedly antiquated as set of handkerchiefs (and never was I as smug as I was at rubbing that—the knowledge not the handkerchief—in the faces of those who found my hankie carrying ways a source for mirth).

Second, the people were courteous and friendly. From my lovely host family, the Lynches, to the business suit-clad ladies and gentlemen who helped me find my way when I finally knew that I didn’t know, most people that I met were quite eager to show me the way, even when it meant going out of their own.

Finally, the city was intense. DC is the political capital of the United States. I might venture that it is the political capital of the world. It is a city abuzz with politics, economics and international affairs. You must literally shut your eyes and ears to be ignorant of the hot topic of the day. When I arrived, I was in a state of intense glee.

These points are just an initial observation—the things which struck me on that first day, that first week. The time between then and now has been one of knowing less, and understanding or appreciating more… Time has exposed me to some of the depth of the District, the parts you don’t get from the Wikipedian Oracle or from being in the city for a mere day. DC has a lot of good, and it has taught me a great deal. But there is a great deal that this city can learn from outside its four quadrants. I hope that my South African sisters and brothers and I, along with our new sisters and brothers from the island of Ireland and from Palestine and Israel, can leave a part of ourselves in this place as we take a bit of it back home with us.

Also, I like this city; I do know that.

Ideas. Powerful entities. Beings, even. Born of necessity, or curiosity, or determination, or by accident: born of life and living. They are beautiful, and ugly, and they shape the world. The bad ones shape it into something from which to avert our eyes and gnash our teeth, but the good ones, they bring smiles to the human faces of the world. Author Napoleon Hill said, ‘Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.’ I’d but alter those words to speak of good ideas and fortunes for greater humanity.

Nexii is a good idea. It is an idea about good.

On Monday 21 May the SAWIP Class of 2012 hosted Tamzin Ratcliffe, the founder of Nexii, and Alfred Johnson, an intern with the project. The pair presented the initiative, which officially launches in September this year, and fielded questions about its inception and the support it enjoys at this pre-launching phase.

You are wondering what Nexii is. I wondered too. An apt description of the initiative is found, of course, on its website: ‘Nexii aims to make impact investing a reality at scale by providing the meeting place for investments that are primarily social or environmental in purpose and intention and by supporting the intermediaries who serve impact investors, intermediaries and high impact investment initiatives.’ To my mind, the Nexii platform—for that is what it is—marries the idea of business for profit with that of social good—concepts which have traditionally been seen as diametrically opposed to each other. In this regard Nexii should be seen as a facilitator of this connection, an enabler of good.

In a world fast becoming one where economic and financial involvement is a prerequisite for success and personal and community upliftment, I think that the thinking behind this project is laudable. Nexii represents a drive to create a platform where businesses can become an active part of creating positive change to ordinary human beings. Technically, it is a stock exchange geared towards investment with social aims. Nexii sets criteria that NGOs need to meet in order to be listed on the exchange, insuring their repute. It also provides rules for engagement that protect the NGOs from pressure from the businesses who invest in them or from having the carpet swiped from beneath them.

NGOs struggle, we know this. Many of them do great work, innovative work that reaches the core of many of the problems that are faced by the communities in which they operate. Dr Rhoda Kadalie, the Executive Director of the Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust, speaks of the need for government to partner with NGOs to upscale the impactful work that they do. I agree with her, but I also thing that the private sector bears such a responsibility, especially in a country of such inequality as South Africa. In that light, I support the Nexii project’s commitment to providing a reputable place for social good projects and businesses to meet and collaborate.

I must be honest, now at the end of this piece, as I wasn’t at its beginning, I don’t fully understand everything that Nexii does. I’ll probably have to read three or four times before I can grasp the concepts of social impact bonds and other such socio-financial instruments. But I can say this: that the space most certainly is being opened up for a redefinition of the way we do business and the way that affects our interactions as human beings. This space is being driven by thinking people; people with hearts full of ideas and ideas with heart.

When we infuse humanist notions—ideas of ubuntu—into those aspects of our lives to which they are most foreign, a real magnification occurs of our capacity to realise good.

... And a deep sense of humility overcame me. Never before had I been so intimately honest with perfect strangers, and never before had I had such openness and depth reflected at me. What was this strange and accelerated ubuntu which seemed to defy my sensibilities and introduce me to a welcome discomfort? Quick as we were to advance past the acquaintance phase into a space usually reserved for those we’ve known for years, it never felt rushed. It felt familiar—in every sense of the word. Like an old and infinitely warm blanket it enveloped us, together. We were strangers, but oddly we were becoming a family. It felt right. It made me cry with inspired happiness. In the company of these people—these my people—I was deeply honoured and uncontainably excited...

I still am.

Let me try to put that in perspective. This is my first blog post. We are a few weeks into our South Africa-Washington International Program curriculum. And, I might say, this is quite the programme. Already we have engaged with many of our countries most serious and pressing issues, and always in a meaningful way. We have had an in-depth look at the national Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment framework; we have asked deep questions about the state of South Africa’s constitutional democracy and grappled with the very difficult history that provides context for our present. Importantly, we have debated the meaning of being an active citizen poised to meet head-on both the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead of us in South Africa. It has been intense, this SAWIP story. It’s just beginning.

In many respects the SAWIP story is the South African story. To tell the SAWIP story is not an easy thing to do, plainly because the South African story is so complex. We all star in that story and we are all its narrators; we write the story and it is written for us. Quite truly we all have a part to play; and play it to the fullest we must!

SAWIP really has done well to cast a group to play in its narrative that represents both a South African actuality and a future of promise: a group of storied strangers. I once mentioned in passing to one of the team how great it was that we have amongst us historians and politicians, economists and lawyers, teachers and managers. Each member brings with them an invaluable perspective informed by their colourful and varied educational and historical experiences. They have strange stories to tell.

I am moved to believe that this is part of what our South Africa needs—to learn as a nation to share in and to be comfortable with our beautiful strangeness. Nation-building is family-building. In a country of such diversity smothered in pain, and with as much that is unsaid and unacknowledged as our own, we need to make it safe for people to come forward and tell their own stories and have them actually listened to. Because strangers though we may be, our stories fit together as one.

It is through our stories that we curious strangers become a nation—a family.

I recall that first day at the SAWIP selection camp when newly-introduced we each took to the front to tell our tales one-by-one—our deep and troubled and brilliant and human tales. And with each personal recollection we wove another beautiful and strange pattern into the great burgeoning blanket that draws us together in a familial embrace. And a deep sense of humility overcame me...

The largest blanket in the world. Naturally.
(Knitted by the hands of South African churchwomen. Read the story here)