Recent reading IV

Some books you just don't seem to get through, sometimes because you are not drawn into it, sometimes because the book is too tedious to read and sometimes because the script is outright too bad. When I was younger (maybe I should say young), I hated giving up on such books. The older and wiser I get I increasingly refuse to spend time on books that give nothing back to me as a reader. But there are cases where I have a feeling that there is something in the book although I don't seem to be able to get through it.

Sindiwe Magona's book "Mother to Mother" has been such a book; I have begun to read it any number of times since I bought it in a bookshop in Namibia in 2001, but until now I still hadn't made it through the book and for none of the above reasons. It is pretty easy to read, the story is catching enough being based on the killing of a white woman in a black township in Cape Town, South Africa in 1993 and discussing how the situation developed into these outbursts of violence. Maybe I've been reluctant to the topic because I was afraid it would exploit the tragedy and all involved.

However, Magona writes about the absurd situation in South Africa in general from the perspective of a fictional mother of the murderer, and she does it after she has herself realised that one of the real-life murderers was the son of a neighbour - and asking herself if it could not as well has been her own son who had been drawn in and part of the violence. Thus, the book captures well the frustration of the black community which was pretty much devoid of prospects for the future, through letting the murderer's mother address the mother of the victim. Not through a letter intended to merely apologize, but through giving the sad account of how things could end as they did, with finding herself the mother of a murderer - and the other mother deprived of her daughter.

The book leaps back and forth between time periods, setting the subject from the first sad sentence "My son killed your daughter" but while alternating between the childhood and youth of Mandisa (the mother), the childhood of her son (Mxolisi) and brief pictures of his life before the killing, and citing from the letter from Mandisa to the mother of the white woman who was killed it tells its story in no straightforward way, and it is not until the last pages of the book that we get the whole picture. Or as whole as it gets. I'm thankful that the description of the violent events are not drawn out more than they are. But I keep wondering what happened to the non-white people in the car the woman drove. And for a while I kept wondering what happened to Mxolisi. That is, until I remembered the passage where Mandisa reflects on that the state now provides Mxolisi with food, clothes, and a roof above his head while it hasn't given him anything at all during his entire life before he killed the woman. So although I can't remember that it directly says so anywhere else in the book, Mxolisi was found and brought to jail.

It is an important book, because it demonstrates the frustration and hate that apartheid created. But I think that it also pictures a general problem in societies with big differences between rich and poor, in societies where some has and some has not - and I wonder about our presentday global society, where we in the richer parts of the world depend on people in poorer parts working almost for nothing. And about countries as Sweden where we again have begun to increase the gap between those who have and those who have not, be it money, influence, jobs, education. My view is that as soon as you sustain that kind of society, you also create groups that see no real future for themselves or their children and children that grow up without any belief in the society. I think that what we do now is close to as dangerous as the apartheid system in South Africa was, for everyone. Isn't it time for us to start paying the costs? The real costs for production of e.g. food, clothes and different kinds of electric devices, just to name a few. And the real costs for schools, health care, etc. In stead of demanding access to cheap supply of whatever we wish for, and in stead of electing politicians that ask you to vote for them in exchange for decreasing taxes without having to state which implications this have for sustenance of quality in education, health care and other kinds of social security. If we don't look further than our own private economy and our own well-being, what will remain? Does anyone remember the word solidarity?

The book can be found at Adlibris, Bokus or Amazon - or you could borrow it from me.

The US gone mad

While the fireworks went mad outside the house I got some time to think about an article from today's newspaper. It is about free weapons training for teachers in Utah, which attracted hundreds of teachers (two hundred were admitted) in response to the latest school shooting in Newtown, which I have written about before, both in English and in Swedish. I also mentioned in the post yesterday (in Swedish) that one of my wishes for 2013 is that this year will bring changed gun laws in the USA so that the risk for children being shot down in schools will be reduced. I must say I was disappointed when I read this morning that instead teachers learn to handle guns to be able to open fire against people entering schools to shoot children and teachers. The world, or at least the US, must have gone mad! Do y ouwant to have war in the schools!? Do you expect people to feel comfortable because their children's teachers learn to handle guns - and bring these guns to school, and into the classrooms!? Do the teachers appreciate adding a new specialist field to their subjects: I teach history - and I am able to shoot anyone threatening my class?

In The Vancouver Sun one of the Utah gun instructors, Clark Aposhian, comments:

"Schools are some of the safest places in the world, but I think teachers understand that something has changed — the sanctity of schools has changed."

 It seems that Aposhian has not noticed that schools in the USA have not been particularly safe for some time due to the amount of guns available. School shootings are still rare, but the school shooting in Newtown was neither the first one, nor will it be the last if nothing is done to make it more difficult to access weapons for people in such despair that they want to inflict as much pain as possible to others. And hey, school shootings are not supposed to occur at all! Don't get too used to them, making they seem inevitable tragedies, because they are not. Furthermore, it seems Aposhian has not noticed that there might be some problems with teachers carrying weapons in schools. In USnews on NBC news the teacher Kerrie Anderson (stating herself being "pro-gun") observes some of the difficulties:

"How would I keep that gun safe?" she said. "I wouldn't carry (it) on my person while teaching, where a disgruntled student could overpower me and take it. And if I have it secured in my office, it might not be a viable form of protection."

Furthermore, more guns in the society will certainly increase gun related violence - how can more guns in schools be expected to decrease gun related violence? Children understand why it is not a good idea. When I talked to my kids, six and ten years old, about teachers having weapons training and the idea of teachers bringing guns to school they just stared at me. "Mom, we will never move to the US and go to school there, will we?", they asked. "Probably not", I told them. "Good", they replied. They did not say that when we talked about the Newtown school schooting, but when faced with the idea that there might be schools to which adults bring weapons, every day, to avoid new school shootings they had had enough. We do understand the frustration you face when people have been shot down without any chance to protect themselves. But you seldom solve problems of violence through violence, and least of all you reduce gun violence through adding guns. Children understand this. I thus repeat my wish for 2013:

Let 2013 be the year when the USA finally begins to move towards restricted availability of weapons to reduce the risk for school shootings. We've had enough of these tragedies!