The photos included in this post were taken over my many visits to South Africa. Those of you who were Dance Umbrella (best dance festival on the planet!) aficionados should scroll through. They’re among my favorite pictures of all times and I want them included in one more blog book. So enjoy a visit back with me or skip if you’ve already seen them before or are tired of travel posts…

Posted August 11, 2022: South Africa is a big deal in my life. While the next few posts will be about the South African travel of 2022, previous visits are always scrolling in the background on my mind’s screen. The dance and friends, the history and geography, and the experiences involved in going to/being in/leaving from that grand land, are present in my thoughts and words whenever I write. My first time in South Africa was in 2005 and the last, this summer of 2022, with seven or eight visits in between, all connected with dance except for two. I’ve been to the continent of Africa many more times and have enjoyed every country, city, experience, but no other place has engaged me quite like South Africa.

Why this attachment to such a distant place? Well, it’s as big and bold and beautiful as the US with surprisingly similar histories and problems, and its own wealth of inspiring heroes and monstrous villains. But my fascination isn’t scholarly, although that’s a piece of it—my kind of love for the place was born in dance, especially contemporary dance and dance-theater. I’ve written about this before and noted that at the core of my obsession was a Johannesburg dance festival called Dance Umbrella, launched in 1989 and a vital part of the South African and African dance scene until recently.

Dance Umbrella with some of my favorite people in that, or any world—a most favorite memory. A city no one seems able to figure out, then or now. But the dancing was the best! Here’s my first blog description of Dance Umbrella, the festival: Johannesburg, South Africa hosts the best dance festival on the continent in my humble opinion; one of the nicest anywhere. Almost all are SA artists, most from or connected to Joburg. It is impressive. Not so many cities could present a festival of this variety and strength, all with regional artists—NYC, Paris/a few other Euro cities, Tokyo, Rio? Maybe that’s it … For me, for now I will just tell what I love and what moves me, and what I hear these captivating dance makers telling me. Maybe my role is to tell the layman’s dance stories.

So many memories, photos, and blog posts from those dancing years in South Africa, but since then I’ve made two trips back with family, both wonderful in their own ways, but with those long-ago dancers forever on my mind’s YouTube channel, I’m always just a little melancholic, including this summer when, almost up until the day of departure, I told myself this was it, my forever farewell to the continent. And then—the day of leaving, and on the long flight to Morocco, I thought of little else but how I would get back—just one more visit, I said; this cannot be the last time, I promised myself. It’s always like that when I leave that place. So who knows the truth of that parting declaration, but on July 4, 2022, when Celia, Sara, and I boarded our flight in Cape Town bound for North Africa and then home, it probably was the last last time?

2022. I’ve been back for nearly a month now and I’m finally ready to complete my accounting of this year’s adventure on the African continent—beginning with a short background paragraph here. Nelson Mandela’s presidency ended in 1998, and while it hadn’t been without strife, the Rainbow Nation seemed secure in its nationhood, with Thabo Mbeki freely elected and serving from 1999 to 2008. But the grand old ANC (African National Congress), party largely responsible for the end of apartheid had embraced corruption as enthusiastically as they had fought for freedom, and the disastrous Jacob Zuma was elected, and would remain in office until 2018—by which time the state would be captured. Zuma was a precursor of our very own Trump—a joke of a human being (but the humor was extremely dark) and the scary stories just kept and keep coming four year after he’s been booted out of office. At corruption Zuma was a master…without being particularly smart, charismatic, articulate…in fact without any redeeming qualities. He got further into the game of debasing every department and level of government than Trump only because he had the Gupta brothers, three inordinately clever and crooked gentlemen from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. They had moved to South Africa for the express purpose of streamlining corruption to the level where their web of greed and sleaze literally captured every branch of government as well as what was probably the majority of other major South African institutions. Now, state capture is probably the most common way of referring to the recent past and present condition of South African government. While most governments in the world have been captured by the greedy to some extent, it took Zuma and the Guptas to almost completely turn a government comprised of former freedom fighters into a seriously odoriferous cesspool.

There are plenty of excellent books exploring how it all happened, but it’s really thanks to Dirk, our scholarly driver/guide/best friend, for a week along the southern coast that I’m up to date on the full story of ‘state capture.’ He told us tales that included the wild adventuring of his ancestors, the Afrikaners (both good and bad), the Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swazi, the Asians, and the British. And, with Dirk, being a former teacher and something of an actor, the time on the road passed much too quickly.

Back to South Africa and me. As with so many, my earliest interest in South Africa was rooted in news about apartheid…the endless horror, brutalities and indignities. Considering the American system of apartheid which was at least as brutal, it seems odd that we in this country didn’t turn our collective gaze on our own practices, and work as hard to end segregation, racism, and inequality between races and ethnicities here, as we worked to shed light on the wrongs of South Africa.

And then there’s another, maybe one of the biggest of deals in my life. Books. Thanks to books and more books, many purchased as I began traveling to South Africa, and not a few of those, bought at Clarke’s Bookshop in Cape Town and shipped or lugged with wrenched shoulders home—I’m a little informed. Books are my great pleasure and the primary hope for civilization in general. Learners (who are usually readers) will save the world if it is to be saved!

So I bought a bigger suitcase.