1. 2 Mail & Guardian Friday November 4 to 10 2016
Lifestyle
Milisuthando
Bongela
Iimbali!
O
n the day I found out that
Shaeera Kalla was shot,
Busisiwe Seabe was stun-
grenaded and Benjamin
Lesedi Phehla was fatally run over, I
received a phone call from a decent-
sounding middle-aged white woman.
“Hello, is this Miss Milli B? I’m call-
ing to invite you to a networking ses-
sion hosted by ___ Coffee. Is this a
good time to talk?” I am not proud of
how impatient I was with her but my
response has since left me question-
ing. “This isn’t a good time to talk but
this is also not the time to be having
coffee-fuelled socials. Our country is
in crisis,’’ I said.
But I don’t blame her for calling
me. I have long enjoyed the fruits of
being the go-to black girl for brands.
I am 31. I have been thinking about
the fact that we, the blacks of my gen-
eration, thrive on the islands of mid-
dle-class accomplishment and have
mastered the art of living for our-
selves too. Just like the white people
we like to castigate. Fine. As we say:
“Siyasebenza, only rest in Dezemba.’’
But it’s quite obvious from how we
live our lives that there isn’t some-
thing that we are collectively fighting
for and are collectively giving up for
other generations beyond ourselves.
There have been many times when
I’ve had to stop myself at the door of
reality when talking about the cur-
rent students and their generational
demands and struggles. It’s not my
struggle.
For a long time, I thought of my
three years at the University Cur-
rently Known as Rhodes (Uckar) as
the best three years of my life. I had
that dreamy university experience
and I don’t regret it. But I also realise
that my black friends and I did noth-
ing to complicate the problematic
Uckar experience from a political
perspective.
And 10 years later, nothing
urgently compels me to live for any-
one beyond myself except my bloom-
ing political consciousness. So far, it’s
been about My Career. My Car. My
House. My Holiday. My Medical Aid.
My Family. My Flat-Screen Life.
We’ve become the individual-
ised, nuclear models of neoliberal-
ism and are trapped between those
who were striking in 1976 and those
who are striking in 2016. Bar the
birth of the EFF, what is the genera-
tional exchange between us and our
parents, and us and our younger
siblings? What are we doing for
citizens beyond ourselves? We were
impressed by the girls of Pretoria
Girls High, but what have we done as
a generation to protect them against
a beast we have also encountered?
We are not bad people. Neoliberal
capitalism was the Snapchat of the
political world in the early 1990s, the
app that all countries were down-
loading. There was no way Nelson
Mandela’s new government was
going to avoid that successfully. And
so we are the data of that project.
What will history say about us?
That we were masters at being cute
with our natural hair and ombre
weaves? That we had the right to
experience peace because our par-
ents fought for it? That our lifestyles
kept Top Billing on air? We have, no
doubt, left crumbs of wisdom for the
13-year-olds to pick up and platforms
for the 21-year-olds to look up to.
But I’m tired of our useless gather-
ings, of sparkling wine-filled boozy
lunches and cured meats. It’s nice
to know the taste of eisbein and
Graham Beck’s Brut. But to what
end? We know so much. About eve-
rything. Iconic revolutionaries. The
fees movement. The potato boycott.
Which YouTube link has all the
Stokely Carmichael speeches. Helen
Sebidi. Aquaponics. Leica AGs and in
which aisle at Thrupps one will find
the Boursin cheese. But what is our
collective agenda?
Our parents have different reasons
to spend their money. Some went
to jail or knew the humiliation of
being exiled inside and outside their
home countries. They have a differ-
ent relationship with umlungu. But
we have played with her, slept in his
bed, drunk whisky at his company’s
retreat and done our nails with her.
We were luckier. We want the land,
but do we have a plan for what we
are going to do on it when we get it?
And some, like me, are not landless.
What am I building, knowing that on
both my parents’ sides, there is free,
available land on which I can build?
Iimbali is a space for stories and
other narrative-based social analysis
Living your best life while your country burns
TheReadingList
The Vedanta Treatise: Swami
Parthasarathy’s seminal work
about recognising and harnessing
one’s core self is the kind of gift
that finds you if its teachings are
what you seek. It’s a collection
of treatises about diminishing
distractions, developing spiritual
guidelines to live by and quieting
the mind so that it can get to the
work of living its pur-
pose. I’m a third of the
book in and I’m already
holding my mind differ-
ently and recognising
the difference between
the useful and the use-
less when it comes to
what to engage with.
(MB)
Known and Strange
Things: Teju Cole is bet-
ter at nonfiction than fic-
tion, and his latest book
of essays is some of the smartest
cultural writing in recent memory.
Cole is able to discuss history in a
decisively modern vernacular, and
his writing about photography
and black image-making breathes
new life into the stale genre of the
photography essay. Also, if anyone
sees him, please ask him to come
back to Twitter. (SM)
ThePlayLists
Moving (340ml): I looked
through an old stack of CDs while
preparing for a long drive alone
last week and had completely
forgotten about this album — my
personal soundtrack for 2004
to 2006, years characterised by
Greyhound trips across the Cape,
graduating into the “system”, pay-
ing tax, changing looks and dark
encounters at Evol in
Cape Town. (MB)
The Leftovers: This is
a perfect TV series. The
premise is simple: What
happens when 2% of the
world’s population dis-
appears? Rather than
going to a sci-fi mys-
tery place, it focuses
on those who are left
behind and how they
deal with a world that
has shifted underneath them. It’s a
searing meditation on family and
grief, anchored by beautiful per-
formances from an ensemble cast
led by Justin Theroux and Regina
King. (SM)
The Lists this week are compiled
by Friday editor Milisuthando
Bongela and contributor Sihle
Mthembu
TheLists
l Essence Festival (Durban,
November 8 to 13): The Essence
Festival, a mainstay on the New
Orleans summer calendar, is
launching in Durban and is a
confluence of live music, talks,
seminars, exhibitions and screen-
ings. For celebrity lovers, Tina
Knowles-Lawson, Steve Harvey
and Reverend Al Sharpton are
some of the speakers at the festi-
val. It will also see local musicians
such as Wizkid, Babes Wodumo,
Thandiswa Mazwai, AKA, Black
Coffee and Cassper Nyovest and
international acts like Yolande
Adams and Estelle. There’s also a
business fair, a beauty and style
expo and plenty of food. Visit
essence.com/festival/essence-fes-
tival-durban for information and
tickets.
l Black Portraiture[s] III confer-
ence — Reinventions: Strains of
Histories and Cultures (Turbine
Hall, Johannesburg, November 17
to 19): This three-day conference is
a blank page for the new narratives
that will emerge from a coalescing
of different black and African iden-
tities from around the world. It’s
a collaboration between Harvard
University, New York University
and local institutions such as the
University of the Witwatersrand
and the Goodman Gallery. Hank
Willis Thomas’s curated line-up is
overwhelming in its scale, subjects
and multiple disciplines. Visit
blackportraitures.info for more
details.
l In Context: Where We Are
(Goodman Gallery, Cape Town,
until December 3): This group
show is a partner exhibition to
In Context: Africans in America,
curated by Hank Willis Thomas
and Liza Essers, which will be
held at Jo’burg’s Goodman Gallery
and the Johannesburg Art Gallery
from November 17. The Cape Town
exhibition features works by artists
such as David Koloane, Moshekwa
Langa, Tracey Rose, Kudzanai Chi-
urai, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gabri-
elle Goliath, Haroon Gunn-Salie
and Kiluanji Kia Henda. Where We
Are is a precursor to a larger exhibi-
tion in New York in 2017.
Don’tmiss
Estelle will be at the Essence Festival in Durban. Photo: Bennett Raglin/
Getty Images for 2016 Essence Festival/AFP