Tradition!

As I was working in my room this gloomy Wednesday morning trying to keep my mind off the rain outside (though we need it, I never welcome cold rain), I was listening to my iTunes. "Tradition" From Fiddler on the Roof came on, and I noticed a verse to which I had never really paid attention before. The lyrics say, "Here in Anatevka, you might say that all of us are like a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask, 'why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That, I can tell you in one word: tradition!"

How true that is of South Africa. If I haven't portrayed it accurately in my former blog posts, let me be blunt about the history and current affairs in SA: this country has been in the spasms of death and rebirth, almost simultaneously. After fifty years of harsh, state-mandated oppression, the nation finally emerged from this sad state of affairs in 1994 with the first fully democratic election in which Nelson Mandela was elected the President of the Republic of South Africa.

The storyline in Fiddler on the Roof is very similar. The little town of Anatevka is within the Russian empire during the 1910s and is being beseiged by the rule of the Czar. (Sideline--my favorite line in the entire play is the line where the rabbi is asked if there is a special blessing for the Czar. He responds, "May God bless and keep the Czar--far away from us!") The small Jewish community is fighting the rapid urbanisation and modernisation of the area and trying to keep their way of life as intact as is possible. As a result, as Tevyeh suggests within the opening tune, traditions gain importance within the society, often paramount to all reason, as the show goes on to examine.

Back to South Africa. This country has emerged from a period in which traditions were considered acceptable only if they were of "European" or Afrikaans background, and generally Christian within that framework. More traditional African traditions were considered to be heathen or superstitious. Now that all citizens of South Africa are free to practice their traditions as they like, the various cultural and religous groupings within South Africa are quick to flaunt the value of their traditions.

The sudden ability to practice tradition without repercussion has led to many freedoms within South Africa, but I would also posit that it has led to a trend which anthropologists call "retraditionalisation." Put simply, many South Africans have been forced into a "European" way of life for so long that they are now reaching back to their "roots" in order to regain their own identity. The Xhosa student travels to the Eastern Cape province every December in order to engage in the initiation rituals for young men in the family. The Indian man looks for another Indian within his same cultural group in order to be married. The Zulu man released from prison slaughters a cow in order to appease the ancestors. These practices are generally beautiful celebrations of community within individual cultural groups. They do, however, provide many difficulties within the "New South Africa."

Within South Africa today, most people live in plaster houses much like you'd find in California or New Mexico. They're exactly what you'd expect someone in the US to live in. There are huge cities full of a variety of people. It isn't unusual that within your office, you might have a Tswana, a Zulu, an Afrikaaner, an Indian, and an English person all working together. So, as in any society, complications arise when dealing with issues that are traditionally dictated by culture. For example, a Xhosa woman and a Sotho man who work together decide to marry. Will this be okay with families? Is each person somehow less Xhosa or Sotho by not abiding by tradition? Right now in South Africa, the most common answer is yes.

I don't believe that this is because South African families are somehow less accepting or enlightened than families anywhere else in the world. I think that it is due to a need for identity within South Africans. Because identity was, for so long, taken away and dictated anew, South Africans are now in a phase of asserting their identities, which are drawn from their cultural backgrounds. Often, deviation from these traditions is seen as a blow to the individual culture and to the identity of the cultural group. This mirrors Tevyeh's comments at the end of "Tradition"--"Without our tradition, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!"

One can assume simply because Fiddler on the Roof was written thirty years before the South African situation came to be the way it is today that this condition is a human condition and not unique to South Africa; however, I believe that it has special repercussions for South Africa. It seems that few realise that this same kind of search for identity and tradition led to one of the most difficult regimes in the history of South Africa, Afrikaner nationalism. And so, we are again where we started, historically and culturally speaking. As a result of Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid was begun by the South African government. Now, with a renewed search for identity, I am afraid that South Africa may face many of its old trials anew. Without an honest acknowledgement of the similarities of the situation, I fear that history may repeat itself.