Conflicts polarise people's worlds.
In seeking to perpetuate the illusion of objectivity, news journalists
narrate conflicts by reducing them to binaries and encouraging polemical
debates between them. Yet such a
strategy actively foments the fissioning of the
world. While media scholarship has
learned to be cautious of attributing excessive power to the media at the
expense of audiences' agencies, the news media retains tremendous power. This is particularly so in situations where
violence at the local level becomes shocking and difficult to explain. In contexts where there is urgent need for
defensiveness if not retaliation, the power of journalists to make narrative
connections that rouse people to greater levels of anger becomes very
great. Texts describing today's
sentiments easily become scripts for tomorrow's battle scenes.
Few
journalists are willing to acknowledge the extent to which news media is imbricated in the perpetuation of cycles of conflict. In part that is due to the persistence of the
myth that news is simply a mirror of reality.
Yet that argument overlooks the reality that mirrors can be severely
distorted. It also obscures the reality
that how people see their own image in a mirror can be heavily distorted. And, most importantly, it does not recognise that mirrors - far from standing outside of
events - can and have become utterly central to the production of contemporary
personhood and identity.
Another
reason for the persistence of the idea that news coverage stands outside of
conflict is that few journalists live in the conflicted communities on which
their reports focus. Conflict erupts;
journalists gather; conflicts subside; journalists travel back to their
newsrooms and from there to homes and communities that are not directly
involved in the fighting.
But
in situations where journalists do live in the midst of a community that is
being torn apart by conflict and its associated narratives and polemics, the
ethics of news production and the complexities of news consumption come into
sharp focus. Frequently, death threats
or physical attacks arise when a journalist's attempts at impartiality are seen
as a betrayal of one or other side.
Surviving such times at all is hard enough; surviving them with
professional integrity even more so.
One
of the few journalists in South Africa who managed to remain resident in a home that was
surrounded by conflict for many years is Khaba Mkhize. An editor,
journalist, columnist and award-winning playwright, his experiences of living
and working in a region at war with itself forced him to rethink priorities,
ethics and practices of news gathering and news writing. His own work exemplifies a search for stories
out of the ordinary, that do not repeat the structures and forms of news
stories that become, as he calls them, the equations of conflict journalism.
I
first met Khaba while working as a journalist and
attending a series of workshops for journalists on mediation and conflict
management. Our acquaintance developed
into a mentorship some years later when I spent some months researching the
practices of journalists covering the KwaZulu-Natal conflict, and from there began to run workshops
for journalists and teach an anthropology of news media. The workshops focused on newsgathering
skills, ethics, and the techniques of writing stories that did not fit the
conventions of stories about particular conflicts. Much of the content derived from what I had
learned from Khaba.
Yet, much as these particular skills could be communicated, there is
something else about Khaba's approach to journalism
that is difficult to articulate. An
anecdote captures the complexity. In the
late 1990s Khaba survived a car hijacking near his
home by rolling out of the car and feigning death after a bullet grazed the
back of his head. He survived because he
was able to read the rules of the moment and play them instantly. Such an understanding of the human psyche -
to know what a more powerful party to a conflict wants out of a situation and
find a way to meet that need without damaging lives - came from two decades of
reading conflict situations as a reporter.
As
a journalist that instinct for survival derives from an ability to play many
roles, and choose the right one for each occasion without compromising on
principles. His columns, like his
stories, draw from very deep resources of courage, and most of all, from a
jester's sense of the absurdities of the contradictions between ideologies and
human nature and a knowledge of how and when to express those truths and
survive. “You can never change the path
of a bull by taking its horns,” he once advised me, “you need to get alongside
it and tickle its ears.”
This
paper aims to describes Khaba Mkhize's
rethinking of the practices of journalism, and of the persona of the
journalist. Based on a series of
interviews with him and a reading of his copy files, I want to suggest that the
art of surviving a career in journalism when living at the heart of a conflict,
is in being a jester, an original storyteller, and above all, a good listener
to how audiences are receiving the news.
*
‘The key is to apply inclusive journalism,’ Khaba declared at a London meeting on media and transition in 1993. ‘We must
tell ourselves that we are part of the human race. And once you feel that you
are part of the human race you are able to identify with the pain. You are not
aloof, you are not on a different planet. When you write about what happens, it
also involves you’.[2]
The
theme is a strong one in his copy files housed at the library of the Natal Witness. His narrative strategies constantly played
with subversion and inversions of the range of binaries that structured South
African conflicts: binaries that extended from 'black-white' through
'Xhosa-Zulu' and 'Inkatha (IFP)-African National
Congress (ANC)' down to the minutuae of details that
came to stand as signifiers of the apparently incontestable reality that
society was divided into two irreconcilable halves. At the heart of his work is the belief that
society was impossibly more complex than the binaries proffered by the
narratives of a polemic journalism: whether those polemics be black-white; ANC-IFP, or partisan-royalist.
Consequently, he constantly challenged journalists to write about more
than what he called the 'equations' of lazy journalism. 'What you see blocks your sight' was one of
his favourite aphorisms. Journalists' task, as he saw it, was to make
the invisible, visible by observing the realities of human connectedness across
social boundaries. In doing so, the task
was to narrate the unnarratable - or, in Barthes' terms, to go beyond the 'already said'; beyond the
journalistic short-hand that simply confirmed the nature of a conflict (and in
so doing, perpetuated it) instead of challenging perceptions and providing
alternative scripts for action.
Accomplishing
these goals required one to position oneself neither on one side nor the other,
and not even above the conflict on some high-wire fence, as it were, but on the
ground, engaging with people whose family ties extend to all fronts of the
fighting; encouraging physical,
emotional and communal survival.
Intense conflicts inevitably seek to force people to choose sides. Avoiding this force requires deep conviction,
empathy, wits, and wit. In 1988, when
violence was intense, Khaba wrote about the
difficulty of not taking sides. The
column touched n the difficulties politicans had with
him; the difficulties of explaining to readers that the law on court reporting
only allowed one to write about what had been said that day; of the difficulty
of being labelled reactionary for talking to both
sides (Echo 1988, 12.05).
Talking
peace with 'vigilantes' was tantamount to treason, they [the opposition]
warned. I had indeed dived into a pool
of controversy and was labelled 'reactionary'. This was no setback at all to me because I am
a firm believer of the fact that one should not worry if his or her shadow is
crooked so long as he or she is standing upright - because at the end of the
day, when the sun has set, your real image will remain. ...
On the credit side of reporting the violence, it
left me with one good habit: To think before talking. How else could I have survived ... One wrong
word and you are in for it.
Of colleagues, he wrote:
A
question that is frequently asked by many concerned people is 'How is it
possible for you not to take sides?' Let me answer by quoting some of my
journalist colleagues: 'Khaba is a fence-sitter.'
Later, when things got very hot, they upgraded the phrase and said I was not
sitting on the fence any more but on the air itself.
Yet the effort to be
neutral ought not to be confused with simplistic objectivity in journalism; far
from it. Khaba
and his colleagues sought to make the Echo serve as the means of communication
for all parties in the interests of dialogue that could reduce violence. Thus, when the goal of reducing violence
demanded plain speaking, punches were levelled and contextualised, but not pulled. From a column titled 'Stones deserve shields,
not guns and bullets' (Echo 1990, 15.03):
A
couple of weeks ago I'm driving home on a Tuesday noon. On my way
I see a crowd of students at a nearby school toyi-toyiing[3]
inside school premises. They are locked
inside the fence and shouting their rhythmic political slogans. ... As I
approach the scene I see that some young constables are pointing firearms at
the kids and provoking them ... .
I respond by approaching the sergeant in charge of
the unit and introduce myself. I point
out my house up on the hill and explain that I am a parent and I do not like
what I see: Provocation. Why must your
guys point firearms at unarmed students, I politely try to mediate. ... The sarge argues his point by claiming that there's no
provocation whatsoever. [The journalist-parent points out a particular
policeman as he dares one of the students to act; Khaba
points this out and the policeman is restrained by his superior.]
But sadly, as is often the case ... the moment
[the students] realised the negotiation process was
going smoothly, one points at the sarge: “Jy is 'n bobbejaan!”
[Afrikaans for “you are a baboon!”] ... It's too much for the sarge who forgets me and starts reacting: “Mfene futhi wena!” [in Zulu, “you are a baboon too!”]. Inside I laugh at the display of knowledge of
languages - a Zulu speaker spouting his venom in Afrikaans and an Afrikaans
speaker doing his bit in Zulu.
[After the tension has dropped the sergeant]
points at the stones lying on the streets and points out that these are not
mere pebbles but real boulders which can “kill you and me.” “We policemen we are not above human beings. We are also physically weak and can be
dropped dead with a single well-aimed big stone.” Addressing a personal
question to me he levels: “If you are confronted with a group of
stone-throwers, Mr Mkhize,
would you not pull a gun if you had one and shoot to kill?”
The sarge continues:
“You can write about this in newspapers if you like, but the fact remains that
you all take us as just policemen.
Yesterday they killed one of our guys in Richmond and it was taken as
just another policeman killed, yet when just one student in injured by one
rubber bullet it gets full page coverage.
It's true, isn't it Mr Mkhize?”
The sarge was
right. People expect protection from the
police and not attacks. But, as he has
just explained, people, especially the youths, are attacking the police.
What is wrong?
You and I know the answer. When
one sows thornwood he's bound to reap thornwood and not fruit.
But that's not the issue now. The
issue is what the sarge's fears and feelings are all
about. They are not protected from
stones during riot situations.
It is a big question. How do you protect the police?
The answer is always available during TV's news
bulletin ... [when we] see hordes of policemen carrying fibreglass
shields protecting their skulls while controlling riots. That's the answer, and I hope police bigshots are listening.
Protective shields are far cheaper to buy and maintain than bullets and
lives. We now need a new thinking in the
police force. We need new policemen for
a new South
Africa. NOW.
*
Most of Khaba's ideas about journalism were
formed between 1985 and 1991 while he was the editor of the Natal Witness Echo. The period coincided with some of the most
intense fighting that occurred in South Africa, and the Echo,
a weekly tabloid that was aimed at black readership, circulated in a region
that was ravaged by violence that seemed as if it would continue in
perpetuity. In 1994-5, while Khaba was an assistant editor on the daily paper the Natal Witness but retained an active
voice on the Echo, fifty-thousand
copies of Echo circulated every
Thursday in Pietermaritzburg and the rural Natal
Midlands region - a vast area incorporating much of KwaZulu,
the political stronghold of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu nationalist Inkatha
Freedom Party.
During his editorship of Echo he vigorously pursued strategies of conflict reduction through
the medium of the newspaper. Towards the
end of 1988 the newspaper believed his life to be in danger after he was
publicly denounced at an Inkatha rally and received
death threats, so he fled to Canada for several
months. In his absence, Echo was edited by Fred Kockett, whose ‘Fleet Street’ style of journalism (as Khaba calls it) stood in stark contrast to his own style of
mediative journalism.
To Fred, guffaws Khaba, he owes his life:
after a few months of ‘Fleet Street’ reportage, he says, Inkatha
welcomed him back.
Khaba was born into
a Zulu family in a Durban township
called Clermont. For most of the 70s he worked as a site clerk for a building
contractor, but wrote sufficient letters to various local newspapers for the Witness to offer him a job in 1978 when
it was decided to employ a black journalist. He was instrumental in founding Echo in 1979, and became its editor in
1985, forty-four days before PW Botha imposed the
State of Emergency that lasted
for six years. In 1991 he was appointed assistant editor of the Witness and in 1996 he was appointed General Manager of the
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in the province of
KwaZulu-Natal. He remained with the SABC
until early 2003 when he resigned to pursue the promotion of an African style
of classical music.
As
a columnist on both papers he created for himself the identity of a
journalist-raconteur with responsibility towards justice in the public sphere
and published stories that would seldom have found a place on the news
pages. While researching journalism at
the Natal Witness in 1994-95, it
seemed to me at early morning news meetings that he had established the right
to speak his mind with charismatic inoffensiveness. Characteristically, he would puff on a cigarette,
purse his lips and drop a low rumble of a thought into a conversation in a way
that it would be taken up, without giving a hint of challenge to prevailing
ideas. Or else he would regale
colleagues with observations of the absurdities of South African social
categories.
Playing
the raconteur was part of asserting an alternative social vision - but not
being an orthodox journalist meant that at times his peers considered him not
the real thing. Having won the Commonwealth Fellowship for Journalists in 1995
and having been appointed to the SABC Board of Directors in 1994, he was not
promoted from assistant to deputy editor at the Witness when the opportunity arose; nor was he honoured
by the South Africa media community on being awarded the Fellowship, which in
Britain was considered prestigious enough to land him a place at the high tea
table at Buckingham Palace to converse with Queen Elizabeth II.
Khaba
is also a playwright. He has written a number of plays, one of which, Pity Maritzburg!
(1989) won South
Africa's
prestigious AA Vita Award. His plays, like his journalism, are an extension of
his desire to put into the public sphere narratives that function as the social
resources that could change stereotypes and behaviour. In the words of Ben Okri:
'stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and
nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and
nations’.[4]
*
The story “Killing of 15 a 'tragedy of errors' ” (Natal Witness 1994, 24.02) was published as a feature article, some
days after a massacre of 15 young people near a small village in the rolling
hills of the KwaZulu midlands. The killing had been reported as
straightforward 'election-related violence' between the supporters of the two
rival political parties in the area, the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha
Freedom Party (IFP) and the non-racialist African National Congress (ANC). Convinced that the label 'election-related
violence' was obscuring more than it was explaining, Khaba
investigated and came up with a far more nuanced
story of youthful excitement, misunderstanding, and tragedy.[5]
Killing
of 15 a 'tragedy of errors'
–Khaba Mkhize[6]
The shooting of 15 youths in a hut at Mahehle near Creighton early on Saturday morning was a
"tragedy of mixed errors."
During the State of Emergency, when the violence was
at its peak, I took the paper myself to shops, public places, and I went to shebeens,[8]
and they would grab it ‘oven fresh’, this was the slogan, and whatever
misconceptions we’d have, they’d tell me straight - but there I was gambling on
human psychology that if I’m there, they will never channel their anger through
the barrel of a gun, they will tell me straight: ‘Khaba
this is rubbish.’ Then I’m in a position to explain why we did it, if we had
missed the point somewhere, I would apologise. I was an immediate target, they
didn’t have to phone or plot, it became a spontaneous reaction or anger. They
had the person to take out their anger on in the shebeens
and shopping centres.
Lesley: -so you
were available
Khaba:
-I was available.
Lesley: -Right
there-
Khaba:
-right there. Because I consider it - that’s
protection, to create instant bridges. If they want to piss on me, let them do
it. As long as they don’t kill me. But then they would tell me - look, this
whole page, it’s comrades.[9]
Then I would plead with them, ‘Do me a favour. Spread out the message, at your
meetings, that your people must respond.’ By so doing I was involving the
entire community in communications, and I also learnt that to have a whole page
from one side, was dangerous. I used to count letters - Echo’s letter pages
would take about eight letters. I’d take four from Inkatha,
four from the other side. In order to serve the community on an equal basis.
The community became the objective for my job and for my existence. It ceased
to be Ulundi[10]
or Pretoria or Security Branch. I became preoccupied with the
community. Hence I was very excited to learn of communitarian journalism,
because this is what I was practising.
Lesley: Now if
you were explain communitarian journalism very very
simply -
Khaba:
It’s to apply inclusive journalism on the part of the community. You imagine -
how would I feel if I was a member of the IFP? Reading this? The UDF - reading
this?
There are basic things; all communities have these in
common, and the newspaper must also be treated from that perspective that we
are all common, as human beings, that we belong to the human race, we
journalists are not sitting on a planet giving judgemental theses on humanity,
we are part of community, but we tend to have this egoistic profile that we are
writing for the people - [but] we are writing for ourselves. If I write a story
which will make Imbali burn - why should I write it?
Even if it is true, telling it as it is does not justify me to cause suffering.
There are three categories of journalists - you have
the writers, or opinion makers, who are thinkers, ok, but they will have
experience to do that. Then you have your reporter who reports about what
happened yesterday. And who’ll announce what has been announced by a particular
group. Then you have the explorer - the explorer is a person who writes about
what happened yesterday, why it happened; you go back three years; if it still
doesn’t make sense, you go back four, five, six years. Then you explore the
future, how will these trends influence the future of the community - you are
exploring backwards and forwards. I cast myself in the mold
of explorer journalist - I explore the future; what will happen after the
massacre, and what does happen too - the ‘follow-up culture’. When people make
peace we don’t care; we don’t care about miracles; when those people were
killing each other last week [have stopped fighting, but this week] we haven’t
heard anything about the continuation of the conflict. How; why; you explore,
you don’t report.
I call it [communitarian journalism] the greening of
journalism. It’s a very difficult concept to sell overnight to people,
especially --- [a senior colleague], he thinks I’m ‘off’ [crazy] because this
is just a myth, an unattainable myth, [they speak of me in the same way that]
they describe the born-agains. Good news is no news,
they’ve got a lot of guys they quote, they quote some Fleet Street experts who
actually crush the concept of good journalism. Some people don’t even bother to
argue with me, I sense that, [they think] ‘pvvt, it’s
a waste of time’. But again it is because people are always scared of new
things, things which have never been endorsed by the so-called gurus of the
field. Talking seriously with some of the people, they say ‘ja
we agree with you but good news is boring’. I disagree. You don’t have to
report in a greyish style, you can do it in an exciting style - did you read
that one on the refugee pigs and dogs?
Lesley: - the
column?
Khaba:
Ja, that column. Many people still talk about that
story, you see, because it’s story telling, it’s a narration which carries
symbolic analogies and metaphors, and people identify with analogies and
metaphors.
The story of the pig and
the dog occurred after a team of reporters, including Khaba,
visited a violence-stricken region. While
conducting an interview Khaba noticed a small black
pig being tormented by a large dog. All of a sudden, over the crest of the hill
came a small dog that chased the tormenter away. The event became a focus of Khaba’s column (Natal
Witness 1993, 10) as a parable, this time: that if a small dog could side
with a pig to chase away a big bad dog, how about humans overcoming racial and
ethnic divides in everyday life? In a
media environment where most journalists are fascinated by the unjust exercise
of power over the powerless, Khaba was attracted by
the power of stories and fables to suggest alternative responses of the less
powerful. He once spoke about the power
of columnists to bring new story forms to bear on conflict situations:
“Kwasuka sukela --” [Zulu for “Once upon a time --”]. Then you
tell your story. It’s your story. You can take a simple folklore and change it
- or not folklore, fairy tale, and change it serve to their society. Our
discussion at Kampala [a
township pub] last night escalated with wisdom until I said to them, because
there was some fighting when we talk about women’s rights. But I said women are
powerful. But the thing is that women fail to pick up some analogies based on
animal life, and use them to their favour, like the
bee. The bee is so powerful. The queen bee. The bee kingdom is ruled by women.
We started talking about the bee, its organised life.
And I found myself needing to go and study bees in order to carry on the
women’s struggle. Because it’s all a matter of words - the power of language.
To convince men, and to convince women - women need to be empowered, and there
isn’t anything with which you can empower women except powerful words. And
powerful words need to push the goal by using something that no-one can argue against,
like bee life, or the lions, the lioness being the provider. From there you
have the reality, something that is conclusive, something that is self-evident,
above what is evident now about the capabilities and achievement of women. Not
as a romantic journey - this is the difference between man and animal, is that
man can reason - humankind sorry - humankind can reason and communicate;
animals cannot. Animals cannot improve their lot. Animals cannot enter into
conventional contracts - they are what they are. A bee of today is a bee that
was before the birth of Christ. So why should journalism behave like animals
and not change? Why? An animal is trapped to that animal which was there in the
Garden of Eden. Journalism must not be there where it was when journalism was
established as an art form of communication; it must progress. [...]
In South Africa, the 1990s were the years in which the
transformation of apartheid began.
Negotiations at a national level decided the future shape of the
country's government; at a local level, people began experimenting with ways of
living without colour bars. Discoveries of common humanity at all levels
made for some extraordinary moments; desperations to retain the old system led
to some violent times. In this context
of the extraordinary becoming the ordinary, Khaba was
constantly amazed at the lack of flexibility in the news industry, as news
continued, day after day, to be dominated by violent flashpoints, often without
acknowledgement of the extraordinary context. Without the acknowledgement of a chaning context, the message of such stories was
effectively 'the more things change, the more they stay the same': a message
that couldn't have been more wrong. Khaba's comments at the time:
Many
journalists are by-products of an apartheid era where everybody was hammering
apartheid - you didn’t need skills. See, I consider the tools for our industry,
the media, to be language and words. With apartheid you needed only three tools
in your toolbox: a bulldozer, a fourteen-pound hammer, or a four pound hammer.
Because you were just doing demolition. Bha! Bha! Bha! Bha!
This era now demands very effective tools: tools of precision. Your level, your
tape, your drill; you need a power drill, a pneumatic tool -bwwrrht-.
We haven’t learnt that art of selecting the right tools, because we are not
demolishing now, we are building. That whole baggage of demonising people,
demonising institutions and organisations, it’s a closed chapter. Mediative journalism in my establishment - it’s a taboo
cause; I only get away with it because it’s me, in what I write, I’ve got a
‘mentally-related exemption’. Okay. And with the younger journalists, some
actually believe in this, but then news editors and subs, they don’t.
And I think what actually militates against
communitarian journalism is that people have been conditioned to flashpoints,
violent flashpoints.
Lesley: -
Explain?
Khaba:
The mass media is thriving on violent episodes; television and people’s deaths.
Not that I disagree with it but they get the headline news - those referring to
deaths and violence. A truck that doesn’t overturn but gets off the road and
probably overturns and nobody dies - it’s not considered news, but to me, the
news is the driver - how did he pilot the truck to save passengers or homes
which are next to the road, or probably here are these ramps, steel barriers,
or maybe it was the presence of these steel barriers that helped to prevent an
accidental massacre. But no, [in terms of] the death principle: no-one was killed
- so it’s out. But we would be helping the community by identifying those
things that protect the community so that the local authority would be
encouraged to erect those things that save the community. We don’t see that
story. To us that story is no story. So the culture of how many died has got to
be readjusted.
We are
living in the end of the twentieth century, with all the work that has been
done from centuries before the work of Christ, but we are not getting it right,
because we don’t read the teachings of people who advocate ‘truth force’
philosophies, philosophies like ubuntu. [...] News by
its own, it’s no source for the refinement of human standards. Information. I
don’t like news reporting, I like story-telling. I don’t like events-telling. Because
events are not conclusive for a morale, or for a moral lesson. They are
inconclusive. But a story is rounded. You get a story, of you, Les, for
example, but it can never be news, because you did not do an extra-ordinary
thing, out of the normal. News is something out of the normal. And something
out of the normal does not really recreate or reconstruct the human order, it’s
a record, it’s not a moral. You are asking me for my story - I haven’t killed
anybody; it’s not news - Khaba Mkhize
hasn’t killed anybody, it’s not news. This is the difference. If it’s a
debacle, if it’s a catastrophe, it’s bad - that’s news. I like to tell good
stories, like the old man who had two children, or old grandmother who had
children around her in the fireplace, telling stories. Kwasuka sukela.[11]
The power
of analogy and metaphor, I think to me, is the most efficient wheels for story
telling. Metaphor and analogy. The metaphor of the cockroach I know has
actually sharpened the consciousness for cleanliness in many a kitchen. [...]
Lesley: Something puzzles me about this cockroach
thing. It seems so central to you and to your thinking about journalism, and
yet it is such an ugly thing. I mean, why choose cockroaches?
Khaba: You say
they are ugly. [He grins.]
Lesley: Absolutely.
Khaba: But I
don’t look at them as ugly. They are like traffic cops. They are ugly, but
really when you look at it objectively, a traffic cop, when he tickets you, is
not ugly, he is protecting you from your own - what - from your own
recklessness. Yet there is nothing ugly about a traffic cop, yet we hate
traffic cops. But they are helping us. Cockroaches to me are like health
inspectors sent from heaven to come and check against our hygiene. Because
you’d never find a cockroach in clean environments. Cockroaches thrive where
there’s filth. That’s why I like a cockroach. The cockroach taught me
cleanliness. And a cockroach is a symbol of physical, concrete inspection. It’s
an Inspectorate of Neatness. And who doesn’t like neatness? Have I answered you
why?
Lesley: So journalists are cockroaches?
Khaba: Good
journalists!
Lesley: That’s enough to put anybody off.
Khaba: Huhhah, good journalists. But everybody loves the cockroach
concept. I’ve tested it in many an audience. You get them rolling with laughter.
But then it’s a good analogy. The metaphor of a cockroach. Nobody forgets it,
because they see the cockroach all the time and then they think about the
metaphor. This is what I like about metaphors.
The
cockroach knows the basic rules of survival. When to emerge from the kitchen.
First of all the venue, the habitat. He mustn’t be far from what makes you
tick. So the cockroach will keep itself in the kitchen - not in the bedroom,
it’s too far, but in the kitchen.
And then your
cockroach - if you don’t switch off the lights, then the cockroach will know
instinctively, that they’re all asleep now. And then it will emerge. When
there’s a sound or a human appears, the cockroach knows, I must stop now, and
if it is attacked, it even knows how to fly. Natal cockroaches fly. And then,
millions of dollars are spent all over the world to save certain species which
are endangered. But hundredfold millions of dollars are spent the world over to
exterminate the cockroach ever since the animal kingdom was founded. But the
cockroach is still there. It knows - it even adapts to these pesticides. It
knows the basic rules. And those are survival rules. If things go bad for me, I
fly to Cape Town. And if
they are very desperate I fly to Canada. And
come back and survive again. That’s timing. I used to call it cockroach
technique. But now I’m calling it cockroach timing.
In the context of a
status quo undergoing radical transformation, the white right wing became
something of a national scapegoat for racism (not least in that overnight they
were the only ones willing to acknowledge their racism). Recognising the
hypocrisy of the media's right wing antagonism and all too aware that
reactionary coverage of the right isolated them ever further, Khaba employed the strategy of not taking the bull by the
horns but getting alongside it instead.
A local meeting of the avowedly racist organization, the Afrikaaner Weerstandsbeweging
(AWB) was announced, and Khaba attended despite the AWB's reputation for the ejection of black journalists from
its meetings. This story appeared as
part of a column in the Witness of November 19,
1993:
I
can’t tell you about the AWB outside Natal but I can tell you about our AWB in Pietermaritzburg [who were] waiting for Mandela at Howick on Monday. ...
I took my chances to get the feel of the AWB at
close quarters. I decided that they would not further flatten my already flat
black nose in front of crowds. I found that this AWB crowd is a different
kettle of fish. ... I got the impression that they were ordinary fathers and
sons who happen to wear the image of a demonised
name. ...
Of course, they were heavily armed. Some were
carrying leather cases which looked like guitar bags, but their faces did not
match their fire-power. I still wonder how many media people who took the
‘spectacular’ pictures actually wrote about the polite behaviour
displayed by the AWB. ...
Probably irritated by their presence, the comrades
decided to toyi-toyi towards the group ... carrying a
very big red SACP banner. The AWB refused to be agitated. ...
When I’m overseas again, I will tell them that in Pietermaritzburg we have a different AWB. I hope they stay
like that.
Alongside the bull and stroking its ears, the story recasts villain and
victim. That this was possible was in
large measure due to Khaba's capacity (and
determination) to be so gracious in his own bearing that he brought the best
out of people. This was in contrast to
a common tactic of journalists to provoke the earthquakes that would expose
social fault lines, in the misguided belief that their task was simply to
expose the latter. ‘Readjusting the
culture of journalism’ was a theme of many of our conversations. While on a
long road journey he spoke about it.
Khaba:
‘Tell it as it is. Bugger the consequences.’
That’s the criterion for being a good journalist. To me, it’s an 18th
century norm of journalism. You see, paradigms have shifted. And when paradigms
have shifted, we also have to shift our ethics.
When you do a sensitive story, what I used to do and I
still do, is to come back to the person reading the story, and say, ‘Do you
agree?’ and when he objects to point abc, xyz,
discuss it again, until he convinces me that it’s wrong, or I convince him that
it’s right to let it stick like that. Then a person respects you for that.
Doesn’t get a shock the next morning when he gets the paper. And when you are
wrong, never hesitate, take it as virtue, to say, ‘I’m sorry, I made a
mistake.’
Approaching journalism in a violence-stricken situation, according to the
book, it tends to be reckless. For instance, that youngster [who had given us
information about a recent massacre], I can quote him, but what do I want to
achieve? If I publish his name, people will come back and shoot him. They shoot
kids. If I publish his name, do I have a responsibility? People are behaving
like animals. Nothing is stopping them from killing children. I am putting that
boy on death row, just because Journalism says, ‘Get their name.’ I can change the name and say this is Bafana. The name does not matter in the story. It’s not a
court case. [The aim of the story] is to give out information, not kill the
sources of information. Preserve life while presenting the facts. This dogmatic
approach of sources, you know, they’ll do it, then fly back to London. Get the story in the Daily Telegraph [a UK paper, an international version of which is
distributed weekly in South Africa]. They don’t
care about what is happening to the people they’ve left behind. But for me to
come back again here, I must protect the identities of people of this area. The
next time I come, I get that boy’s name in the paper, and they kill him - the
next time I come they either kill me or reject me. Short-term journalism.
Ignoring the consequences. And not knowing what you want to achieve.
Les, some journalists cannot live with the fact that
sometimes you drive 500 km and you come back with no story. That’s where
dishonesty starts. Your newspaper or your news editor must know that not every
trip produces a story. Then the fabrication of stories, thumb-sucking of
stories will stop.
They want to justify expenses. Nothing else. The guys
came here in 1987; overseas TV crews. They said Khaba,
we have been told that you are the man of the moment in this area. We need your
help. What’s happening? I say we are enjoying calm, peace, right now. Nothing
is happening, it’s peaceful. They say come on, come on, come o-o-on. Then they
look at each other and say, the other one, ‘Look here Khaba,
organise some action. Make a plan. We’ll see you right.’ Unbelievable. I was so
embarrassed on their behalf. How d-a-r-e these guys suggest that I script
violence, you know?
And er, in 1989, January, I
had a tip-off about an attack which would have been like a massacre on Ashdown
township. It was coded Operation Doom. Doom, like they Doom the cockroaches,
Operation Doom. Which was planned for the 19th of January 1989. So the only way
to pre-empt such a disaster was to expose it, so I decided to expose it. Of
course I knew Inkatha would deny it, I phoned Ulundi [the headquarters of the IFP]; they said they would
treat the thing with the contempt it deserves. ‘We can’t plan such a thing.’
OK, the story was fit for publication because Ulundi
had responded, and we published the story that Ulundi
denies Operation Doom. Right? But then journalists from abroad and from Johannesburg started arriving in Pietermaritzburg
to cover Operation Doom. Huhha. They came to me to
find out directions - where’s this township, bla bla bla. On the 18th the office
was hounded by the media moguls. OK. On the 19th I did not bother myself to
dispatch any reporter or for me personally go out and watch for Operation Doom.
Because I knew Inkatha is not stupid. They would not
do the thing on the day which was quoted. But all these guys went there. And at
about 2:30, they came there, in a bad temper, accusing me of
sending them on a wild goose chase. I said what do you mean? They said,
‘Where’s the violence, there’s nothing coming from there.’
I’ve never hated journalism like I hated it at that
moment. I looked at the guys faces. I mean vultures are good looking. I don’t
know how to describe their faces. I felt so-o-o sad. Not angry - so sad that
some of our guys have stooped to such base levels, and I opened up my drawer in
my desk and said ‘look here guys, if at all I had violence I’d be giving it to
you free of charge. Thank you, sorry. I don’t manufacture violence. I wrote a
story, you have got nothing to do with the story, you can’t question me, I’m not
accountable to you. I wasn’t writing the story to you.’
The first guys who had come in ‘87 and said I must
make a plan, organise some action, they explained their type of journalism to
the fact that we have got to account for expenses. ‘We are flying from New York to Johannesburg, from Johannesburg to Maritzburg, we are
staying at the Capital Towers Hotel. They need film back at work.’ I don’t know how much they would have paid
me.
You know, I’ve told the story in America, in Canada, in Germany, in England, Uganda all over, but to my surprise the people who I’ve told
the story are not surprised. No-one queries it like ‘no-o-o, you are not
telling the truth.’ That alone tells me ... you get what I am trying to say.
Journalism has not moved. Today we have conflict
management - but journalism is conflict-propellant. ... We need to learn skills
of violence-extinguishing. ... You need that to be incorporated into our
journalism.
Lesley: You
said earlier that journalism in this country is digging its own grave. That
sounded to me like a thought that’s been developing for a while.
Khaba:
Exactly. Recklessness. Not thinking about the consequences of a story. You run
an editorial like that one [on the Creighton massacre], you can see the person
who wrote the story that he lives in comfort. He’s an academic theoretician. He
doesn’t understand the cultural dynamics of the environment he is writing for
and he is writing in. And then the name of journalism gets tainted. And then we
even convert simple questions into statements attributed to radical activists.
Like the PAC [Pan-Africanist Congess]
thing - ‘Kill a journalist’. It sounds a nice slogan, if you see a journalist -
[yell] ‘Kill a journalist!’ - that’s the way we are now gonna
be intimidated - this is how they are going to intimidate us. ‘Kill a
journalist! Kill a journalist!’
But then if you go back to the origins of the slogan,
you find that they did not compose the slogan, it was composed by a sub-editor,
who probably changed the story - [thinking] the headline will read well, like
‘kill a farmer, kill a boer’[12]. There
are many slogans now. Based on that - kill one. In this play When honey turns sour, the slogan from ‘kill a boer, kill a farmer’
was ‘one Adam, one Eve’. Many people are catching on that. It’s catchy.
Lesley: -
When honey turns sour - that’s
your play on Aids?
Khaba: - Ja. The problem with slogans - they read well, they sound
well. Who knows next week they will have transmuted it into ‘kill a journalist,
kill a story’, something like that.
[...]
Khaba:
Violence is like a virus. If it is in Guguletu [a Cape
Town township], it is soon in Clermont [a
Durban
township] ... it flies, it’s a bug, and so, I said the media are labeling
violence as ‘black-on-black,’ it is actually trivialising
violence, as if it’s a third-rate problem, but nobody’s safe. Well today it’s
history - ‘kill a boer kill a farmer’ - the case of
Amy Biehl,[13]
it’s because you play into the hands of the culpability of the human condition,
you repeat something, they feel it’s an assent, even a stamp of approval. Those
tendencies actually cause violence before it happens.
Bodies
alone - this has become the recipe for news. But the question is - Why did they
fight? We must go and see whether they must go to a sanatorium - there are mad people
out there. Most cases, they are not mad, they are people with families, people
who don’t want to fight. What makes them fight? This is therapeutic journalism.
You heal, you heal communities, and when they vent out their problems, they
feel satisfied somehow. It’s like the phone-in programs. They’ve done a lot to
de-escalate the violence. People are able to shout at each other. And it’s good
for them. It’s a healing process.
I used to
be angry about the violence, but now I am angry about the media. For actually
caressing violence.
I use
tomato as an analogy for our journalism. For most housewives, cooking begins
with a tomato to spice food. And South African journalism uses violence. To
spice its news. Violence must always be page one.
Development
journalism is not a priority, to write a good [news] story and make it a lead -
it’s not a news fashion. It’s the fashion to lead on earthquake-like story -
that’s news, that’s the definition of news in contemporary South
Africa. How many people died? Not natural
death. I mean this psyche is feeding into something. And feeble minds think
that that’s the way life should be. Ja. I’ll be very
happy if you could put a stress on the greening of journalism. The greening of
journalism is the beginning - it’s the first step to the greening of humanity.
We need the greening of humanity, and the greening of journalism.
During the transition
period prior to the first democratic election one of Khaba's
stories was that of an unusual soccer match.
At the time, conflict between the South African Police, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress was
intense, and the numbers of people dying in massacres, month by month, were
among the highest experienced in the province.
SAP vs
ANC, IFP - on a football field!
The mass media can play a leading
role in a ‘Peace Unleashing Movement’, reports Khaba Mkhize, Natal Witness (1993 9.10).
The
invisible was made visible recently, thanks to the alert eye and sharp nose of
journalist Fred Khumalo who writes for City Press. He recorded a
tolerance-generating event in the violence-ravaged Malukazi
shack township near Durban whereby the ANC first thrashed the IFP and then
the international peace observers, in collaboration with the South African
Police, succeeded in beating the hell out of both the IFP and ANC.
This event is hardly known in the country and
certainly not by the overseas community. Even the police press releases didn’t
contain this scoop. But I do not blame the mass media and the police. It was
obviously invisible and unimportant. The winner at the end of the day on that
battle field was the ‘Peace Trophy’.
The first soccer match was between the IFP and
ANC. The IFP was walloped by three goals to one in a tournament organised as a peace gesture. Then an integrated team of
IFP and ANC wore one jersey and played against a combined team between the
international observers and the SAP who scored a slender 1-0 victory.
Echoing local Inandi Chief Sondelani Zondi’s
sentiments, the IFP and ANC then set up a Malukazi development forum. They also
agreed to form a joint dispute resolution and a joint disciplinary action
committee to investigate criminal cases.
The leadership of both organizations agreed to
free political activity and to make schools and halls available to both for
meetings. Although the South African mass media and police belittled or simply
ignored the violence-shattering episode, this is no reason why we should ignore
the hope-building process.
Massacres (very visible) are easy to capture on
the box and paper - hope and peace (easily invisible) are journalistic
geometry.
In the context of
massacres perpetrated by the flag bearers of the teams that played, the thought
of a game was almost unimaginable. Yet
the unimaginable happened. “It is easy to
forget how mysterious and mighty stories are,” wrote Ben Okri, “They do their
work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the
mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories
you read or tell: subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they
are altering your world.[14]
Khaba's
experiments in the value of circulating stories that worked with unusual
subjects an made unusual connections, extended to playwriting.
Lesley: Let’s move on to your plays - what was the
first play you wrote?
Khaba: The first play I wrote was ‘Behold the black sheep’. It was about a youngster who was angry, who was messed up by Bantu
Education, and he wanted the world to be aware of this. It was a
psychoanalytical piece of work, and he ended up being a crime boss. I won’t
talk about all the plays I’ve written, but I’ll talk about those which have
made an impact.
The
building trade - all my observations and high points were told in this play Hhay’ Hhash’;[15]
I gave [the paper’s] management some tickets, the next day [then-editor]
Richard Steyn called me and said ‘Khaba, thank you very much for the
experience. What I saw really riveted me, I couldn’t imagine that in this
country such things happen, but the story was well told - you gave us a glimpse
through your window last night of how the other half lives, and I would ask you
to continue writing the story by writing a weekly column.’
Lesley: When was this?
Khaba: - this was September 1979, I joined the
paper in October 1978. Before the end of the year I was invited by Americans to
a high-profile conference of African-American writers in Florida, USA, [with]
Chinua Achebe, James Baldwin, some other high profile writers - because of the
column. I got the column because of the
play ‘Hhay’ Hhash’’; had I not
written ‘Hhay’ Hhash’’ I wouldn’t
have got the column at that early stage - the way I wrote it with honesty and
robustness, it was a courageous statement and stand to take, they knew in this
establishment [the Witness] that the
play worked; it opened up the column; the column worked; it introduced me into
international levels. When I came back from the States, I was empowered, I had
confidence, I believed in myself - I started walking tall with my pen.
And then
the amount of stories I used to churn out for the Witness
could not actually make it in the papers because of the news editors, because
of their Eurocentric approach, tended to cut them, chop them to oblivion. And
then an idea grew up that there must be a special paper that could accommodate
my stories. We held meetings, that Echo must
be formed, but for a different reason, management wanted a paper that would
reflect on the social life of black people, they wanted wedding pictures,
parties, soccer, crime. I said OK. I had my own agenda. When the paper started
I said black life is not parties, soccer and crime; there is the other side -
which is their hopes, their aspirations, their failures and their victories;
it’s a community, it must address the needs of the community. I think
communitarian journalism started there, now when I look back. I said it must
serve the community, if it reports only on the [soccer] goals that we scored
last week, it’s not serving the community. Let the paper work to achieve the
goals and lubricate and service the hopes, then we are onto the bottom line of Echo as infrastructure. The paper did a lot of
things in improving the quality of life out in the townships.
Lesley: How?
Khaba: We got robots [traffic lights] ... I was a
pain in officials’ necks, I was a pain. Because I wouldn’t deal with
semi-officials, I went to the top to get results. I introduced the culture of
accountability to the positions they were serving. I became very unpopular in
this city, I was called a shit-stirrer in this city. My stories which were
crusading for a better deal, and when people saw me they were completely
disarmed - ‘you and your name[16]
don’t match’, I said yes, I am doing my job, and if you are doing your job
you’ve got to fight by using the communicative tools. I’m accountable to that
community. The media is a very strong tool to make things happen. And the idea
of using the paper as a light-hearted sheet to make the people happy, I changed
all that, I said the paper must serve to realise the dreams to create a better
life and to educate this city. Because before I joined the Witness,
black people were [represented by the paper as] maids and laborers. When I
entered the scene, they became people, they had needs.
In 1982
the ANC organized a culture and resistance festival in Botswana, [my
play] ‘Hobo the Man’ was asked to represent Natal. It’s a
two-man play; it evolved from my encounter with a person in Durban in 1978.
I heard a voice in a polished cultural English accent, stiff-lipped, saying
‘Excuse me Sir’; I looked around, I mean Sir? My mind - went round, I’m called
Sir, in this accent? I looked round, it was a hobo, ‘Can I have ten cents
please?’ I was so impressed I gave him twenty cents. I was still in the
building trade, I used to drive the van to collect the building materials, my
mind was stuck on that sentence. Then I asked myself, must it take such
degradation for a person to give me respect? So it was the inspiration to write
‘Hobo the Man’. It was dealing with stereotypes. I did not imagine, I did not leave
room for that experience. At the time there were these stereotypes: white is
right, black is bad. Or inferior. And then the play took head-on the
‘stereotypedness’ of society, in such a way as I made people [in the audience]
to drink mahewu [traditional maize porridge] from a chamber pot - managing
directors, everyone ... I made people to eat dog food from tins. ‘What we see
blocks our sight ...’ there is nothing wrong with dog food - you cannot die
from eating dog food. The chamber pot had never been used for it’s official
capacity, and the hobo was valuing it as his trophy ... the whole point was to
break the stereotype. In fact, I’m so in love with that play that I’m redoing it,
phase 2: ‘Hobo in a new South Africa’.
Hopefully it will be in Grahamstown Festival this year. It’s just a journey
exploring - it’s going nowhere, but it’s exploring the situation - where are we
come from, where are we going to, it’s sort of an experimental type of play.
Then in
1985 the Brits approached [then-editor] Richard Steyn
and said Khaba deserves a break and to get exposed to
the British media. And I came back very excited about the way Fleet Street
write their papers, very concise, you know, crisp. While I was away I was
promoted to take over Echo. [When I came back] I was able to do more
sensitive things, more unimagined things, getting the paper sued - I defied
this ‘contempt of court’ and the Secrets Act, exposing prison conditions in
Virginia.[17]
But one thing all officials of the government knew: that bastard Mkhize has his facts right. This is the thing. They hated
me but they respected me. When I came back I was Acting Editor ... I started in
May and in June, forty-four days after I took over as editor, we were given
volumes of the Emergency Regulations. I was still wet. I said to myself - hmm -
I’ve got to read all this? I said to myself, I will gamble, I will play it
according to my gut feeling. If I see it’s wrong, I will restrain myself, but
if I believe that this has got to be told, I will tell it. That was the birth
of the cockroach. Forty-four days. The forty-four days’ experience landed me on
the cockroach technique, on the cockroach timing.
Lesley: How have plays and audiences impacted on
your journalism?
Khaba: Very
much, because when I put up a play and put up all these cynical ideas, people
catch up with them and discuss them, and actually compliment me for thinking in
an unorthodox way. To me, that becomes a vote of confidence, which I use in my
journalism - that no idea will shunt me to Fort Napier -
Lesley: which is - ?
Khaba: - a
sanatorium, for mad people, it’s in this area [lights another cigarette].
Lesley: Now what about ‘Pity Maritzburg!’ - where did the idea come from?
Khaba:
[Explains that a group of musicians in the nearby township of Sobantu asked
him to write a script for them.] For years I promised them a script, but then
the violence came, before I could put a script together. I wanted to integrate
their musical talents with drama, but - in 1989, I said, ‘let me force myself’;
I said, ‘what kind of play can I write?’ I’m inclined to believe that a writer
must reflect the community picture - what is, or what should be, or what was -
but then, you have got to prioritise which is the
pressing issue at the moment; it’s to mediate the violence. So I have got to
write about the violence, but write about it in an interpretive and in a - how
can I put it - in a ‘boom-boon’ fashion; we must, I must write in a fashion
that would throw the light - use heat for light, because violence is very hot,
it was the heat of the moment; but extract light from the violence - this was
the bottom line of ‘Pity Maritzburg!’, as the
name suggests. So I took all the incidents that could not be published because
of the nature of the newspaper - we’ve got to distill news - you don’t write
everything, we couldn’t write about everything that we saw and heard in Bhambayi [a squatter camp near Durban which experiences
intense violence] yesterday, and certain things, they are like trivial, it’s
not for the newspaper ... or you would be pouring petrol in an already
inflammatory situation. I used those snippets, put them together, and ‘Pity
Maritzburg!’
was written by the events, not me. It
was like a fruit salad. You take the apple, slice it, put it there, you take
paw-paw, y’know.
Lesley: What was ‘Pity Maritzburg!’ trying to say?
Khaba: It was
trying to say that it’s futile to kill each other. Tolerance. If you are Inkatha; if you are ANC; if you are Azapo;
we are just one community. It was based on the community premise. [...] We are
a community. Before we became political followers, we were a community, and we
must go back to communitarianism. That’s what’s the
message.
Lesley: How many people saw the play?
Khaba: Hey,
thousands. When it opened in Maritzburg, about 40 per
cent each night were people who came back to see it. It was a magic thing,
really, it was magic. Many people were persuading me to take it full time, but
I thought no I have a more important role in the media.
Years later during the
transition period in South Africa when Khaba was writing
for the predominantly white readership of the Natal Witness, 'ubuntu' (an African
philosophy of shared humanity) became a major theme in his writing. ‘The day the fish came out’ appeared in
January 1995 during a summer heatwave.
The day the fish came out
by Khaba Mkhize, Natal Witness (1995 7.01)
All eleven languages in the country are at one in
describing the scorching weather and all use the symbolism of animals.
South Africa is so hot even Euro-languages have thawed to
gauge our temperatures. And they, too, use animal symbolism, like the English
saying: only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Afrikaners say: Dis so warm dat die kraaie
gaap (it’s so hot the crows yawn).
IsiZulu, siSwati, and siTsonga use fish: Lishisa likhipha inhlanzi emanzini - it’s
so hot the fish are expelled from the water. In siTswana
and seSotho a crocodile replaces fish. Ligqatsha ubhobhoyi
goes the isiXhosa saying, meaning the sun ejects ubhobhoyi (a type of bird) from rocky cliffs. And isiPedi says: it’s so hot it melts fat from the pigs (La go tolosa kulube makhura).
Says Sekola Sello of City Press,
‘As South Africans, we have gone a long way; we’re surely normalising
as a country. That we can all talk about a single common topic, the weather,
shows civic growth. And to imagine that the media freaks would treat the
weather as a running story tells volumes about our transformation.’
Typically, Pietermaritzburg
- a city of extremes in floods and violence - was beaten in the heat stakes
only by Windhoek - by one degree.
However, the unifying heat waves are felt from
virtually coast to platteland
as if to underline another Zulu saying: Libalele nasebukhweni bezinja - it is
so hot, even at the in-laws of dogs - wherever the in-laws of dogs are. It’s
hot everywhere!
True to the writer’s
belief in ‘ubuntu[18] journalism,’ the piece has a one-nation
meta-text: ‘all eleven languages are at one in describing ...’. In writing the
story he has a specific and consciously intended civic function in mind: to
ride outside the binary ruts of black/white, Zulu/Xhosa and remind people that
to be human is to be embodied; that color does not alter people’s experience of
heat.
As a writer, Khaba’s
interest was not in differences between conflicting parties, ideological or
otherwise, but in the ties between them that subverted the rationalisation of
their enmities. Indeed, as the ‘Fish’ story above suggests, even bodiliness and shared experiences of the weather could
stimulate interest across social divides.
Shared
bodiliness is also the theme of a piece that
reflected on the changed environment for
black journalists during the period of negotiations on the future of South Africa, immediately prior to the first elections and
Nelson Mandela's presidency. Against the
background of black journalists having had a very difficult time approaching
white president, he describes his first meeting with then‑State President
FW de Klerk ‑ during a ‘biological break’ in
the men’s room while at a conference. In a back room of a distinguished
gathering, the last white president meets a black journalist at the urinal, and
racial protocol suffers a sustained guffaw. Such reportage embodies Bakhtin’s observation that the ‘plane of comic
representation ... is the zone of maximally familiar and crude contact ...
laughter is a vital factor in laying down that prerequisite for fearlessness
without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically’ (Bakhtin 1981, 23).
The strategy of laughter found many of its roots
in Khaba’s watering hole at a tiny shebeen (township pub) with an old rusty fridge standing
off-centre on a bare cement floor, surrounded by
assorted plastic chairs and a few upturned crates for tables. Outside, chickens
had the run of the weeds under the fence. On the front wall, next to a peeling
coca-cola sign was the name: Kampala. One day I
asked Khaba to tell me more about the place.
Lesley: You said you were at
Kampala last
night ... I was intrigued by the place - you said it’s your ‘ear to the
ground’?
Khaba: Ja, I learn what was going on and that’s where I