This episode of AIAC talk is devoted to Palestinian solidarity. For international spectators, the case for Palestinian liberation often exists in the heady space of argument, a realm of abstractness. And while there are the visceral images of horror and brutality we are exposed to on our TV screens, when the ceasefires are declared and the violence paused, it can cause us to forget that another violence still remains—in the little things. This is the violence of petty apartheid, a word South Africans used to describe how apartheid’s most debilitating effects, how it controlled the most intimate aspects of life, how it was a daily humiliation. This was exemplified by what happened in East Jerusalem, when Israeli security forces barricaded the Damascus gate esplanade (a popular gathering spot especially during Ramadan), or when those same forces desecrated Al-Aqsa—the point is to rob people of all their dignity in every way.
We want this episode to transport us to the realm of not simply understanding the injustice of apartheid, but of grappling with its totalizing brutality—and it is often the case, that literature, film and poetry can evoke images of places we’ve never been, can allow us to bear witness to feelings we’ve never experienced. Relating the importance of black art in relaying the black experience during apartheid, the South African poet Mafika Gwala declared in his seminal 1984 essay, “Writing as a Cultural Weapon”: “ When you face a truth and there is challenging need to express it, you can most emphatically capture it through poetry, because there is no way you can twist it about in a poem. You have to bring out the truth as it is, or people will see through your lines. It is also through poetry that you find, most soberly, that there has never been such a thing as pure language.”
This episode features South African writers Rustum Kozain, Siphokazi Jonas and Heidi Grunebaum reading the poetry and prose of Palestinian writers and some of their own. Together with Palestinian poets, Mahmoud Al Shaer (with translation by Katharine Halls) and Basman Elderawi, as well as author and essayist Adania Shibli.
South Africans know the despair and suffering of apartheid. But South Africans also know that apartheid can end. And so, as Palestinians continue to resist, we hope for this to serve as a small gesture of solidarity as they dream of freedom.
