South Africa

So what do we think about The School That Oprah Built?

Not many hand-picked groups of 150 girls have $40 million standing behind their learning . . .

I heard about it on National Public Radio yesterday, and then today Newsweek arrived and Favorite Daughter read it to me in the car. Quite the personal project. It reminds me of

So what do we think about The School That Oprah Built?

Not many hand-picked groups of 150 girls have $40 million standing behind their learning . . .

WTF

I watched the film Ashes and Snow today.

I want to lighten up, and enjoy this truly enchanting and fluid film, but I cannot shake the feeling that I was supposed to be seduced into not noticing the racism and exploitation ...

People of color with their eyes and mouths closed and still as stone. Exquisite women of color dancers playing second fiddle to the white swim-dancers who had the first and last scene. Haikus written with the self-important tone of a white man. The white man who has the last word while the third world folks are his "medium." It was set up so that the human beings were objectified. He contributes, imo, to racism in the form of the exoticizing and dehumanizing of women of color. Men and children too for that matter. Then he imposes his poetry on top of their worlds.

At the time I was watching, I thought the narrator was white. I stand corrected Laurence Fishburne is a black man. That helps some, but the fact remains that a white man waltzed around the world and took what he wanted from it.

He has been silenced in a country where he is revered. Or he has chosen to silence himself. It's not clear which. Nelson Mandela, one of my heroes, is 88 today. And I miss his voice.

The voice of the revolutionary:

Our fight is against real, and not imaginary, hardships or, to use the language of the State Prosecutor, 'so-called hardships'. Basically, we fight against two features which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa and which are entrenched by legislation which we seek to have repealed. These features are poverty and lack of human dignity, and we do not need communists or so-called 'agitators' to teach us about these things.

And the voice of the peaceful struggler:

From the BBC:

South Africa's highest court has ruled in favour of same-sex marriages, which are banned under current legislation.

The Constitutional Court ordered that parliament amend marriage laws to allow gay weddings within a year.

The constitution outlaws discrimination against gays and lesbians, but social attitudes remain more conservative.

The court ordered that the definition of marriage be changed from a "union between a man and a woman" to a "union between two persons".

If the Supreme Court's order is carried out, South Africa will join the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, and Massachusetts in allowing same-sex couples to marry.