#FridayFiles - From Steenberg schoolgirl to renowned philosopher

Born in District Six, Rozena Maart, who teaches at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, recently won an award for philosophy born of struggle.

Born in District Six, Rozena Maart, who teaches at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, recently won an award for philosophy born of struggle.

Published Dec 9, 2016

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Cape Town - At the William J Rose Award ceremony recently, Professor Rozena Maart scanned the packed room wondering who would be honoured.

The prestigious lifetime achievement award was usually reserved for a senior professor or, in her mind, someone “older” who had made their mark and was being globally recognised for their work.

At the ceremony at Texas University last month, Rozena, the girl who first read Steve Biko as a 13-year-old after being forcibly removed from District Six to live in Lavender Hill, realised she was officially “older”.

Rozena, a University of KwaZulu-Natal professor and former director of the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, who is currently on sabbatical, went to work in the wake of the Marikana massacre to look at the issue of black male identity.

She argued that a theme of the massacre was the black male policing the black male, and her papers explored the vulnerability of victim and perpetrator in a body of work entitled Philosophy Born of Massacre.

“To be honest, it was a bit of a shock. When my name was read I was completely taken aback. I thought lifetime awards were given to ‘older’ people, which I clearly do not see myself as. 

“In hindsight, I am not sure if it was a wake-up call to say, ‘Hey, you’re getting old’, or one which said, ‘You’re there already!’

“Nonetheless, it was still a joyous moment to share with colleagues. None of us come to these moments in our lives without the foundation being set by those who came before, so my salutations always go to my PhD supervisor Richard Johnson, and of course my lecturers and professors at UWC, where Yvonne Muthien, Adam Small, Henry de Grass and Marie McDonald played a huge part.

“One has to acknowledge those who paved the way for you, and one has to give thanks to your ancestors.”

With a few days of 2016 to go, it has been a rough year. In South Africa, race relations took a nosedive as 2016 was bookended by Penny Sparrow at the start and Vanessa Hartley at the end.

Regrettably, there were too many similar diatribes in between about black bodies in white spaces. Each brought a particularly vicious onslaught on social media.

What is this all about? Where do we turn for answers? Are we in trouble?

The answers are to be found beneath many layers of critical thinking. Rozena - trained social worker, award-winning author, playwright, woman of the year nominee, and now globally recognised philosopher - has done a lot of the work.

“I host weekly seminars on thinkers and events that mark women’s history nationally and internationally. Students want to talk, engage one another, confront one another and challenge one another.

“This is part of a process of producing scholars and somehow, because of our history of apartheid and now within the third decade of democracy, we think that this process of confrontation should not happen. It is what drives every generation in every country.

“We need open discussion, debate, confrontations of our histories - all of which are necessary.  We are only in trouble if we do not speak to one another.” 

Rozena became politically conscious at a young age when her family was kicked out of District Six, her place of birth, in 1973.

The accomplished author, who wrote Rosa’s District Six, was greatly influenced by her UWC lecturer, Professor Adam Small

From District Six, the family relocated to Lavender Hill, where she made lifelong friends at Steenberg High that would help shape who she is today.

“I think 1973 was a tender and difficult year. We were forcibly removed. I was in a play at school and had actually told myself that the move was not happening.

“I finished the year at George Golding and the following year went to Square Hill Primary for a year. It was a huge adjustment. It is where I saw class play itself out in the most intricate ways.

“Not only was my teacher in disbelief that I was from District Six and was now living in Lavender Hill, but the children in my class had a similar attitude.

“I did not have those feelings of shame; for some it was a surprise. My grandmother told me very early on: ‘If you want to be accepted you deserve to be rejected because you gave that person an option.’

“So I learnt very early on that who I am, what I have to say, how I live my life, sometimes bothers people and that I cannot let that bother me.

“Part of my understanding as a feminist, even throughout these years, was always to participate in the day-to-day events of our community. I learnt to cook because of our neighbour, Auntie Mina Sydow.

“Steenberg High was the best years of my life in many ways. It is where my foundation grew and where I made friends with whom I am still in contact. I think I am very fortunate to have good friends, people who live their lives with integrity, irrespective of what others have to say.

“I still have women friends in my life like Sharon LaGuma and Ayesha Ismail, because there is a bond that was established when we were children.”

To begin to understand what drives the continued oppression and racism, one perhaps needs to turn to Rozena’s area of expertise, Black Philosophy.

She explains the phrase Black Philosophy is often used synonymously with Black existentialism, which is about how black people exist in the world and the meaning they make of their day-to-day lives.

“Black Philosophy examines the ways in which the materiality of racism, in other words the conditions under which we live as ‘raced’ or ‘racialised’ are conditions from which our being stems.

“It is about the significance of our being, of how we exist in the world despite the inequalities that inform our material reality.

“It is also about pointing out, identifying relations of inequality, measures and practices of injustice, and why our philosophies emerge from those struggles, much like Biko’s conception of Black Consciousness.”

“I took my PhD at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of York in the UK in Political Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.

“The title of my PhD, The Politics of Consciousness: The Consciousness of Politics. When Black Consciousness Meets White Consciousness, speaks precisely to where and how I turned to Black philosophy. I examined the ways in which European philosophy hides and represses its White Consciousness but how it is still present in its articulation of ideas.

“This was 20 years ago. In some strange way it does not feel that long ago. I think partly because all of what I addressed is still current today.

“It looks at how the history of consciousness, as told through early philosophers, even as far as examining key moments within the history of Christianity, show a marked realisation of what it means to question and confront inequalities.

“So, I would say that I ask philosophical questions about liberty, justice, inequality, knowledge, the production of knowledge, the functioning of the mind, the full spectrum of oppression at particular historical moments, and how these moments are actualised through speech, writing, and the imagination.

“In fact, my friends and colleagues who I have known for more than 20 years would say that my work is more relevant now than it was then.

“The award is a recognition of a lifetime’s work in philosophy but with a particular focus on Black Philosophy and Critical Race Theory, which is very central to contemporary philosophy today.

“I was influenced by Steve Biko when I was still a teenager at Steenberg High School. And if you read, I Write What I Like, you soon discover that Biko read political philosophers like Marx, Hegel and Nietzsche, existentialists like Sartre and Jaspers, and psychoanalysts like Freud.

“Their writings reveal very particular understandings of how consciousness and politics were understood. Yes, brilliant as many of them were, they failed to reflect and comprehend the extent of the world of slavery they were embroiled in and failed to address it in their writing.”

Where to from here? Vanessa Hartley hardly learnt anything from the Penny Sparrow episode. The government is moving to legislate hate crime.

The incidents have moved on from non-bloody social media outbursts, and the policing of black credentials and black wealth to a violent type of racism.

A man being shoved into a coffin at the hands of his oppressors recently is a case in point.

And amid the madness, the colours of the rainbow on which our new nation was sold are fading fast.

“We can legislate for and against anything but we cannot legislate attitude. Yes, there are many racist attitudes that are still alive and well and they need to be addressed and challenged because a constitution guides, provides and legalises.

“It cannot speak to a person in the flesh, and challenge that person’s agency - we have to.  We have to breathe life and transformation into the constitution. That is why it is there.

“When a black person applies for a job within the academia, for example, to a position previously held by a white man the first time a black woman is a candidate for that position, the question of ‘standards’ is suddenly an issue.

“I have had people read my CV and tell me they had to check up on the academic papers that I have written or the awards I have won to make sure that what my CV made reference to did actually take place.

“I am not sure if I can speak on black excellence other than to say excellence is excellence, irrespective of who the person is. To suggest black excellence means that one was either not expecting a black person to be excellent or suggesting that excellence is always racialised, and we need to reward the recipient of excellence if they are black, is it possibly because they have persevered irrespective of their previous history of inequality? Perhaps.

“I’d still say we need to address excellence head on. Demand it from our learners and our students. Expect it, nurture any trace of it - which means even if others do not see it.”

Cape Argus

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