Heeey!

Happy New Month! Happy Pride Month!

How is life treating you these days?

Well, I don’t really know how I feel about life at the moment. The only thing on my mind are the South African Election results and the negotiations that are taking place between the political parties. The country is in untested waters, where the dominant African National Congress (ANC) lost the national elections for the first time in the country’s 30-year old democracy. You can read more about my two cents on the outcome, later in the newsletter. The official results were announced and elections declared free and fair this past weekend, amidst threats of disruption from “dissatisfied” quarters – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before we get into all of that, a reminder to share this newsletter and ask your friends to ask their friends too to join the squad and subscribe.

Here’s how we’re doing in this edition:

-Studio Update

-Companion Listening

-Broken Promises

-Giving Me Joy

Alright pod friends, time to get to business. LET’S GO!

STUDIO UPDATE

HEALING RACIAL TRAUMA

In the latest episode, Lizzy Hudson and I talk all things South African and American. We are both from South Africa and connected on social media while living in Seattle. I have previously been a guest on Lizzy’s podcast, Live to Thrive talking about our experiences as Southern African immigrants in the Pacific Northwest. This time around we discuss the importance of providing a platform for people of color to share their stories and how these narratives can impact others. We also get deeper in to Lizzy’s personal story, which includes growing up in apartheid South Africa, being a cross-racial adoptee and how the murder of George Floyd sparked her latest journey in to healing and podcasting.

COMPANION LISTENING

THRIVING ABROAD

One of my favorite interviews on Shades and Layers is a conversation with Nkuli Mlangeni Berg, who has the sustainable and handmade interior design studio, The Ninevites. Based out of Southern Sweden, she collaborates with makers across the African continent and South America to create unique pieces that are inspired by the geometric patterns of different tribal groups in South and West Africa. Her operation is structured to support local artisans and preserve African cultural heritage. Our conversation about her approach to work and artistry will leave you inspired to make something, anything!

ON MY MIND THIS MONTH: BROKEN PROMISES

The Rainbow nation was a myth from the beginning and now any hopes of building it are seemingly dead. As I mentioned, the liberation party, ANC, got a thumping. They lost more than 15% of the electorate in one election cycle. They came in at about 40% of the final vote. Most South Africans have placed their hopes and dreams for a better South Africa in the party for the past 30 years, but I guess we’d had enough of the corruption and lack of delivery on the basics – education, housing, jobs, working infrastructure and safety to name a few.

We, South Africans who have voted for the ANC in years past, are very much to blame for this unprecedented, and undoubtedly uncertain situation we find ourselves in. We didn’t hold our leaders accountable, our whistle blowing culture is weak -for historical reasons I won’t go into here- and we focus way too much on people who – being the beneficiaries – have shown no interest in doing the work it requires to dismantle neocolonialism and put Apartheid behind us.

In the face of all this uncertainty, I’ve tried to be more philosophical in my approach. My biggest thought being that maybe it’s time to start having honest conversations with the people who hate us. None of us are dealing with the trauma of what’s happened – and continues to happen – in our country. We haven’t even started to do the work of healing. So far, we’ve been semi-successful at existing alongside one another, but we’ve never been truly forced to be in the same spaces. You could argue that none of us need to be in the same spaces, but we have definitely called for it in our voting patterns. The results demand that we deal with each other. I personally have no desire to be hanging out with Helen Zille after spending my school years with a lot of children who came from families that espouse her beliefs and views 🤮. At the same time I am not interested in excluding anyone out of the country on the basis of their skin color. What I am interested in is starting to have honest conversations. For example, don’t insult our intelligence by highlighting corruption in the ANC while failing to recognize the racism in the DA . What’s the answer to how come every single one of the promising Black leaders who were in the party left to start their own parties? We all need to call a thing a thing.

Why am I so focused on these two parties? Because they might actually go into a coalition – and I’ve seen far too many mentions of this partnership as the silver bullet that the country needs right now for economic stability. Nonsense in my opinion. I also have no idea how the ANC with its leftist social leanings will reconcile partnering with the white monopoly capitalist principles of the DA, but apparently it might be a requirement for having a stable government. As you know, I’m not a political analyst, nor do I live in South Africa at the moment, so my judgement and opinions are formed from the perspective of a citizen that lives a safe distance from daily life in the country.

And so, I’ll recommend one of the most sober and easy to understand analyses of the post-election negotiations and possible formations that will yield a government by next week. It comes from South African activist – most notably in the Rhodes Must Fall Movement -scholar, musician and author of The New Apartheid, Dr. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh. He has a current affairs channel/podcast SMXW. He does a deep dive into the scenarios involving some possible coalitions between the diminished ANC and the various opposition parties. It’s a long watch/listen, but if this topic is of interest, then definitely head on there and listen. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he has to say, but he does paint a clear picture of the possibilities. Also before you come for me, I know he has a lot of critics who call him neoliberal for zeroing in on the apartheid regime itself as South Africa’s biggest problem as opposed to white supremacy itself.

Nevertheless we are here because The ANC has failed to deliver since the after glow of the 2010 FIFA World Cup held in the country; and the party has always failed to act on calls for an internal cleanup, so really this is a self-inflicted outcome. What is scary to me is that the two political parties that have failed to be of service to the people of South Africa, will continue to determine our lives, whether they form a national coalition or not.

That brings me to the lead photo this month. If you’ve never been to South Africa, know that Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities you will ever lay eyes on. Not far away from neighborhoods such as the one in the pic you have Black and Brown communities living in abject poverty. There are many aerial photos on the internet showing this spatial and racial divide. And yet the DA claims that the Western Cape is the best governed province. Similarly, in Johannesburg, the richest square mile in Africa sits across the highway from one of the poorest townships in the province, Alexandra. Gauteng has been governed by the ANC for the better part of the past 30 years. Johannesburg was using the tagline: World Class City at some point in recent history…

I’ll leave it here because it exhausts me to think about coalitions with the smaller parties, like former president Jacob Zuma’s new party MK and Marxist-inspired Julius Malema’s EFF – who will definitely have a field day should the ANC and DA form a national coalition.

Mostly, I’m heartbroken 💔

GIVING ME JOY AND PAUSE

This being Pride Month, I’m recommending a couple of LGBTQ films I’ve enjoyed in years past; they are: Moonlight and Fire. I’m also recommending Beyond the Margins, which serves as the home for the work of journalist, photographer and researcher, Carl Collison, and other like-minded collaborators. He has been documenting stories that center LGBTQ+ people across the African continent for more than a decade.

Most of my recent reading, listening and watching has been focused on News Media and analysis covering the South African elections and the Donald Trump felony conviction. Things are about to get wild in these US of A.

For good laughs in between the serious, I keep revisiting African Content Party leader Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s clips on social media. Shout out to broadcast veteran Phemelo Motene for always keeping calm in the face of lunacy while interviewing Motsoeneng in the run-up to the elections. For more madness, check out the Newzroom Afrika interview between Ziyanda Ngcobo and former president, Jacob Zuma. Shout out to her for her fearless line of questioning. If you can’t watch the whole thing, go to about 43 minutes and have a good laugh at Zuma explaining how he’s simultaneously the leader of a new party whilst still being a member of the ANC.

To keep things light, I’ve been reading BB Alston’s Amari and the Night Brothers to (and with) my kids. It’s the first book in the Amari Peters adventures. Amari is a Black teenage girl from the hood who’s not aware of her magical powers until her older brother, Quinton – who also has supernatural gifts – goes missing. Her quest to find him leads her to the supernatural world – a secret world that exists right alongside the world as we know it – and she is called to perform heroic feats to save her brother and the supernatural world. Movie rights for this gem have been secured, and now awaiting production date and to hear who’ll get the lead role!

Can’t wait to get into Selena Montgomery’s Rules of Engagement. Only found out earlier this year that this name is American politician Stacey Abrams’ nom de plume. Hey, don’t judge me.

That’s all from me this time around pod friends. I’m ready for the summer, but not before one more edition of the newsletter.

Next time we’ll get back to more entrepreneurship talk. I hope 😆…

Until then, please do take good care.

Cheers,

Kutloano

(your host with the most)