Unfortunately, to most, Alexandra is popular for its many shacks and filth; many of us don’t even give this place a chance that there is more that can happen or come out of it. I remember thinking to myself that, ‘Maybe I have a hang of this adulting thing if I can eat and walk in the streets of Alexandra’. Having to breathe in a stench air owed to the water that is always flowing in the streets or the garbage that couldn’t be PikitUp-ed and eat (because you’re late) on your way to the local library is not ideal. This is me on my way to discovering the gem that is Mongane Wally Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood.
I haven’t been this immersed in a read in so long! I remember talking to a friend some few weeks ago and him saying, “Alex is the one place where you can be yourself without fear of judgment”. With the kind of work he does that has people demanding his attention every now and then, it is in Alexandra that he is able to be himself and not worry about being watched or seen. For some reason, there is always a haste in this place with everyone pretty much minding their own business and not giving a shit about who’s who-doing what-with who-ko kae-neng. It will prove useless as well for one to be a part of this lively Township and worry about what other folks think of you when we’re all really just figuring shit out. Alex is home away from home – for some – it might have been a good 20 years or just a little over 2 years that one has been a part of this neighbourhood and one thing still remains – Alex will never disown you. Whether the dream is to make it in the Jo’burg CBD or live lavishly in Sandton , or maybe lay low in the middle-class suburbs that surround it, this is the place to be and watch it all in 360 while deciding which is attainable or if the dream just seems forever out of reach and will remain a wish. Trevor Noah puts it this way, “Alex can’t get bigger, because it’s pinned in on all sides, and it can’t be build upward, because it’s mostly shacks…Alex hasn’t changed. It can’t change. It’s physically impossible for it to change. It can only be what it is.”
A place like Alex can get frustrating. A place like Alex can allow you to release your frustrations. In To Every Birth Its Blood, Tsi says, ‘I looked at Alexandra from the graveyard, it looked like a graveyard.” I’d like to think this was because really, the place (and other Townships across the country) was meant to bury those who dared defied the system and wanted to be their own people under no one’s control. To be able to walk the streets without any fear that you’re where you’re not supposed to be. To sit in a shebeen and not have to be mindful of what you say. To not feel inferior. Maybe Alex has buried people alive. Maybe these shacks that have become homes, are graves. Maybe it has buried as many dreams as it has ignited and resurrected. In all this, we still hope that for us – Generation Now – we can claim a huge victory as compared to those before us. Maybe we can create a counter-system to disassemble and disable that created by ‘…schizophrenics like Jan Smuts;…’.
Maybe some of us needed to be here in order to appreciate life. Maybe some of us needed to be here in order to be face-to-face with reality – other people’s realities. Maybe we needed to be here to find, and even lose ourselves. Alex – a curse and a blessing. Maybe we all need an Alex in our lives.
I haven’t been this immersed in a read in so long! I remember talking to a friend some few weeks ago and him saying, “Alex is the one place where you can be yourself without fear of judgment”. With the kind of work he does that has people demanding his attention every now and then, it is in Alexandra that he is able to be himself and not worry about being watched or seen. For some reason, there is always a haste in this place with everyone pretty much minding their own business and not giving a shit about who’s who-doing what-with who-ko kae-neng. It will prove useless as well for one to be a part of this lively Township and worry about what other folks think of you when we’re all really just figuring shit out. Alex is home away from home – for some – it might have been a good 20 years or just a little over 2 years that one has been a part of this neighbourhood and one thing still remains – Alex will never disown you. Whether the dream is to make it in the Jo’burg CBD or live lavishly in Sandton , or maybe lay low in the middle-class suburbs that surround it, this is the place to be and watch it all in 360 while deciding which is attainable or if the dream just seems forever out of reach and will remain a wish. Trevor Noah puts it this way, “Alex can’t get bigger, because it’s pinned in on all sides, and it can’t be build upward, because it’s mostly shacks…Alex hasn’t changed. It can’t change. It’s physically impossible for it to change. It can only be what it is.”
A place like Alex can get frustrating. A place like Alex can allow you to release your frustrations. In To Every Birth Its Blood, Tsi says, ‘I looked at Alexandra from the graveyard, it looked like a graveyard.” I’d like to think this was because really, the place (and other Townships across the country) was meant to bury those who dared defied the system and wanted to be their own people under no one’s control. To be able to walk the streets without any fear that you’re where you’re not supposed to be. To sit in a shebeen and not have to be mindful of what you say. To not feel inferior. Maybe Alex has buried people alive. Maybe these shacks that have become homes, are graves. Maybe it has buried as many dreams as it has ignited and resurrected. In all this, we still hope that for us – Generation Now – we can claim a huge victory as compared to those before us. Maybe we can create a counter-system to disassemble and disable that created by ‘…schizophrenics like Jan Smuts;…’.
Maybe some of us needed to be here in order to appreciate life. Maybe some of us needed to be here in order to be face-to-face with reality – other people’s realities. Maybe we needed to be here to find, and even lose ourselves. Alex – a curse and a blessing. Maybe we all need an Alex in our lives.
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ReplyDelete6 May 2018 at 15:53
ReplyDeleteSome things we have to see through others. Your review of Mongane Wally Serote's To Every Birth Its Blood reveals just how important that is, and proves how real, even in your time, the read has been to you; it could simply have been titled Letter To My Granddaughter.