Levels & Futures
Today, we in the holy land of South Africa, move down a notch from Level 4 to Level 3 of lockdown. The biggest news is that the country is open for business; with physical distancing, temperature scanning, sanitising and the now compulsory face mask, when out in public. It all seems sensible enough and time will tell how well it works or does not. I’m not even mildly convinced.
My ever reliable polling source (and source of random laughs) Twitter, is barely holding itself together with excitement to exercise at any time of the day and be able to get some wine. Another strand of posts reflect the deep anxiety some people are feeling about the easing of lockdown, just at the point that the country’s infection rate is starting to climb.
For the most part, people appear to be taking the cautious route; limiting their exposure to large crowds of people and crowded spaces, continuing to work remotely and are unlikely to send their children back into a school system of dubious preparedness.
It’s been a tense week; George Floyd sparking the tinder box that is our global politics, neatly reflected by the United States. Then there was the palpable tension in the air in the holy land over the weekend, with changes on the horizon for Monday morning. I’ve not had this much excitement since…err before lockdown. I trundled off for a walk to clear my mind and to bond with the full-grown chocolate Labrador. Admittedly it was out of the specified hours for exercise — but I’m more likely to run into a tractor than another human.
It’s a warm afternoon, the sky a winter blue and the fields a shimmering green of sugar cane, ready for the harvest. The move to Level 3 of lockdown in South Africa could not have come a moment sooner for the locally owned sugar company. With the sugarcane reaching over two meters in height, sections of fields are marked with white flags (used seed or maize bags) hoisted on a river reed to signal their turn for the cold burn. This controlled fire burns off the sugar cane leaves, stripping the cane bare and makes the harvesting easier.
The cold burn also deposits tons of sugarcane-leaf soot from the cold burn on neighbouring villages. Mostly it’s little scraps of the cane leaves, charred to feathery wisps that crumble in your hands. For the most part the cold burn soot stays close to the burn site; but every now and then, gusts of wind arise from the thermals created by the burning of large fields of cane. They carry over the fields, skip over the banana farm, across the Mdloti separating the town centre (locals call this the ‘the village’) from the farmlands, to drop gently onto laundry drying in the sunshine in back-yards. And anything else left uncovered, leaving a greasy smear and a persistent whiff of smoke.
It’s probably a health hazard but mostly it’s just a nuisance. The locals have adapted. They know the distinct smell of the cold burn in air, the ‘honey-wind’ and generally change the laundry schedule or use an undercover drying area to save their laundry from ruin.
Still, to walk in and amongst fields of this sugar cane at its peak, before the burn is like being at sea. And before I tempt the universe, let me specify: like a mild sea. Even the lightest breeze sets off leaves against each other, softly, a hiss, rhythmic. First this way over on your left and then to the right as the breeze turns, carrying more speed. You feel the air lift around your face, now it’s a rustle, growing into a hundred soapy-wet Labradors giving that first shake-off, in a rolling mexican wave. Haring off and bounding back until with an audible gasp, it is spent and falls to a gentle sigh, the cane penduluming with its neighbours, sometimes in concert and other times, at odds. And that’s just in the first two-hundred meters.
In winter, with the gentle heat, the ground is dusty; potholes carved out by the rains of the past five months are slowly drying into their shapes. There are hollows, dongas and ruts on almost every footpath, trail and road in the farmlands. There’s no need for speed here, it’s mostly tractors growling past on their way to pick-up bundled cane, transport water and drop off fertiliser. And the locals, in their weapon of choice, which includes everything from the white bakkie to the luxo-barge SUV and regular cars.
The locals, probably like locals in farmlands in other villages, generally drive their mud-spattered bakkies and SUVs a little too quickly over these roads.
Visitors and those in regular cars (or platkars, to use the very apt Afrikaans term) tend to drive a little slower, they also do the traditional local acknowledgement, usually a raised open hand, although I’ve seen generational locals lift just a finger at a passing cousin (thrice removed). I guess you have to be careful which finger(s) you use. And I’ve little doubt that a few local family feuds probably got started because of someone innocently mixing up their thumb and index finger when greeting their second cousin, on these very roads. And not a few family dynasties were consummated in the very fields I’m walking in now.
And not an unremarkable amount of sweat and blood has watered this very land over many years. By people just getting on with doing the job in front of them. People doing what needs be; to survive, to grow, to learn, to hope, to dream and maybe, even to believe that their existence mattered in the world. That they too, however small a cog in a very large machine, that they were part of something much greater than themselves.
And in that Disney-like summary, we have the faintest narrative threads of the indentured labourers first brought out to the east coast village of the holy land of South Africa in late 1860. To stand and walk and smell and see these miles of fields as a grown adult; knowing what I have learnt of slavery, colonialism and rabid capitalism, is surreal. And there is no shortage of blogs and tomes on those subjects, so let it haunt you as you choose.
But the walk works its magic. The Labrador is fuzzy with stray leaves and panting loud enough to create his own rhythm and I gently fall into stride. A little after the turning point, he’s sniffed out, he wants to run himself spare and he’s got some company. We are on, making the return trip a lot quicker. We breathe out the weight of a week that has probably shaken our global system, far more than we can give it credit for right now.
Later, back at the table that has been repurposed into a workspace, I count the blessings of the week — not the least being the announcements from some Muslim and Christian religious bodies declaring that their mosques and churches will remain closed to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Kudos!
Right now, I wish we’d all just choose peace, but my heart tells me it’s likely to be a long time before we are ready for that. First, there must be justice. Justice; if Minneapolis is anything to go by, lies on the other side of escalating violence. I wish we could dare to dream other ways to the new futures so many people crave right now. Even as I wish that, I remind myself to dream and feel new futures for myself when I walk in the fields watered with the blood and sweat of my ancestors.
