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Dreams I’ll Send You | Essay 8
A birthday month practice
For the month of February 2025, I’ve decided to publish a micro essay once a day. I described the why and what over here.
Last year, I spent a week in the Western Cape in South Africa as part of a board retreat for Electric South, one of my favorite organizations. I decided to write about last year’s trip today because the U.S. has moved to cut funding to South Africa in reaction to the ICJ case of South Africa against Israel and for its project of land reparations to Black people who were dispossessed and removed during apartheid. There’s a bitter irony that the US, one of the countries that eventually came to support the toppling of apartheid, is now isolating South Africa in this way.
I was there in May of 2024, in the middle of the 30th anniversary celebrations of apartheid’s end, the ruling in the ICJ case against Israel, and general elections. It was fascinating to be there then. It felt alive, as if the country was vibrating from possibilities for change.
Change towards what, no one exactly knew ahead of the elections. South Africa is complicated — what country racked by decades of colonialism isnt’? — and the possibilities for change, toward progress for all or for resource capture by the few, are many. People’s conversations were full of both concern and hope brought on by South…
