Bambling

It’s going to take me half an hour just to transfer all these fucking photos.

So I’m trying to figure out how to go about this, because it’ll probably happen again: it’s been a busy week, which means I have lots of photos and not a lot of time to update. I’ve already ruled out just putting up a few shots from everything I’ve done: several of the assignments were boring as shit, and I don’t want to waste my time.

So I suppose I’ll just aggregate (is that the word I think it is?) a few photos that I’m pleased with. Except that I did do a little thinking and have a coherent thought I want to put out. And that doesn’t fit too well with just random photos … crap.

My thoughts: I seem to have adopted a tendency to expect the worst. As a kid I recall being horribly pessimistic, and I seem to have retained a fair bit of cynicism. More importantly, I have some kind of anxiety which I blatantly ignore on an emotional level, but it constantly pollutes my thoughts with the most dire outcome to a given situation:

That loud thunder-like noise? Must be a bomb in the middle of the city.
All that smoke? Cape Town’s going up in flames.
Haven’t received a response email for a whole three days (KATHLEEN, E-MAIL ME SO I KNOW YOU’RE ALIVE)? The recipient must’ve been kidnapped and is currently undergoing torture too horrible to imagine.
That rash? Leprosy.
That smell? Agent Orange.

You get the idea.

This might surprise some people, as I like to think that I come off as a remotely level-headed person most of the time, and not a screaming loon pronouncing the imminent Apocalypse. Maybe I have that wrong.

The point of all this is to qualify my thoughts on the coming elections (the South African one, as opposed to the American one which is, you know, done). If you don’t know recent South African history go look on Wikipedia or something. For the first time since the democratization of South Africa there’s a legitimate second party (Cope) contesting the current ruling party (the ANC).

My inclination as an American is to think that the politics will be rather anti-climactic and (avoiding a poli-sci spiel, here) the ruling party will win due to apathy. But there’s a factor here that I’m not used to: blood. Lots of fucking blood. Spilt less than 20 years ago. The family’s that saw the violence are still here, and there have been recent reports of minor conflicts in townships (though if they’re explicitly politically motivated isn’t specified). It didn’t hit me ’til I started reading the Bang Bang Club that a lot of the major players are still here. For fuck sake, I took pictures of the head of the IFP just last week (ed. note: In no way am I claiming that Mangosuthu Bulthelezi is directly responsible for any violence. Just wanna make it clear that apartheid and the apartheid violence is not too far removed from the currently political climate).

So … I don’t know where all these thoughts really lead. I guess this election is something of a test for South Africa: has the country progressed to the point where people are just destroyed by the typical machine of political corruption and cruelty or are they still going to be killed by machetes? And I know it’s horrible, but part of me wants to see it get hectic. I know it’s wrong to want something horrible to happen, to always expect the worst is going to happen, but I guess that’s just part of my personality. So … shit.

Sorry for the text-heavy post. Next one will just be photos (vis-a-vis Vic’s photo round-ups, except entirely egotistical and just my photos). Promise. Look, another picture!

For the record: I’m not implying that this guitar was directly responsible for any of the violence at the end of apartheid, either. Just keepin’ it safe.