An American Diplomats Experience in Johannesburg

By Avery Steadman

We were back in the United States today. Just kidding – we visited the United States consulate in Johannesburg. Technically, the consulate stands on American soil. Entering the consulate was similar to entering governmental buildings in the United States. We were directed to leave all electronics on the bus and enter with only pen/paper and our passports. We entered a pass room, five students at a time and were screened in a security check. We traded in our passports for visitors badges and entered the main building.
We were greeted with the first American accent we’d heard besides ourselves in the last three weeks. Kevin is an American diplomat with a Masters in Art. He noted that we would be treated like any other visitors to the consulate, hence the inability to bring in our electronics. As we were listening to his welcome speech, three marines walked by and he explained that there are marines stationed here as well as foreign trade diplomats, among others. After a quick intro, he walked us into a meeting room set up with a presentation wall of TV screens and plenty of chairs.
Kevin had a calm and cool nature about him. He seemed very comfortable to be talking with a bunch of college kids. Due to his background in art, he wanted to start our conversation about Johannesburg with a dissection of his first touch with a South African artist. William Kentridge is one of the most “well known” artists of South Africa. He played us a video that William Kentridge made by putting pieces of his artwork together. You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpamsEdCbX8.
The video shows the dichotomy of life above and below ground in Johannesburg at this period. For most of his work, Kentridge does not like the use of color, and rather sticks to charcoal drawings with erasures, rather than using multiple pieces of paper for the animation. The charcoal and erasures strongly represent the struggles the minors faced. In this video, we are introduced to Soho Eckstein, a fictional character of Kentridge’s that represents the political and economical struggle of the pre-democracy area in South Africa, particularly Johannesburg and the mining economy. Soho becomes the mountains that arose from the dirt being taken out of the mines and is seen towering over the city. He reminds me of the political cartoons of the big monopolies and trusts from the United States industrial revolution. We see unidentifiable masses of people, clumped together in the darkest areas of Johannesburg. I found this an interesting juxtaposition of the play we watched about miners called Egoli, which dove deep into the individual lives of the miners. Whereas society treats the miners like clumps of faceless people, in reality, each miner and each citizen has their own story. 
Mining is a major facet of life in South Africa. According to one of our class articles titled “Diamonds: Forever or For Good? The Economic Impact of Diamonds in South Africa”, it is also a sector that causes a lot of unrest. Currently, “the key issues are wages, hours of work, and transport.” Kevin told us about the Marikana Massacre, which happened in August 2012. The Marikana Massacre happened during the Wildcat Strike at a mine Lonmin and is the single most deadly attack by the South African security forces against civilians since 1960. Kevin described this event as a “political football” as the country went back and forth between blaming the miners and blaming the politicians on protecting themselves. The horror of this massacre is that most of the victims were shot in the back. 
Someone asked: “What is the relationship like between the United States and South Africa?”
Kevin’s Reply: “It is very complicated. Often I will request meetings with people and they will either outright deny my request, or accept and then not show up. Many South African’s believe we are exploiting Africa. At the same time, South Africa has a complicated relationship with itself. ”
There is a group in particular called the Economic Freedom Fighters that are a very far-left, radical political organization that is calling for “People’s Power for Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime”. They believe that the current ANC and DA government are too pro-business and are putting corporate greed in front of economic equality for all South Africans. Their current goal is to double welfare grants and the minimum wage. Kevin was granted one meeting with a member of the EFF and was then not allowed to meet with them again because of the complicated relationship with the United States.
This reminds me of a quote I found on the SouthAfrica.info.co.za website while doing research for our presentations: “As the National Treasury is at pains to point out, development is not just the pursuit of growth – it is about creating a more equitable future”. It is clear that there are many different opinions on how to create economic growth while also creating economic equality for those citizens that have been previously left behind in society due to the unjust and disturbing Apartheid Regime.
What similarities or differences do you see between the growth/stagnation of the US economy and South Africa’s economy? 


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