Ch. 13: Shooting Yourself in My Foot

Last Friday I did my first load of laundry since I’ve been here. My German housemate pointed out to me that I had been putting powder detergent in the liquid compartment of the washing machine. For nine months. “Yah, you see the little pump. He cannot pump powder.” Somehow it always gets diffused enough to convince me that it had served its purpose.

But, come to think of it, my clothes have always seemed clean anyway. And, assuming that I haven’t been rolling in harmful contaminants, seeming is all that matters. So how necessary is detergent, really, after a rinse and a spin and a few hours hanging in the sun?

In modern civilization, we use resources and much more than we need to, because we rarely get a glimpse of how unnecessary they are. And rich nations have largely been able to preserve this hegemony by remaining blind to the consequences these unnecessary uses of resources have on the global ecosystem. I read somewhere that Great Britain has kept its emission promises under the Kyoto protocol only by outsourcing manufacturing, and therefore emissions, to India. While corporations are greenwashing consumers in North America and Europe into thinking that they can be “eco-friendly” by buying unnecessary products with woodsy color schemes, the much less “enlightened” African continent is inflicting a tiny fraction of the impact on the Earth’s resources. Yet it is suffering the consequences. Nations with agricultural economies which are unstable anyway after generations of imperial leeching are more prone to suffering from erratic climactic patterns. Not to mention the even more fragile dependence on subsistence farming, as I saw in Malawi, where the rains-to-meals ratio is locked quite tightly. The first-world nations have cushioned themselves from these issues by their power to import despite rising food prices.

South Africa’s economy benefits from soil that is fertile in a different way – it contains some of the richest deposits of gold and diamonds in the world. Coupled with its history of apartheid, which allowed a portion of the population to consume resources and produce waste at a rate comparable to first-world nations, this puts it in the unique position of being both a perpetrator and a victim of resource-based environmental problems. One might think that this would produce an attitude of “we are shooting ourselves in the foot.” But this is prevented by South Africa’s limits of national cohesion. The apartheid legacy of contrast has remained, and so the perpetrators can still distance themselves from the victims. Alas! it is only a microcosm of global-scale dysfunction.

South Africa faces many environmental disasters, from polluted rivers and destruction of wetland ecosystems, to waste and energy. For a modern city, Cape Town’s attitude toward recycling is anachronistic. When looking at apartments, I asked landlords about recycling facilities, and received blank stares in response. My current landlord collects newspapers, glass, and tins, but says that “South Africa has a surplus of plastics.” South Africans haven’t fully grasped the idea of separating waste. And taxes for industrial dumping are so low that manufacturers have little incentive to reduce.

One issue that I feel right at home with is dependence on coal. My home state of West Virginia is a top producer and consumer of coal in the nation. South Africa, too, burns coal for most of its electricity. To my knowledge, the violent practice of mountaintop removal, which has been damaging water sources, ecosystems, and communities in West Virginia for many years, hasn’t found its way into the tactical handbooks of South African mine companies, but the other dirty attributes of coal are equally problematic here. 73% of carbon emissions in South Africa come from the burning of fossil fuels (primarily coal) for energy production. Jacob Zuma, the President-in-waiting who still needs to go through the motions of campaigning, recently said, “we want to escalate our national efforts towards the realisation,” (my “rhetoric” LED is now lit up), “of a greater contribution of renewable energy sources, including solar and wind power, as part of an ambitious renewable energy target.” Make it happen, JZ. Make it happen.

But the backbone of any real environmental change is not governments or corporations, but the people: constituents, consumers, those who make tiny decisions which, taken en masse, have huge consequences. A couple of weeks ago the World Wildlife Fund hosted a global Earth Hour. It asked all citizens of the world to turn off their lights for one hour, as a demonstration of solidarity against global warming. I was surprised that in Cape Town, despite its outdated tendencies, this was publicized on billboards and placards. In a minibus taxi one day I heard Desmond Tutu’s voice over the radio, urging my participation. It doesn’t take much of an excuse for South Africans to party, so this event was celebrated across the city. The Cape Town Philharmonic played at the waterfront. I had to miss out on a friend’s braai (barbeque) to play a candlelit gig at a local bar.

As an artist, I am concerned not only with material repercussions of environmental attitudes, but also the psychosocial concerns of a people living with not only the immediate effects and a guilty conscience, but the knowledge that it’s getting worse and it’s nearly unstoppable. This Wednesday I am presenting a performance at the College of Music which is conceived as a reaction to these building pressures, and a mythological response to them. Featuring masks, dancers, props, a storyteller, and music that is edgier than the tastes of most of the audience members, it will attempt to serve as a moment of catharsis. It’s something we all need to experience in order to be emotionally able to face the reality of the situation, and then roll up our sleeves and get to work.