Ways of Staying

by Kevin Bloom

After the brutal, random murder of his cousin, Kevin Bloom was left with shock, grief, and angerApartheid South Africa. But when his own cousin was killed in a vicious random attack, the questions he'd been asking about the troubling political and social changes in his country took on a sickeningly personal urgency. Suddenly, it felt as though this South Africa was no longer the place he'd grown up in or the place which felt like home. Still stunned by the loss, Bloom begins to trace the path of violence from the murder of his cousin in the hills of Zululand to the fatal shooting of the historian David Rattray, linking these individual crimes to the riven political landscape, and the riots and xenophobic attacks of 2008. Visceral, complicated, and compassionate, Ways of Staying is an eloquent account of how the white community is coping with black majority rule, and in particular how one family is coping in the aftermath of their own private tragedy.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, South Africa

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this book would be painful to read and it was. I think I was hoping that the book would offer up meangingful reasons for staying in South Africa, rather than ways of coping.

Bloom offers up the chance to do something meaningful for a suffering society as one reason for staying, but it is hard to hold on to when the book presents one horrific, violent story after another.

I did feel that the writer resorted a little bit to the white oral tradition of the "crime anecdote". You can tell endless stories of crime in suburbia, and they are all horrific. There are also endless stories that could be told of crime in the townships, and they are horrifying too. But we know why the people in the townships stay. They have no choice. Theirs is not Bloom's story to tell.

At the same time, I think these stories really are all there is to tell. They are our stories and they are South Africa, and what else is there? You can't make anything more of situations like that. You either stay, and survive, or leave and survive. I can't see a higher moral or point to be made beyond the endless telling of these stories. There is just life, and carrying on with things.


I did feel uncomfortable that this was all seen from the point of view of why whites were staying or leaving. One of the reasons why I felt uncomfortable was that even the story of the xenophobic violence was drawn from the point of view of what it meant for white people in South Africa, and if it threatened them. Those incidents were terrible and they were terrible for the black people involved. That violence, that story, belongs to the black foreigners. I didn't like that it was colonised by white fear.

There is another thing about the book that makes me feel uncomfortable. The writer wonders why the murders of white people have been dominating the headlines, and he postulates a few ideas. But as far as I can see, the murder of white people always dominate the headlines, because white people still have the power and the money to make such cases high profile, the media still writes to a white-dominated audience that wants to read about white people, and when we get down to it, in South Africa, white lives still count more. Many white people have the power and the luxury to be afraid and to decide what to do about it. Mos township-dwellers live with powerlessness over their fear. But Bloom knows this and he does point it out, the fact that white people can afford to hire ex-military personnel as suburban security guards.

Overall, I think it is an excellent book, and I will keep it and read it again. It made me think, about my own reasons for wanting to go back to South Africa, and in the end my reasons are his reasons for staying. The place that made you who you are is home, even if it is a place that may not want you or be safe for you.

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began to read this on a flight home from South Africa and completed it safely, if coldly, a few days before Easter here in England and in a way that sense of a foot in both camps is exactly the feeling that Kevin Bloom conveys very movingly in these pages. The dilemma can be summarized: I am an "English South African", I love this land, but recognise its not really "mine", and I have my UK passport in my back pocket...so should I stay...?

I came to my own conclusions decades ago and no amount of nostalgia, however much I miss some very dear people, persuades me that it was wrong for me. Becausefor me what is important is the freedom to sleep fairly peacefully at night knowing how very unlikely it is my home will be invaded and loved ones harmed. To stop at a traffic light without going on higher alert...such a simple thing yet so easily taken for granted.

This is heartfelt, and honest, sometimes has horrifying things to reveal, and is a book anyone who feels even a flicker of affection for Africa should read, whether you stayed or went.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ways of Staying, by author Kevin Bloom, is an excellent look into post-apartheid South Africa. Bloom, a white South African, examines fear and crime from the perspective of white South Africans as well as immigrants and rural to urban migrants. Most effective about the book is its ability to set the scene and tell the stories of the Paterson family, the Solomon family; the Muderhwa’s, Tony Maurice, as well as Bloom’s own extended family. I have a graduate certificate in African Studies and wrote my final paper on South African Born Frees. In addition, I studied abroad throughout the country in 2013 and can attest to the vivid and accurate imagery he gives of Johannesburg and other places in the country. I would highly recommend this book to those interested in contemporary South Africa as well as those interested in the continuing impacts that Apartheid still has to this day.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book about the moebius strip dilemma: how do I live in the place I fear and love the most? Kevin Bloom discusses the shifting sands of politics and the escalation of crime fueled by the growing hatred of South Africans of the makwerekwere, immigrant Africans. The image of the rainbow nation has been shattered. And with the clear conclusion that South Africa cannot be policed (see Jonny Steinberg's excellent "Thin Blue: The Unwritten Rules of Policing South Africa") the question is whether the country can survive as distrust continues to blow communities apart. This is a country that behaves as if it were at war.

Bloom describes the failure of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Truth is good -- those that actually stepped up and told the truth -- but justice is essential. Without it we have to question what is the future of South Africa.

Bloom's reason for his return to South Africa is emotional -- but his analysis of the country's crises is clear-eyed and courageous.

I will most definitely be looking for other books by Bloom.

[Caleb Benadum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and thoughtful, Kevin Bloom's reflections on South Africa, crime, politics, and race relations are worth looking at. This is not a textbook, by any means, but it is honest, and it asks questions that every faction within the "rainbow nation" would have a hard time answering. In the end there is one question that stands above all others: twenty years after the end of a institutional program of segregation, when the scars are still visible, the problems tangible, and the history doesn't seem so far away, what can or should be done? What does historical justice look like? Economic justice? What debts are owed and to whom?

[hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. I feel like there's not much more to say. It's a reflection on the possibility of staying in South Africa, even when many are leaving. It's hard to explain what it is -- part memoir, part journalism... it's very thoughtful and informative, as well as moving and well-written. A little gem.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horrifying, bleak, and often a bit too self-congratulatory: the martyrdom of staying. But enlightening at the same time.