
Ek lees op BBC News: “Italy has warned that an influx of Tunisian migrants arriving on its shores could have devastating consequences for all European nations. / Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said migrants who have landed on the island of Lampedusa threaten the institutional and social structures of Europe. / The EU border agency is sending patrol boats and aircraft to assist Italy. / In another development, a boat was intercepted off Sicily carrying about 30 people believed to be from Egypt. / Italian police said the boat was intercepted overnight off the coast near Ragusa. / Meanwhile, in Tunisia, the authorities have lifted a night-time curfew.”
‘n Mens sou sweer hulle berig oor ‘n militêre inval! Ek lees op ‘n ander webblad: ‘A train carrying Tunisian immigrants from Italy was halted at the French border Sunday in an escalation of an international dispute over the fate of North African migrants fleeing political unrest for refuge in Europe. / But France blamed what it said were hundreds of activists on the train planning a demonstration in France, and posing a problem to public order. Traffic was re-established by evening — but not before Italy lodged a formal protest.” / At no time was there a … closing of the border between France and Italy,” French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henri Brandet said. It was an “isolated problem,” he said by telephone, “an undeclared demonstration.”‘
Tunisië: Frantz Fanon het op ‘n stadium daar gewoon, tydens die burgeroorlog in Algerië. In sy essay, ‘The “North African Syndrom”‘, skryf hy juis oor migrasie uit Noord Afrika na Frankryk.
Hy skryf: ‘Men come and go along a corridor you have built for them, where you have provided no bench on which they can rest, where you have erected a lot of scarecrows that viciously smack them in the face, and hurt their cheeks, their chests, their hearts.
Where they find no room
where you leave them no room
where there is absolutely no room for them
and you dare tell me it doesn’t concern you!
that it’s no fault of yours!’
Hy skryf: ‘All those men who are hungry, all those men who are cold, all those men who are afraid… All those men of whom we are afraid, who crush the jealous emerald of our dreams, who twist the fragile curve of our smiles, all those men we face, who ask us no questions, but to whom we put strange ones. Who are they?’
Hy skryf: ‘Who are they, those creatures starving for humanity who stand buttressed against impalpable frontiers (though I know them from experience to be terribly distinct) of complete recognition?’
Hy skryf: ‘His evolution and the story of his life. It would be better to say the history of his death. A daily death. / A death in the tram, / a death in the doctor’s office, / a death with the prostitutes, / a death on the job site, / a death at the movies, / a multiple death in the newspapers, / a death in the fear of all decent folk of going out after midnight. / A death, / yes a DEATH.’
Hy skryf: ‘If the standard of living made available to the North African in France is still higher than the one he is accustomed to at home, this means that there is still a good deal to be done in his country, in that “other part of France”. / That there are houses to be built, schools to be opened, roads to be laid out, slums to be torn down, cities to be made to spring from the earth, men and women and children to be adorned with smiles. / This means that there is work to be done over there, human work, that is, work which is the meaning of a home. Not that of a room or a barrack building. It means that over the whole territory of the French nation (the metropolis and the French Union), there are tears to be wiped away, inhuman attitudes to be fought, condescending ways of speech to be ruled out, men to be humanized.’
Hy skryf: ‘Your solution, sir?’
Hy skryf: ‘Don’t push me too far. Don’t force me to tell you what you ought to know, sir. If YOU do not reclaim the man who is before you, how can I assume that you reclaim the man that is in you?’
Hy skryf: ‘If YOU do not demand the man, if YOU do not sacrifice the man that is in you so that the man who is on this earth shall be more than a body, more than a Mohammed, by what conjurer’s trick will I have to acquire the certainty that you, too, am worthy of my love?’
Hy skryf dit alles in 1952.

Dankie aan Andries en Desmond vir die aanhalings en verwysings. Die skrywer wat die afgeslagde menslikeheid blootlê pleks van Eoropese vrese vir getalle.
Andries, ek het Gibson se boek onlangs gekoop en lees dit tans aandagtig. Dit is die moeite werd en ek is mal oor die omslagontwerp: Fanon se gesig, die verontwaardiging daarin, die toepaslike emosie wanneer nie net jou regte nie maar jou (mens)waardigheid vertrap word. Fanon se gesig: mens kan jou verbeel hy kyk na ‘n foto van Andries Tatane, of na oop toilette, of na daardie mugu, Steve Hofmeyr, daardie siniese, opportunistiese peddler van kleinburgerlike haatspraak en vernedering.
(PS. Jy kan ook op die internet gaan luister na Achille Mbembe se onlangse Du Bois lesing, ook oor Fanon. ‘n Heeltemal ander benadering weer as die van Gibson!)
Desmond, op daardie noot (as jy perdalks in Gauteng is), ‘n advertensie van Boekehuis in Aucklandpark:
Jacob Dlamini & Dan Magaziner in conversation with Nigel Gibson about his book, “Fanonian Practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo”
Has post-apartheid South Africa been able to chart a course away from the all too familiar script of a postcolonial crisis, rooted in the narrow nationalism and neocolonialism that Fanon so vividly described?
How might Fanon, the revolutionary, think and act in the face of contemporary social crises?
When: Wednesday 25 May 2011, 6 for 6:30pm
Where: BOEKEHUIS Bookshop, Cnr. Lothbury and Fawley streets, Auckland Park
RSVP: by Tues. 24 May on 011 482 3609 or Boekehuis@boekehuis.co.za