on Caroline weg

Squashed up, the space that held the face seemed too small. Everything shrunk. A tight pink mouth and narrow yellow nose, dark dots for nostrils held behind a veil of eczema. I gazed into the eyes from behind a window, repelled and enchanted, convinced he was of another planet. He looked not quite at me but through me, as if not seeing my body or noticing my stare. And then the boy next to him turned around and stepped forward to his brother’s side. The same, but smaller. Each with clipped yellow hair but somehow not the hair of a child. I stared longer, harder, and noticed the baldness of their skulls, the pink skin beneath.

Miniatures on the pavement. Alone and strange. Of this land but not entirely human. I can’t erase the image.

foundations

A combination of words and pictures and it feels like I am back to the drawing board. It began with discovering that Bernard-Henri Lévy is still being taken seriously by some elite somewhere on this planet (that was over at the Tomb) and was compounded by the endless newsletters I receive on Angola every morning. This morning I read a piece by the respected Angolan novelist, Pepetela (I’m currently reading his o quasi fim do mundo), in which he seems to be saying that in order for the country to have free, fair and safe elections everyone must accept very very tight control. I wonder what he means, precisely. And why? Does democracy really matter anyway? Fundamentally? And then I had a conversation with a very bright and interesting woman who works in what you might call the consultancy sector, advising big business about people and telling big business why, for example, local people living next to their oil explorations matter. Cynicism is my only response. Since when has big business wanted to do anything for people, really, seriously? Is this not simply about anthropologists adapting to capital?

I’m no closer to understanding the tension between ideology and fact: this is the essence of the problem. I know what I believe in, and I know the ideas and theories in which I believe, but they collapse almost entirely beneath what I have seen and what I’ve experienced. This is where the confusion between fact and fiction emerges in all of my work. And because my learning has emerged from engaging in one way or another with politics in London and bits of southern Africa, the essence of my time is taken up with trying to understand liberation, freedom, justice, socialism, and I suppose nationalism, alongside what I see and experience. And always this desire to be part of a club, a group. The yearning to be able to be part of a movement, but forever remaining on the periphery. Always the fact jarring and defeating the theory. Experience always overriding ideas. Like that rubbish up there, the foundations upon which many houses are built. That rubbish up there.

And still clever people tell me ‘what the fucking people say is irrelevant…’ And still clever people tell me that ‘the fucking people don’t know about geopolitics…’ This being an argument in favour of the theory. But the thing is, whenever I speak to ‘the fucking people’ I am struck by the fact that they do know what they are talking about, and what they complain about tends to come true and tends to become the essence of the problem. Which is why I gaze at the rubbish up there everyday, because I fear that if I don’t, I might become lazy and allow the theory to overwhelm the fact. Though it would make my life so much easier if I let it.

money

‘Wealthism can deepen the sense of isolation that many heirs feel. Raised in sheltered enclaves, they can be woefully ignorant of life in “the real world”. As a result, they may find it hard to make friends beyond their own small circle. This difficulty is one of the dilemmas of having inherited wealth: failed attempts to befriend those without wealth only intensify an heir’s sense of isolation. Joanie Bronfman interviewed one woman who clearly articulated this situation when she said, “There’s a world of other people that I can’t quite relate to. I can’t say, ‘Why don’t you just get a new car if your car breaks down?’ And that’s always my first reaction. There’s a definite separateness about my reactions to the people who don’t have money and the difficulties that they have.”‘ More on this here.

I don’t think there’s much to add to this. I just feel sorry for all those trustafarians. But do they really say things like this? Or is the book made up? (Thanks to ‘i on the ball patriot’ who drew my attention to this here.)

awfentik

How much does spelling really matter? If it is so very important, why then is Angola written Angola? Shouldn’t it be Ngola? Should Brazil be Brasil or Brazil? And should the Queen of Matamba be Njinga or Nzinga or Nzingha? Or Ginga? Should the Van Dunems be searching for their ‘roots’, along with the Vieira Dias and Do Nascimentos and Vieira Lopes and the Dos Santos? Should they be hunting through the Catholic church archives to find out their ‘real’ names? What’s a real name? If mine comes from Parson, as I’ve been told it does, should I not call myself Lara Parson instead of Lara Pawson? How authentic should language be, or leaders? How loyal to history? Why wear a Ralph Lauren suit when you could throw on a boubou? Why is it, in Luanda, that so many members of the elite are ashamed to speak autochtonous languages, that is, if they speak them at all? Should they perhaps be going for classes to learn them? I have never forgotten a breakfast meeting I had with the Unita General, Paulo Lukamba Gato, months after the Angolan war ended in 2002. He told me he had been warned to only speak European languages now that he was in Luanda, otherwise he would not be taken seriously. He was told this by fellow Angolans as advice for dealing with fellow Angolans – not Americans, or French, or Portuguese, or Brazilians. Who is the neocolonial here? Who is the oppressor here? I will never forget being told by an Angolan vice minister, ‘They are not like us, my dear; they must be treated like animals.’ By ‘us’ she meant me and her, two Europeans in her most humble opinion. ‘But you are a minister of an African country,’ I responded, ‘You are an African.’ She boiled with fury: ‘I’m like you. We are different.’ And so the gunshots rang out across the musseque where we stood, and the people ran for cover. She stood, stock still, in her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and shiny black court shoes.

I pondered all of this and more at the weekend when I went to see Xala, a film by the late Senegalese writer and film-maker, Ousmane Sembene. The film explodes the neo-colonialist process as the resplendent elite receive briefcases stuffed with banknotes from white businessmen in the chamber of commerce, and are ushered along a red carpet into Mercs after a speech about “the African path to socialism”. “You’re not a white man,” Kader’s future mother-in-law says when he refuses to participate in the ceremony to ensure the successful deflowering of the bride. “You are neither fish nor fowl.”

A few years, an Angolan friend explained his feelings after visiting Senegal: ‘I realised that Angola isn’t Africa at all: Luanda is totally Western. I’d like to go and live in Senegal to be truly African.’

mr manley is gone

I first met him in Paris. I was there, in love, with a man, quite older than myself, who said he had someone he wanted to introduce me to. And this tall willowy figure appeared in the restaurant, speaking perfect French, fun, adoring, tactile, candid, childishly cheeky and incredibly intelligent. His mind intimidated me but such was his generous and humorous nature, it was impossible to be intimidated by him. I was on vacation from stringing in Angola. We talked about the trials of being a stringer, the difficulties of being a good journalist in a world which seemed only interested in big business information and paying a pittance. That evening I learned that he began his life as a reporter in the slums of Bamako, Mali. He lived in a shack and it was from there that he wrote his reports. He knew West Africa so very well, especially the so-called francophone countries. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Mali, Guinea and Senegal, among many others. But what struck me most was his huge heart. He was interested first and foremost in people, and poetry and politics.

I may be wrong. I only met him twice, in person, but we spoke often on the telephone and shared long long emails. He always offered advice, insisted I didn’t lose faith, first in the BBC World Service, then in a series of journals and magazines for which I’d done some reporting. He told me it didn’t always matter if I didn’t receive money for what I wrote because, he said, what is important is that ‘we write, Lara’. When everyone else was slowly falling to the market, accepting the new rules of play in the world of the media, he would carry on chasing a vision of truth that really mattered.

He once rang me and asked me whether I could help him with a proposal to the BBC World Service: to do a series of programmes on the relationship between Africa and France. But it was too late: I’d already left the corporation, slamming more doors behind me, and the Africa Service was being squeezed and squeezed with ever tighter budgets. While Jonathan Ross bought gold taps and marble baths…

He wrote, last year, saying he was off to demonstrate against some pop-star who was marching ‘for Africa’. Feigning that he didn’t really care… though of course he always did: “If I can be arsed, I’m getting them up here to generally make noise and cause trouble. As a post-adolescent Motorhead roadie in a previous existence but two/three, it’s the least I can do. After that I’m off to Bouake to watch it all fall apart spectacularly from about November onwards, at a guess. Hey ho…”

I’m sad that I never got up north to see him. I’m sad I never shared that final drink, nor read his words that were not to be published. He wrote masses and masses. The last thing he ever wrote to me were these words, “I bow in the presence of a true member of the awkward squad: I am a mere apprentice.” But in truth, Andrew was always much more than a mere member of the awkward squad – for me, he was one of the leaders.

(small tasters are here and here and here)

elections, the MPLA way

I’ve always said that you don’t need to exaggerate when it comes to reporting Angola. Less than three weeks before the country holds its second legislative elections ever, that old MPLA stalwart, Paulo Jorge, has gone and said what I’ve been raving and ranting about for months: that party political campaigning for the ruling party started at least 18 months ago. In fact, according to Jorge – the darling of what’s left of the myopic European Left (and that doesn’t mean all of us, so calm down; just those fools who still believe in the MPLA as a party that seeks liberation, justice and equality for the povo) – it began way, way before!

He told the Angola Peace Monitor (produced by ACTSA, once better known for its anti-apartheid work) that: the MPLA has been preparing for these elections since 2005, and its leadership has developed “a massive mobilisation effort of its militants, sympathisers and friends”.

He also describes the MPLA as “a national party, independent, progressive and modern, ideologically based on democratic socialism which congregates in its ranks Angolan citizens without distinction of social group, sex, skin colour, ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or place of birth”.

He forgot to tell us about the mobilisation of its enemies and victims and all those people who fear the party. And what about those who’ve been killed in, er, mysterious circumstances? Well I’ve done something on that here, for those who are interested in the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

You will note, in that story, the poster on the right. I took that photo in April 2007. It’s a photograph of President José Eduardo dos Santos (who next year will celebrate 30 years in power, hurrah) and, I was pretty sure, Rainha Nzinga (sometimes spelt Nzingha or Ginga). The words read, Honour and glory to our heroes. In fact, I am told by an Angolan on Mars (see below) that it is not the Rainha at all (Queen of Mbundu in Angola in the 17th century) but the late first president of Angola, Agostinho Neto, who died in 1979. Which makes the picture even more loaded, in my humble opinion: that the only glorious heroes of Angola are the two men who have led the country since 1975. Make of that, querido leitor, what you will.

something new

is here.

Meanwhile – I love this – these are some of the searches that have brought you to me:

how to find the clitoris without looking

this may sound strange and unbelievable

helicopter society and the institute of

yellow and black flags

what does angola need

fortune of eduardo dos santos

And I’ve been thinking about these. The idea that anyone thinks they can find what Angola needs on the internet should never be allowed near the country. Ever. A quick Google, stick some money in an envelope, and send it to some NGO. Oh dear oh dear. What will become of all these paternalist beings desperate to feel sorry for Africa. Go away, I tell you, Go away! And as for the clitoris: I have this image of a woman desperately trying to bend her creaking back far enough to see her clitoris, but unable to get there. She finds a mirror perhaps, and struggles with the hair. Strange and unbelievable.

And for those of you who read Portuguese, read this today, by my friend Wilson Dadá in Angola, a man I very much admire.

getting in

I’m looking at the legs of a slim young woman wearing a pale pink nylon nightdress with a hem of neoteny pink ribbon at her knees. Strapped to her back like a baby, a crate of bottles of beer with red and white paper labels only just identifiable as not Coca Cola. Balancing on her head, another large crate. All around are rushing people supporting large objects and weighted down with goods bundled in colourful sheets. A substantial woman with thick buttocks and solid stomach stands with her arms around a long slim brown object wrapped in plastic sheeting and taller than even she, with her heavy red and green headdress of waxed cotton. A man behind a desk is talking about my passport in a weave of English and Portuguese. But I’m gazing at the brown thing the woman hugs, slowly identifying the object as a plastic plant with a thick brown plastic trunk twisted into a figure of eight and several thick green flaps that are leaves. A plastic cheese plant for Angola. The man stamps my passport; I walk out into the sharp light and my eyes sting with tears. All around, gates and wire fences and rolls and rolls of rasor-wire and men slapping long black canes to their thighs. Three young men are walking slowly, leaning forward so far they might collapse to the ground but for broad hands pushing against the handlebars of thick bicycle frames. Wedged between the crossbar and the peddle bar are two large brown bags full of cement from China. Balanced on each seat, another two bags. Great power from the bodies of resilient men. A cream queen-size mattress floats by, a sting-ray, with sides gently ballooning up and down in rhythm with the two legs beneath that are moving swiftly towards large black gates and barbed wire. A teenage girl with soft skin is heading for Angola flaunting armfulls of large crimson roses with plastic drops of water glued and glistening from cotton petals. A pair of slim women totter on several inches of plastic and metal, dragging huge suitcases on small wheels. A young man in a three-wheeler chair rotates a pair of peddles with punching fists that power a bicycle chain above his knees. His vast shoulders bulge from sparrow hips. On top of flattened thighs and shoved into all remaining space in his chair are many packets of green plastic coat hangers. Three separate wheelchairs peddle past: more deformed legs folded gently and neatly into faded canvas seats or hang from the side like empty cotton stockings tossed over a cupboard door.

‘This is nothing,’ the man boasts, ‘sometimes it’s medieval.’

The discourse of the white man when he leaves his over-industrialised land and heads for that which is dubbed developing. He is keen to show that his experience is extra ordinary, that he is particularly brave, particularly adaptable, and that he is in touch with his wild side which he tells himself is savage, and that is why he – unlike all the other foreigners he meets – is able to cope.

To cope… Medieval…

Does an Angolan whisper in this way when he is showing his Nigerian friend how to negotiate London’s King’s Cross train station? Does he say, ‘This is nothing: normally it’s cowboys and indians’? Does he also ignore his own alcoholism and nicotine addiction, insisting that it is a sign of his liberty, his freedom, his alternative take on the world. Does he, too, explain away his serial love affairs with local women in their teens and early twenties as a reflection of his neverending youthfulness?

(But the argument does not happen.)

A man in blue uniform marches up and down the border fence with a three foot bendy whip of rubber. Wherever he goes, waves of people with goods stacked on their heads canter away, a human current moved by the moon of force. A woman and her son try to escape, to run through a hole in the fence a little further up. A dash for the space in the barbed wire. Someone shouts: ‘WOAHA!’ The man in blue turns and starts running, his hand high up behind his back, his whip trailing, its tail springing at his heels. The mother screams, still running, her son ducks and gets through the hole, the whip comes down but too late, she is frantically bending and twitching for a space to duck through. She vanishes into the ground, out of sight. I only see the border guard turn and walk back, dragging his whip now limp across the dusty ground. Boys come to the car window and from beneath their arms, uncover several large bottles of mineral water. Their eyes shift side to side as if it is a crime to sell someone water. In a mirror, I see a tall uniformed man with dark sunglasses, marching towards the car. The water boys leap into a sprint and vanish as quick as they came, but the guard still strides forward waving a white metal cane with something loose and dangly hanging from one end. An electric cattle prodder. The men in blue once those boys herding their cattle by the side of the road.

inside the castle

Is he mad or blind?… In the realm of total acceptance there are no accidents. He once told a friend accidents do not exist in the world but only in our heads. There is no world without causation, and the idea of accident reflects the limits of human perception, our inability to know all connections and so pursue total causality.

Later, He went to an exhibition of Picasso paintings and expressed (to his friend) his opinion that this artist is guilty of wilful distortion. He said he did not think so: ‘He merely notes the abnormalities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which “runs fast” like a clock – sometimes.’

This is from an introduction to Kafka’s The Castle. I’ve been thinking about it since my memory was jogged by Tim Etchells’ notebook from Prague (‘An Axe to Break the Frozen Sea, 8 August 2008), and I’ve been thinking about it even more since reading M John Harrison’s brilliant 1991 book review here. That review depresses me because the author was so clearly on fire when he wrote it, and it is so rare to have that rage and understanding and clarity. It’s a beautiful review. The writing is enough in itself to make me feel a fragility that is far too luxurious, far too much, for this world. But I’d like to live in it all the time.

Am I mad or blind, or do my eyes turn the images in front of me into something else without my knowing such that I see what isn’t there at all, but what my eyes see? This question is partly what stopped me from wanting to report news any more – partly what stopped me being able to report news any more. But I also believe that this is what totalitarian states do, which is why Kafka interests me so much, and why Angola (oh, Angola, forgive me) interests me so much. But these are obvious cases. Totalitarian states are effective because you believe you are mad, because your perceptions of what is really happening are tested and confused and thrown up. Someone is murdered by the State – and everyone says it was an accident of increasing violent crime. But you know, somehow, through perception, that he was murdered by the State. That is a too obvious, too straightforward example. The better examples are much harder to explain, the better examples are not obvious – they are very fuzzy, very subtle, very nuanced. You don’t know why you are scared but you are, or why you are confused but you are. And because you don’t know why you are scared and fear insanity. And slowly you become that.

Distinctions of fact and fiction are more frightening, maybe, in apparently non-totalitarian, apparently liberal, capitalist states. As ‘Julian’ comments on M John Harrison’s post (linked above), Deleuze has argued that we can view ‘theft as the original act of exchange, leading to the ‘coding’ of pleasure and desire that leads to tyranny and capitalism’. Shifting points of truth and the lie and the fact and the fiction. Talking of murder, remember Dr Kelly. And yet in places like Britain, such is the desire for fact and certainty, you can’t even consider that something which appears to be fantasy – Dr Kelly murdered by the State – to be fact. The limits of human perception are exaggerated and expanded out to trap the humans who live in the web (“Of course he wasn’t murdered, this isn’t Russia for God’s sake!”). We trap ourselves, our lives, in a divide between fact and fiction which never existed anyway.

Why is this so complex? So unbelievable. It seems so clear to me.

Am I mad or blind?

By the way, my mum and dad have been married for 47 years today.

glass verges

‘No, don’t give me money,’ he said, ‘perhaps you have a book instead.’

He was cleaning up the broken bottles left by the 7th street revellers the night before. Smashed green glass, empty brown bottles, cans and fag butts littered the shaved yellow verges and tarmac slopes. So I went inside and rummaged through my books. There’s a whole pile of Coetzee I’ve been racing through during the last month, some stuff on film and camera work, Deleuze & Guattari’s anti-oedipus which I am still struggling to understand very very very slowly, Pepetela’s o quasi fim do mundo, a tome on tantra, and a brick of American short stories. And of course the book that follows me everywhere, The Wretched of the Earth. I wondered, Perhaps he’d like that? And started to run through all the possible interpretations of a white middle class English woman giving a black Johannesburg street cleaner a copy of Fanon. Interpretations of others, as well as his own. But I took it out to the street anyway, and handed him the book.

‘If you don’t like it, give it back, and I’ll pick you another. Or perhaps you’d like to come and choose your own?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘let’s stick with your choice. I’d like to see.’

I saw him again, just now, dribble running from the left side of my mouth, and asked how the book was going.

‘I’m on page 12,’ he shouted, and smiled.

‘When you get half way through, let me know,’ I said, ‘and we can share our thoughts.’

He raised his right hand, giving me a thumbs up, and carried on swinging down the street.

I turned back to the group I was standing with, three African-American film makers, here for three weeks. One of them has been here many times before, she says she loves South Africa. I felt sad when she told me that, for I realised how my own experience has been shaped entirely by who I’ve met, as hers has by who she has met. And I wanted to tell her what I’d done, about the book I’d given the man with whom she just shook hands. But I somehow couldn’t summon the courage.