There are posts on these pages that I keep private, and share only with certain people. Feel free to comment on posts that are visible. The images in the banner were made by me, Ismail Lagardien, and can be found on my photography pages at: On Photography.
By Ismail Lagardien
A couple of years ago I created a food blog. After a few weeks of writing about food – from my own cooking, to kitchen appliances and chemicals in our food chain – I began to feel self-conscious about the project. As a radical political economist with quite a deep commitment to social justice and with specific interests in inequality, poverty, hunger, need, marginalisation and structural violence, I felt that my blog would be yet another meaningless voice among the foodie nattering class; like a Gordon Ramsay, but without any of the skills, the looks, the money or the bollocks.
I closed the food blog and reconsidered an idea I had been toying with for several years; a literary work on the social history of the restaurant. However, since there was no book advance forthcoming and, well, I had a full teaching load and a doctoral dissertation to complete, I continued to toy (and toil). The main question(s) I wanted to address in the book was how we reached the point where communal eating has become an apparent farce, a spectacle of consumerism and pretence. How did restaurants become the most ubiquitous public places for communal eating? How did the kitchen, that most common, intimate and familiar among places of human life for as long as we care to remember, been replaced with packaged food stocked on shelves, with salty longevity? How did hastily assembled “meals-on-the-go” and entrées presented then served in restaurants, replace food that is meant to nourish, replenish and help sustain human life?
There are, of course, very many books that explore the histories of food and the things we grow or farm in order to feed ourselves. However, in my imaginary social history of the restaurant, I keep coming back to Eco’s observation, in “Travels in Hyperreality,” about restaurants in advanced capitalist societies as places that offer diners evidence of their own “situation of ‘affluence’… [where] …. the customer will have ‘more and more,’ and can wish nothing further”. My imaginary history – I say imaginary because a have not done any research on the matter and really don’t want to use the word “hypothesis” – starts with the Enclosures movement in Britain and the industrial revolution. At the time of the Enclosures, communal rights and access to land was converted into “severalty” where the owner of the land had sole access and control thereto.
The Enclosures changed the social structure of rural England and Wales. The wealthy, it seems to me, woke up one day and said to the poor: “You know what; we own this land so get the fuck off it and come back only when we ask you to come and work for us.” The Enclosure movement was described by the historian EP Thompson as “a plain enough case of class robbery”. That act of enclosure, I imagine, set in motion a retreat, I would think, into personalised spaces, away from communal activities, such as eating together as part of communal activity. The British example is of course, pertinent, because it is this model of private property and capitalist ownership that was extended across the world on the back of empire-building and the expansion of the industrial revolution’s reorganisation of society. Whereas private property (let us call it greed, selfishness and accumulation, just for a laugh), might well be part of the privatisation of communal eating, the Bolshvik response, fantastically idealistic as it was, turned out to be a gastronomic failure, according to Mary Ellen Snodgrass’ “Encyclopedia of Kitchen History”.
The Russian Bolsheviks placed an emphasis on the communal kitchen and dining room as an essential of universal equality. At the time, Marxist, more appropriately, Soviet idealism infused true believers “with a delight in communal cooking and state-run cafeterias at the same time that it shamed the private diner”. Restaurants were denounced as “a waste of resources catering to the elite at the expense of the poor” and “the best way to manage equipment, food, fuel, and labour was to cook large amounts at once to serve many people,” Snodgrass explained.
The collectivised kitchen (and household chores, in general) was meant to liberate females, and replace individual homes with communal laundries, kitchens, and dining rooms. At the First All-Russian Congress of Women in Moscow in November 1918 Alexandra Kollontai, of the women’s section of the Russian Community Party, greeted delegates with the proclamation that communism would doom to extinction all individualised housework that reduced women to slaving over stoves. In the pamphlet Obshchestvennyi Stol (The Public Table, 1919), Kollontai glorified communal dining as “a cross between a temple uniting a community of worshippers and a cosy family hearth.” It’s too bad, according to Snodgrass, that the Proletkult clubs of the time produced inedible slop in quite dingy and desperate eating halls. This is, to be sure, not the entire story….
Nonetheless, today, in the late capitalist period, restaurants seem have become fabrications to replace the real, and are expected to be more exciting more beautiful, more inspiring and more interesting than the real. Most recently I travelled in South America where, in the outer reaches of Amazonia, I had beans and rice with fried fish, all of which was cooked outdoors, on wood fires, by the side of a river that ran black with tannins. To be sure, the sensibilities of people in suburban Sandton, or on the Upper East Side of Manhattan may preclude eating fried fish using water from a stream which (upstream, I should point out) served, also, as the main source of water for remote villagers to bathe themselves – and wash their clothes! Recreating such (real) conditions would probably not “sell” in Sandton. Food tends to “sell” when it is prepared and presented under more pristine, sanitary and hyper-real conditions, in restaurants presented as “better than” reality to the extent that they become what Umberto Eco might describe as “absolute fakes”.
I no longer have the food blog, and as an out of work writer and academic, I have other priorities that preclude writing a book on a social history of the restaurant. Looking for a job really is a full-time job. What I do know, from the historical record, is that the first restaurant in the world, was opened in Paris in 1765, by a certain “Monsieur Boulanger,” and the first (and only) dish he served was sheep’s feet simmered in white sauce. This first restaurant had a single purpose; to serve food – nothing else – a novelty at the time. Traditionally, people ate their meals at home or, when travelling, they would eat at an inn. Boulanger built his fame on the claim that his sheep’s feet dish was a restorative (the French word for which is restaurant), a claim that a local food guild, which held a monopoly on the sale of cooked food, challenged unsuccessfully. Alas, Boulanger’s court victory led to a proliferation of restaurants across France and… to most parts of the world. Not much of that came from my imagination. I still think that capitalist accumulation has something to tell us about restaurants, but that’s just a hypothesis.
By Ismail Lagardien
The rise of a politics of identity and reproduction of “colouredness” in South Africa is becoming terribly annoying. Instead of challenging the philosophical or theoretical arguments, as I would naturally be inclined to, I have been wracking my brain about how “coloured” I felt or how “coloured” my life world has been. I will, hereafter, drop the quotation marks – if only for ease or reading.
If the truth be known (and desperately trying not to be abstract) I actually have no sense of what it means to be coloured. During the apartheid period I was classified coloured or “Malay” or something. Nevertheless, I have increasingly, at least since my early adult life, rejected the various identities that were given to me by my family or through the polities of particular social orders, and that were conditioned over time through discursive or other practices. There may have been a time when I believed in my inherited ethnic (Malay) identity. When I was growing up, we spoke Afrikaans interspersed with words and phrases which we believed were from “Malaya”. Some of this was, of course, factually appropriate, but language is not a very useful marker of ethnicity. And anyway, over the course of my life I developed a larger vocabulary in isiXhosa, isiZulu, French, German, Spanish, Arabic and, of course, English and Afrikaans, than “Malaysian”. In fact, some of the first words I picked up before the age of five were in Portuguese. Sometime between the ages of two and seven our next-door neighbours, the Garridos, had very strong (colonial) Mozambican family ties, so I picked up several Portuguese words and phrases.
Much later, I would become imbued, as it were, in a coloured identity. I spent most of my childhood in a coloured township. I was educated in a coloured school. We played sport, mainly cricket and rugby, in the coloured leagues and, of course, my personal identity documents stipulated that I was coloured. This identity was conditioned over time. I knew I was coloured, because I was told that I was coloured and because I lived among other coloured people and given especially the apartheid state’s narrow focus on admixture, I lived, learned, loved and played among people who looked like me – more or less. Actually, given my green eyes and fair skin I have always been some kind of a freak. Nonetheless, as part of apartheid’s conditioning process, we were told that we were not white, nor Indian and, alarmingly, that we were not Africans. I could never understand how a someone born in Germany or Hungary could refer to themselves as European (actually, I have blonde haired blue-eyed Hungarian friends who are quite proud of their Asian ancestry, but that’s another issue), and we could not refer to ourselves as African. Among my family, at least, there was a very strong belief in our own “Malay” ancestry…. However two important things happened by the time I reached my teens.
The first was a realisation that I shared religious, social and (nominal) cultural affinities with people whom the state had classified as Indian, as African, and I interacted, almost daily, with people whom we thought, with some certainty at the time, were Chinese. The second was a realisation that the differences among us were notional, especially when compared to the life world experience of our day-to-day lives. This is not a denial of transcendental matters. I refer, simply, to the fact that spending all your life and time in daily interaction and intimacy with someone or another carries a certainty that is more real. Growing up in Eldorado Park, we bought our daily bread from Foon See Kan (I sincerely hope that I recalled that correctly) or Eva’s shop, where grown men bought glasses of brandy wine to wash down the misery and melancholy of unemployment, poverty and desperation, issues that had a much greater formative influence in my life than race. It was on the dusty space outside Eva’s shop in Kliptown (I can hardly call it a road) where I first saw a bag of potatoes “fall off the back of a truck”. It was nudged actually, but it eventually fell off.
I spent most of my childhood in the section of Eldorado Park that bordered on Kliptown. Notwithstanding the promise of El Dorado, Kliptown was home. Kliptown and Eldorado Park are on the southern flank of Pimville, Soweto. East Road, the main strip through Kilptown, was our main street. We, coloured, Indian, Malay, African, all watched films at the Sans Souci, and The Grand bioscope. We attended the Kliptown mosque. When I was growing up, all of us, coloureds, Indians, Chinese and Africans shared almost everything. The state prevented all of us, “non-whites,” from interacting with whites, but they gave us the privilege of being among ourselves. Whether it was in Eldorado Park, Naledi, Diepkloof, Phumelong or Peggy’s shebeen, we laughed, danced and played like there was no tomorrow. Eldorado Park, Kliptown, Pimville, Orlando and even Lenasia, were part of south western townships, the acronym for which was, Soweto. My mother’s oldest brother lived in Noordgesig deep within Soweto. I got my first pair of eyeglasses at the St John’s Eye Hospital next to Bara, which I think was the ONLY hospital in Soweto. The first time I was thrown into a pool was in Orlando West, in “Father Huddlestone’s pool” in Soweto. I should not idealise our misery and poverty; it was hell, at times, but I imagine no more or less than the hell that poor communities around the world have to face. I lost my first childhood friend when he was sliced up on train tracks that ran along our township. I lost another when he was stabbed to death in a gang fight – I was stabbed in the leg and in my back with a spike. Another friend drank himself to death. Another committed suicide, and somewhere one of my childhood friends is in a wheel chair because a bullet shattered his spine. We had no indoor plumbing for many years nor hot water or a bathroom; we bathed under taps of cold water and relieved ourselves squatting on bricks into buckets that were collected and emptied by the “amabucket” men…. It was a hard life. We never missed whites – we didn’t know any. We had each other. We were not white, we were all black. Parenthetically, the first time I heard the word kaffir was when my closest friend’s grandmother referred to him as “Kaffirtjie” – because he was the darkest of his siblings. Later, I would be mocked by my own friends for kissing a girl who, they said, had “blue gums”. This, too, is a story for another time. It was the basis for the second realisation, which is better understood as the development of a consciousness. We needed to overcome the divisions that were established between us, coloured, African, Indian. That was when I first met Muntu Myeza. When he was in his early 20s and I was 14 or 15.
This consciousness did not emerge from the ether; it was my (our) social existence, that shaped our (my) consciousness. In other words we, those of us who were not part of the minority that dominated and controlled the political economy of the country, those of us who were not white shared social, cultural and historical affiliations and solidarities that transcended the classification schemes created precisely to dominate and control us. On any given day we would go to the Apsara Cinema in Lenasia, the Lyric or Avalon in Fordsburg, the Eyethu in Mofolo, we would attend ballroom dancing competitions in “city halls” in Moroka, Diepkloof, Lenasia, Bosmont and Coronationville.
My mother was a dressmaker of some repute, and made very many ballroom and wedding gowns that were worn with pride and swirl all over the “non-white” townships. It was from whence I received my earliest impressions of the female body, and the ability to sew and stitch sequins, plastic beads and appliqué onto fabric by hand. Unlike the settler colonists (whites) who had some kind of filial relationship with Britain, in that they considered themselves to be the offspring, in some incarnation or another, of the erstwhile colonies and colonialists, my living heroes (outside the bioscopes) at the time were the players of the NPSL. While I have been an Orlando Pirates fan for as long as I can remember (although I dallied with Jomo Cosmos for a very brief period), for some reason (I will never forget this), when I was about 10 or 12 years-old, I was crazy about Blessing Mngidi, Brixton Maseko, and Paradise Sello and, of course, Jomo Sono. I didn’t know white people when I was a child. I knew only black people. We were black. All of us were black.
In the contemporary literature on coloured identity, I would be branded a “denialist” or a rejectionist”. Worst, still, I may be considered to be a liberal idealist for denying racial distinctions in favour of utopian non-racialism. I consider all of these to be spurious for they attempt to justify, or affirm that which was, and continued to be made of us, when our greatest challenge, as human beings, is precisely the freedom to make something else of what is made of us. I was born as a human. I was told, afterwards that I was coloured; that I was to live in a coloured township, attend a coloured school, play cricket and rugby with other coloured people only. Perhaps the state’s greatest oversight was that they could not restrain me from making something different from what they made me; they could not contain my life and restrict it to being coloured – as something separate, different, unique, otherwise and distinct from people around me. Instead I have had a life that was colourful, vibrant, fast, dangerous, frenetic, filled with laughter, misery, struggle, optimism, idealism, utopianism, darkness and light. If being coloured means having some kind of in-between status, I don’t recall feeling alienated from people who were called “African” or “native” or “Indian”. I did feel quite different from whites, but that was because they lived on the other side of the city, past the mine dumps, the industrial areas or the highways that established Maginot boundaries between us. This was my life world. It was, in some ways, a very normal life. What I do find terribly difficult, today, is imagining myself as a coloured. The one thing I do know, with absolute certainty, is that I am not white – and that is not something that bothers me. What does bother me is that there are people coming up with very fancy, even rational, intelligent and highly publicised arguments about this coloured thing. I just don’t get it. And anyway, I think they’re playing with fire….
By Ismail Lagardien
I have held several exchanges with European scholars about the potential emulative effects of secessionism in Africa (and of irredentism, for that matter) and the possibilities of fractionalisation on the continent. Two of these exchanges were with Canadian scholars who supported the secession and consequent independence of South Sudan without any apparent regard for the precedent this move may set for other similar claims elsewhere on the continent.
While one should, as a matter of principle, support claims to self-determination, African states, in particular, could face a domino-type effect if the extraordinary diverse groups within individual countries petitioned for secession or staked irredentist claims. Such a development may have disastrous consequences for a region that has seen quite enough conflict over the sixty years or so since the 1950s. Although it should be said that most of the conflict in Africa has been intra-state (within countries) and not inter-state (between countries); the Europeans, it should be said, have a history of inter-state warfare that is unrivalled….
Nonetheless, the two Canadians, an accomplished political scientist and an anthropologist, supported the secession of South Sudan without any apparent reflection on the historical significance or potential political ramifications of any emulative tendencies in Africa. My position was that I generally supported the right of people to govern themselves, but I also was (and remain) aware of the historical role of foreign intervention in Africa and, in particular, the potential for fractionalisation and conflict in the region. In response the political scientist suggested that Africa quite possibly needed more conflict. My immediate response, as an African and a political economist was that we could do with less conflict on the continent. While Africa’s conflicts over the past three or four decades pale into insignificance when compared to the tens of millions of people who were killed in the wars of the European world over the past century – from the First World War to the Srebrenica Massacre – any conflict in Africa, as elsewhere, can and should be avoided at all costs.
The anthropologist was adamant about South Sudan’s secession. Which, I said, may be justified… . I asked, however, whether she had considered the third principle of Article 3 of the Organisation for African Unity Charter (now, the AU), and its provision that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each state be respected. The basis of this third principle was to prevent the type of disintegration of states that we would witness when Yugoslavia collapsed in the early 1990s. Her response was curt: “I don’t care about section three or whatever you say it is.”
I asked both the political scientist (who also unabashedly supported the bombing of Libya by European forces), and the anthropologist whether they had considered the likelihood that groups across the continent may wish to emulate the southern Sudanese. The political scientist created a ruse; Eritrea had already set a precedent, he said. That was not the point. What I wanted to know was whether either one of them had considered the fact that colonial boundaries were drawn rather arbitrarily by the European powers in the 19th century, and that these boundaries had little or nothing to do with indigenous communities or groupings. It was disingenuous, I though, for these same Europeans to now petition, directly or indirect, for the break up of African states, into ethnic groups, on the basis of self-determination only and without consideration of the potential for conflict on the continent.
There are, quite literally thousands of identity-groups in Africa and if one followed the principle of self-determination to its logical conclusion, each African state could end up like the former Yugoslavia, which produced unspeakable atrocities and nine new nation-states. While boundaries between self-identifying groups in Africa were fairly flexible in most cases across the continent during the pre-colonial period, colonisation created fixed border that separated communities and groups (ethnic, language, cultural etc). For instance, in the case of The Gambia, one of the smallest states on the continent in terms of population (fewer then 1.5 million people) and territory (11,300 square kilometers) has remained almost completely intact since independence in February 1965 because of generations of inter-marriage and the unifying force of Islam (90% of Gambians are Muslims), and the sharing of cultural heritage among people.
In terms of self-identified ethnic groups, The Gambians are usually classified into several different groups with its own indigenous traditions, language, social and historical background. The majority of the country’s ethnic groups belong to eight indigenous categories: the Mandinka (41%); the Wolof (15%); the Fula (19%); the Jola (10%); the Serahuli (8%); the Serer (2.5%); the Aku (0.8%) and the Manjago (1.7%) – all estimates. A simple look at a map of The Gambia (above) – a lozenge of land on the banks of the Gambia River surrounded by Senegal – reflects in many ways the absurdity of the colonial boundaries. Here it should be stressed that another reason why countries like The Gambia have been kept intact was precisely because the OAU accepted that the colonial boundaries had to be retained in order to avoid conflict and the disintegration of states in Africa.
Some of the questions that may be asked are the following: What would happen if ethnic groups in countries like The Gambia petitioned for self-determination – purely on the basis of the legal precedent set in South Sudan? What would happen if this emulative effect spread to a country like, say, Nigeria? By one account Nigeria has an estimated 250 ethnic groups. At the time of my exchange with the Canadia scholars the so-called Arab spring had reached Libya. I suggested, at the time, that continued and de-contextualised external support for ‘rebels’ – from the Europeans – without a considered response from African leaders, in the context of the original agreements on African unity enshrined in the Charter of the OAU, may engender deeper fractionalisation on the continent along perceived or actual language or ethnic boundaries. The political scientist said that there was a theory that ‘perhaps Africa had too little violence’. The anthropologist did not care.
The big question I posed when Libyans rose up against the governmemt of Muammar Ghaddafi was this: What would prevent self-identified groups in Libya petition for secession and the creation of an independent new state? In some ways the question is easy to answer. The Europeans would probably support the move – if it meant that they had greater access to the country’s natural resources. With the United States having all but secured the oil fields of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, there seems every possibility that the European Union would continue to support any move or process in Libya that would guarantee them access to the country’s natural resources.