Maggie Messitt Explores Three Complex Sides of South Africa at Bowers Writers House

What do elephants, newspapers and rimbewu have in common? South Africa, and now Elizabethtown College. The connection is immersion journalist, creative nonfiction writer and the Bowers Writers House Scholar-in-Residence, Maggie Messitt. In 2003, 24-year-old Messitt bought a one-way ticket to South Africa and planned to stay there for 18 months. She stayed and lived in rural, northeastern South Africa for eight years, choosing to live in a tent at first. During this time, she founded a writing school for women and edited for a community newspaper. Later, Messitt wrote a book about the people and circumstances she encountered there, titled “The Rainy Season.”

 “When I found out about this first book that she was writing and what she had going on, I was intrigued by it. I liked her energy and her passion, and I thought this is someone who would be really good for the Elizabethtown community,” Director of the Bowers Writers House Jesse Waters said.

Unlike previous scholar-in-residences who stayed at the house for a limited time, Messitt and her dog Shinga will be staying at the Bowers Writers House for the whole 2015 fall semester. During her first event, “South Africa in Three Acts: Elephant, Newspapers, and Rimbewu,” Messitt explained she often approaches storytelling as a curator, allowing readers to make connections for themselves. She described different aspects of South Africa, but didn’t tell the audience what to think about them. Instead, she asked her audience to consider each and to think about what they have to say about South African history and the world in general.

The first topic Messitt explored involved elephants. She explained that the human-made boundaries of Kruger National Park, a conservation area the size of Wales, came with responsibilities to keep nature balanced. Elephants living there grew in numbers. This led to culling, or killing a certain amount of a species, to avoid negative impacts on other species.

Messitt said that people feel a special connection with elephants, and because of this and international pressure, the South African government outlawed the culling of elephants in 1995. Everything looked fine in the park from the outside, according to Messitt, but there were problems lurking beneath the surface. Messitt saw some of the signs for herself while in a microlight helicopter following a wild fire with grass and fire experts from the park. The burnt trees were snapping due to the elephants’ overgrazing. In 2008, there were about 20,000 elephants in the park, while the capacity was about 7,000. The South African government lifted the ban on culling. International pressure to stop the practice returned.

After sharing this information, Messitt went on to talk about newspapers in South Africa, or more accurately, the lack of rural newspapers. After opening a newsroom “in-between a chicken shack and the railroad tracks,” as she described it, Messitt worked with the community to stress the importance of media in a democratic nation. During the apartheids, or legal racial segregation, a total of three television stations aired and the government censored the newspapers.

Messitt told the story of Photographer Sam Nzima who witnessed the Soweto Uprising in 1976. He took photographs of the students shot by the police. The officials tried to confiscate the rolls of film, but he managed to hide one. For publishing these in an international newspaper, he was pushed out of the urban areas and into the rural homelands to hide and then put under house arrest until the end of the apartheids in 1994.

The last aspect of South African rural life Messitt talked about was rimbewu. This Xitsonga word means sex, both the act and gender. “One out of three girls is raped by the time she graduates from matric – high school. And every eight hours, a woman is killed by her husband or boyfriend. In fact, [South Africa is] the number one place in the world for spousicide. You can’t talk about South Africa without thinking about the crimes against women, most often committed by a family member, that very few people discuss,” Messitt stated.

Messitt also explored how complicated AIDS education has been. She explained although the apartheids government gave away free condoms, they weren’t trusted. Many residents believed the condoms transmitted the virus. She also discussed how polygamy, the role of bride-price and the Catholic Church’s ban on condom-use contributes to the HIV-AIDS epidemic and gender inequality in modern South Africa.

First-year Mika Thomas attended the event and said, “The idea of the rainy season bringing about a fearful type of hope was a really powerful image for me. That kind of lingers with me still.”

Maggie Messitt’s next events are October 13 and November 10. More information is available at www.etown.edu/writershouse. She will also be around campus, eating in the Brossman Commons and working on her second book in the High Library.