Singing in the rain
Greetings from rainy Cape Town!
About half an hour ago, I heard beautiful singing from the windows
outside my office. I thought it must be a church group, or (unlikely)
related to Friday services at one of the local mosques.
I looked down to the street, and discovered a tiny protest rally under
way by the South African Communist Party. About 12 singing protesters,
surrounded by roughly an equal number of police officers, all blocking the
entrance to the offices of a law firm. I am slightly surprised to find 12
practicing communists outside of North Korea or Cuba, but in SA the
dialectic continues.
Two women held a printed banner reading “Socialism is the future.” Next to them,
two men held a hand-printed banner reading (with less conviction) “Socialism is a future.”
Many of the other protesters were holding up signs written on A4 sheets
of white printer paper. I was too far away to read the handwriting on the signs, so the
purpose of the rally remains a mystery. The singing sounds wonderful, though.
Earlier this morning, I ran into one of India’s long-standing friends and former
colleagues at a coffee shop. Albie Sachs has been a playwright, a freedom fighter,
a constitutional scholar (and co-author), and one of the original justices on
the post-apartheid constitutional court. I would normally describe him as
“a man in full,” but that would be ironic, because he lost an arm and an eye in
when the apartheid government tried to assassinate him in Mozambique in the 1970s.
Albie retired from the bench, but was completely up to speed on India’s new campaign for Safe
Spaces. He is writing a movie script, and raising a 4-year-old son (Albie is 71). Zola’s
Grade 6 Social Sciences class did oral reports on Albie’s life.
We chatted for a while about politics, and I realized that this was a little like having a conversation with
John Marshall back in 1805. Life in a young democracy can be frustrating and a little scary, but
it is never dull.