Foreign Policy 2017 01-02

I T WAS AN IMAGE OUT OF A BYGONE ERA: recently the world’s most famous oppres- A former student of political science, he 150 young white people jammed onto a narrow pathway on the cam- sors—now belong on its list of beleaguered quoted five obscure philosophy profes- pus of the University of Pretoria (UP), one of South Africa’s premier universities, fac- ethnic minorities. sors in an hourlong conversation. When ing off angrily against hundreds of black students. Tensions had been broiling The group launched in 2006 and for a I showed up to our meeting, the day after for months, since at least October 2015. A group of black student activists had while was small. In recent years, though, Americans elected Donald Trump as their organized a series of demonstrations— first against the university’s fee structure, its growth has been exponential, thanks next president, he handed me a 2004 Sam- then against its use of outsourced work- ers, and finally against curricula in Afri- to a broader trend in South Africa’s trou- uel Huntington article on the new rise of kaans, the language of Afrikaners, the white minority who ruled South Africa bled identity politics. Nelson Mandela’s ethnocentrism in the contemporary West. for four brutal decades in the second half of the 20th century. African National Congress (ANC)—the lib- AfriForum’s tactics and philosophies That morning in February 2016, black eration movement that helped free the are controversial. Is it fair, skeptics ask, for students had entered classrooms to pro- test instruction in Afrikaans. As they country from white minority rule, but white people to identify themselves as an moved across campus and sang anti-Af- rikaans songs, white kids who opposed also championed forgiveness and racial embattled minority, given their long his- them formed a human chain in the bot- tleneck of the grassy walkway. According reconciliation—is suffering a decline in tory of dominance? Where does legitimate to Jaco Grobbelaar and Henrico Barnard, two white participants, they shouted at influence. Today, a new, more radical gen- cultural preservation end and repugnant the demonstrators, vowing to run blacks off “their” campus. eration of young black people is finding white nationalism begin? For many South As the South African summer sun beat its voice, arguing that whites still main- Africans, both black and white, the fight to down, tempers flared. At least two students exchanged punches. “There were fists fly- tain far too much power in institutions retain relics of the old country—including ing,” Grobbelaar recalls. Eventually, secu- rity guards dispersed the crowd. like the country’s universities The white students had been rallied in and banks. Although Afrikan- part by a group called AfriForum, South Africa’s most established advocacy organi- ers account for just 5 percent zation fighting on behalf of white people— specifically Afrikaners. The organization of the national population is popular at universities, but its man- date extends well beyond campus poli- of 51 million, streets named tics. Established in the wake of apartheid’s demise, AfriForum represents white inter- “Voortrekker” (“pioneer” in ests in a South Africa under black majority rule. With the backing of 200,000 mem- Afrikaans) anchor every small Buys’s project was bers, the group files court cases alleging town. More than 20 years after ambitious: unfair discrimination against the Afrikaans liberation, half of South Afri- language and mounts letter-writing cam- can blacks still live in pov- paigns for the preservation of Afrikaner erty, while whites have gotten cultural heritage, such as public statues and Afrikaner town names. It even car- wealthier. According to the last Rebrand the Afrikaner ries petitions to the United Nations, lay- South African census, taken in identity from ing out the case that Afrikaners—until 2011, white people earn on aver- age six times the income black THE OPPRESSORS to the South Africans do. Black youth increasingly find this unten- OPPRESSED. able—and they’re agitating for a more substantial reckoning with the country’s past. “There’s a very, very big polarization,” Flip Buys, one of AfriForum’s founders and current advi- the use of Afrikaans in public universities— sors, tells me, and whites feel increasingly is nothing more than a bid to cement white threatened. With his thinning red hair, people’s demographically disproportion- dress shirt, and snugly knotted gray tie, ate influence in public life. Buys, 53, looks more like a middle man- To Buys, though, AfriForum speaks to ager from The Office than a man who has the legitimate anxiety engendered by white helped shepherd South Africa’s most prom- people’s vision of the world to come, one inent Afrikaner nationalist movement. that will look very different from the past One of his eyes is higher than the other, and the present. “People feel their world and his glasses skew the other way, ampli- change,” he says. “They see their workplace fying the effect. Yet his staid look reveals changing. They see their children’s schools a man who considers himself a thought changing. They see their small town chang- leader of South Africa’s white survival. ing. This is why we have the movement.” 50 JAN | FEB 2017

Alana Bailey has helped grow AfriForum into a 200,000-member advocacy group. pendence war in Mozambique, situated to South Africa’s northeast, joined his school. B UYS DOESN’T COME from rarified to mow down black protesters and jailed “Their parents were missing,” Buys says. breeding. Afrikaners began arriv- leaders of the anti-apartheid movement. “We were talking on the playground and ing in South Africa in the late 17th said, ‘We won’t let our parents be killed!’” century, primarily from the Netherlands, Apartheid’s ideology went beyond colo- to cultivate wheat and wine grapes. Well nial politics. It was a potent worldview. In 1976, Buys saw backlash in his own into the 20th century, they remained The system was a cross between Dutch country when black students in the largely poor and semiliterate. The British Calvinism doctrine and midcentury pseu- township of Soweto rebelled against ran South Africa then as an imperial col- do-scientific theories alleging the different being forced to speak Afrikaans in their ony; during the Second Boer War, which capabilities of various races. From these schools. Protests quickly spread all over the British government started in 1899 to principles, Afrikaners developed a pow- South Africa. “We saw this as the beginning seize territory from the Afrikaners to mine erful and holistic identity. The group was of the revolution,” Buys says. He remem- for gold and diamonds, British soldiers no longer a subjugated white underclass bers wondering as a young teen whether incarcerated Afrikaner women and chil- living under the yoke of the British crown. he would still have his “house in 20 years.” dren in concentration camps. Buys’s pater- They were a holy race selected by God to nal grandfather was one of these children. settle South Africa. In the 1930s and ’40s, He finished his political science degree “He never talked about it,” Buys tells me, political leaders even erected an immense in December 1989, just before the Afrikaner but it left a scar on the family, a sense of monument to honor the day of a battle at government set Mandela free from prison. embattlement and wounded pride. Buys’s which God supposedly empowered Afri- Buys remembers the fear he felt then, and father later had to leave school after the kaners to triumph over the Zulus, a black the anger toward South Africa’s political sixth grade to support his family. tribe. At the stroke of noon every Dec. 16, leaders. Since the middle of the century, the anniversary of the 1838 battle, a hole in Afrikaner officials had told whites that black In 1948, an Afrikaner-led political party the monument’s vaulted ceiling still lets in people were existentially dangerous and that took power from the British in an election. sunlight, a man-made manifestation of the privilege was their God-given right. In the The new government consolidated South miracle of Afrikaner chosenness. space of a few short years, the message to Africa’s racist laws into an all-encompass- whites from the country’s leaders, both black ing form of racial segregation they termed Yet Buys’s family in particular knew the and white, had changed to “trust your former apartheid, which means “separateness” in fragility of white political rule in Africa. enemy”—one who had suffered greatly over Afrikaans. It reserved the best jobs and the His uncle had become a minister in Brit- centuries of white rule and had every imag- best farmland for white people; blacks were ish-colonized Kenya and witnessed as most inable reason to exact retribution. confined to overcrowded so-called ethnic whites fled the country in the 1960s during homelands and had to carry a pass to enter the violent Mau Mau uprising. He told the Even after the apartheid government’s “white” neighborhoods. Apartheid could family stories of whites murdered during ouster, most Afrikaners stayed in South be vicious. The regime’s police used guns the revolt. In 1974, when Buys was 11, two Africa. More than other colonial groups, young Portuguese refugees from the inde- they have always insisted they are African, despite their European ancestry. Their iden- tity is deeply enmeshed with South Africa’s landscapes, the quiet deserts and vaunting mountains they believe the Lord chose for them. “I feel more at home in Botswana than in some German town,” Buys tells me. So he got together with two other young intellectual Afrikaner friends. Their proj- ect was ambitious: Rebrand the Afrikaners from oppressors to the oppressed in order to save them from black retribution and secure them a stable place in their new country. The young men set up a reading group to pore over the works of philoso- phers on ethnicity—The Power of Iden- tity by Manuel Castells, for example. They studied the constitutions of countries like Switzerland and Hungary that include provisions to protect minority cultures. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 51

“I began to think of myself as a liberal inter- Flip Buys helped launch AfriForum in the mid-2000s. nationalist, not a white racist,” Buys says, with palpable relief in his voice. A FRIFORUM’S DEPUTY HEAD, Alana Bai- employee is 27. The decor of the head- ley, is short-haired, wide-hipped, quarters is branded with the group’s funky “We’re finding such inspiration from the and wide-eyed, as if caught in orange-and-green logo. The orange is no Catalonians and the Basques,” he notes, perpetual surprise by the group’s popu- accident: It is borrowed from the original hesitantly fingering a copy of The Power of larity. In the mid-2000s, AfriForum had flag of one of the early Afrikaner settler Identity that lay on his desk. “Even Tibet.” three employees; now there are more than republics. The brand seems to take the 120. The group hosts a publisher, maga- place of a national emblem. Soon the group began organizing. In zine, and documentary film crew, which the mid-1990s, one of the Afrikaners’ recently shot a video alleging that the ANC In the mid-2000s, AfriForum’s founders big concerns was affirmative action. The committed atrocities before 1994. There put out a poll in the main Afrikaans-lan- ANC, helmed at the time by then-President are three full-time social media special- guage newspaper, Rapport. “What are your Thabo Mbeki, vowed to create a system that ists and eight women manning a hotline minimum requirements to feel you have a reserved jobs for black people in govern- on which Afrikaners can report discrim- viable future in South Africa?” it asked the ment and at formerly white-dominated ination or ask for medical help. paper’s primarily white readers. Answers companies. Led by Buys, the three men took came flooding back: to feel safe; to hear over an old, nearly moribund labor union It costs only 30 rand ($2) a month to their language spoken in the public square; and invited Afrikaners to join, intending to become a member of AfriForum, but so to still feel as though South Africa was their redirect its focus toward combating affirma- ardent are the group’s devotees that they home. Today, those responses continue to tive action. They had some early legal suc- overpay by an average of 57 rand ($4). When inform the organization’s key campaigns: cesses; in one, they reinstated an Afrikaner I toured the group’s headquarters on the to make attacks against white farmers, of employee with the state energy utility who outskirts of Pretoria, Bailey showed me the which there have been thousands since had lost her job to a black worker. room where the organization packages its apartheid’s end, a “priority crime” for welcome parcels. There are copies of its the police; to preserve Afrikaans as a lan- By the early 2000s, the union, called Sol- Afrikaans-language magazine, with articles guage of instruction at historically white idarity, began to receive letters from Afri- bearing titles such as “Afrikaans Is in My schools and universities; and to save Afri- kaners who demanded more. Could you Genes” and “#SaveAfrikaans.” The orga- kaner town names—Pretoria, in particular. help us with crime in our communities, nization seems self-consciously trendy, which spiked after apartheid’s end? Could striving to diminish the shame an Afri- “The urge to change the name of Pretoria you help us fight the new black-led gov- kaner might feel at being part of a group flares up at times,” Bailey says, as she offers ernment’s efforts to change the names of dedicated to preserving what could be me a plate of cookies in her spacious office. I towns from Afrikaner heroes to black ones? called white privilege. All its campaigns ask her why the issue is so important to Afri- Buys and his friends saw there was room are broadcast over Twitter. According to kaners. “You have emotional ties to a place for broader organizing around the preser- Bailey, the average age of an AfriForum name,” she muses. Bailey speaks of a recent vation of Afrikaner identity. “We wanted to public meeting on the subject. “A guy said, change the balance of forces,” Kallie Kriel, a younger member of the trio, tells me. AfriForum was spun off Solidarity and envisioned as a movement funded by small membership donations from Afrikaners all over South Africa. The founders filed for nonprofit status and drew up a “civil rights charter.” Modeled after the ANC’s 1955 Freedom Charter, which undergirded the party’s case for black liberation, the manifesto articulates a platform for Afri- kaners “to feel at home as first-class citi- zens in the country of their birth.” “We, the compilers and supporters of this charter, exercise the deliberate choice to lead a meaningful existence as Afrikan- ers,” it reads, “with our deeply-rooted foun- dation at the southernmost tip of Africa. We know no other home.” 52 JAN | FEB 2017

‘When you change a place name, you’ve was consistent with the spirit of the forum. larly on college campuses, is renewing feel- ings of white nationalism among youth, changed the universe.’ So you can see why Moved by the stories of other minorities, fueled by the perception that the black majority is punishing them for crimes com- people want to change it. They want a uni- particularly Tibetans and Yazidis, she mitted before they were alive. verse they can feel more at home in,” she found kinship with her fellow speakers. Grobbelaar grew up, like many Afri- kaners, with a reverence for South Afri- says, referring to black South Africans. “There was a Yazidi woman who had a pho- ca’s natural environment. He tells me that he “always liked rocks” and now wants to Bailey sits back in her chair and pauses, tograph of a celebration,” Bailey says. “She become a geologist at a manganese mine. But Grobbelaar claims he can’t find work, as if considering the justice of this per- put that up on the screen. Then she said, at least in part because he’s white: “When I applied for jobs at mines, you have to give spective. “But for us, if even the name has ‘From all those people, I’m the only one left what race you are.” In line with former pres- ident Mbeki’s affirmative action program, changed,” she explains, “it’s like everything alive.’ You realize why you have to speak to avoid a fine, large South African com- panies are obliged to make black people a is alien now.” up before it’s too late.” significant percentage of their workforces. Names aren’t the only things AfriFo- His failure to secure a mining job con- cretized Grobbelaar’s awareness that his rum sees as endangered. One night in “DID YOU HEAR about the blackface inci- whiteness might be a disadvantage in contemporary South Africa. His father April 2015, black protesters smeared lime- dent?” Henrico Barnard asks. He is sitting encouraged him to sign on to work with AfriForum, and he became one of its lead- green paint over a statue of Paul Kruger, a at a café next to Jaco Grobbelaar, his fellow ers on the UP campus, one of five univer- sities where the group is active. “It stands 19th-century Afrikaner leader, in Pretoria. participant in the AfriForum counter-pro- for the rights of people, of our people, the Afrikaner people,” Grobbelaar says. In response, AfriForum members posed test at UP last February. They are dressed He and Barnard partly credit the clash by the statue with a banner decrying van- neatly—the brown-haired Barnard in an last February with a recent swell in Afri- Forum’s membership at the university. In dalism. A famous Afrikaner singer also AfriForum polo shirt and the blond Grob- 2015, AfriForum’s Pretoria branch had 300 members; last year, 1,200 more students chained herself to it. belaar in a crisp blue button-down. Key signed up. “We need to stand up for our culture,” Grobbelaar says. “The only way In addition to organizing direct-action activists in AfriForum Youth, a wing of the we can save it is to stand up for it.” Because they feel there’s “no room” for whites in campaigns, AfriForum provides services organization, the two 20-something men national politics, “the solution lies in our community,” he continues. AfriForum pro- to its members that should fall to South excitedly relay an episode at UP in which vides a vehicle to try to control a future that “is looking very uncertain.” (The threats Africa’s government. It independently tests white students went to a costume party aren’t far on the horizon; in December, a Pretoria court affirmed that English would municipal water quality, repairs potholes in with their faces painted black. A picture be the sole language of instruction at UP.) rural areas, and runs community watches. of the young women leaked out online. The week before my conversation with Barnard and Grobbelaar, a black activist Hermann Giliomee, a prominent South After protests by black students, the uni- and novelist named Panashe Chigumadzi published an op-ed in the New York Times African historian, explains, “The key thing versity’s management expelled the women referring to an episode that had recently occurred at a girls’ high school in Pretoria. that Afrikaners lost in 1994 was the state.” from their dormitories. Administrators had enforced standards for the girls’ hair that forbade Afros, and the AfriForum replaces that. “We represented them,” Grobbelaar says During a recent trip to Geneva, Bailey proudly. (AfriForum Youth petitioned the gave a talk at the U.N. Forum on Minority university to reinstate the women in their Issues. After her speech, a delegate from dorms.) He claims hijinks like the offend- the South African Embassy stood up. ing costumes are just part of “university “Don’t listen to these people!” Bailey life” and that student traditions are “being recalls the woman yelling. “These are peo- broken down.” ple coming to defend white privilege!” Bai- “They”—meaning black students— ley, however, maintains that her mission “come along and say, ‘We don’t want these age-old traditions,’” Grobbelaar complains. “But that causes our culture to be nonexistent on campus.” The blackface episode was indicative of AfriForum’s popu- “The key thing Afrikaners larity within a demographic that might not be expected to support lost in 1994 it: whites born after apartheid. The youth of that generation WAS THE STATE.” are called “bornfrees” in South Africa, and the whites among AFRIFORUM, one them were supposed to have lit- could argue, replaces that. tle connection to Afrikaner pride. But racial polarization, particu- FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 53

black students ended up protesting the mea- cuted into poverty by a vicious, vengeful world does not look after black people.” This perspective, which can increas- sure. Chigumadzi, recalling how as a young black state. The assertion created a huge ingly be seen on young black people’s social woman teachers mangled her name and she controversy: The South African fact-check- media feeds, has not only confirmed the anxieties of the Afrikaner right. It has also felt pressure to keep her own hair from being ing organization Africa Check published a contributed to something of an identity crisis among liberal whites. “I feel kind of too “black,” argued that “white people [still] blistering attack on the claim, using data locked in my white skin,” an Afrikaner poet named Danie Marais says, a “privileged control social and economic institutions [in from the 2011 South African census to esti- white male” not allowed to be fully South African but with nowhere else to go. Now South Africa] despite black majority rule.” mate that the real number of whites living 45, he opposed apartheid in its final days, participating in the Voëlvry Movement, Institutions, she added, “don’t really accom- in informal housing is around 30,000. Cit- a musical collective that produced sub- versive songs criticizing the racist regime. modate our identities.” ing one of South Africa’s most prominent Today, as the head of PEN Afrikaans, he says that he “tries very hard to distance Grobbelaar and Barnard, predictably, dis- think tanks, it also noted that whites have us from AfriForum.” He works to include nonwhite writers in the group, which is agree. “They say the culture should reflect “shown continued economic prosperity focused on literary work in the Afrikaans language; he hopes to mount a “reconcil- since South Africa’s transition iatory conversation” between white and nonwhite writers soon. to democracy in 1994.” Marais’s work speaks to a longing for the However, a more radical type of integration at the heart of Mandela’s project. Yet the new polarization, the utter- “Now you see a rise brand of black nationalism ances by young black activists, and South of a new has been reshaping the coun- Africa’s persistent inequality make him feel try’s politics in recent years— afraid. “I’m very worried for the genera- and perhaps even reinforcing tion of my daughter and stepson,” he says. AFRICAN NATIONALISM some of AfriForum’s con- “Now you see the rise of a new African cerns. This new cohort of nationalism in South Africa,” Marais con- in South Africa. activists goes further than tinues. “It’s a longing for a redress of a their parents’ generation did kind you’ve never seen in history. What is our answer to that? I don’t know. Duck It’s a longing for a REDRESS in criticizing white efforts to and cover? Keep your own little nation- of a kind you’ve preserve their cultural and alism alive?” economic status. Across the never seen in history.” country, campus organizers “It doesn’t make sense to me.” are demanding that univer- sities shed all vestiges of the O NE GROUP OF Afrikaners has carved out another path. In the ear- former apartheid state. The ly-1990s, a handful of Afrikaner families chose to live far from South Afri- young head of a new populist ca’s urban centers in a decrepit farming village in the desert as post-apartheid the land’s demographics,” Grobbelaar says. political party, Julius Malema, has advo- penance. Far from being an oppressed minority, the Oranians, as they call them- “But in my view there are rules in society.” cated forcefully for reparations, calling selves, believe whites still live like the kings of South Africa. “There are times you must conform to the ultimate return of land from whites I met one of the Oranions, a former mis- the standards,” adds Barnard. to blacks “inevitable.” sionary named Carel Boshoff III, during a reporting trip in 2009. His dining room At the high school in question, imagine Chigumadzi, who wrote the New York a girl who “has this big brush hair,” Grob- Times op-ed on the hair scandal, is a belaar says with distaste. “I don’t see how 25-year-old with a fade who’s also involved a girl behind her can see the board.” in anti-colonial protests at universities. “I believe all white people are structurally rac- AFRIFORUM HAS ALWAYS been considered ist,” Chigumadzi tells me, arguing that any backward by South Africa’s black political white person who doesn’t stand for land mainstream. In 2009, Gwede Mantashe, redistribution and other forms of socioeco- who would soon become the chief of the nomic justice is complicit in the continued still-ruling ANC, warned that “organiza- oppression of black South Africans. “I don’t tions like AfriForum are becoming bolder believe white South Africans are Africans. in fighting for the racist cause” and that They remain settlers as long as they have they threaten the empowerment of South not returned land to black people,” she says. Africa’s black population. In 2013, a promi- “I say white people should leave with nent AfriForum employee, Ernst Roets, told what they came on ships with,” she adds. the BBC that 400,000 whites were living “The reason I can be dismissive of white in squatter camps in South Africa, bolster- people is that ultimately the rest of the ing the case that whites were being perse- world will look after them in a way the 54 JAN | FEB 2017

ing his glasses onto his face with one hand. Dashing after the runaways, he got hitched up in some barbed wire. Extricating him- self, he nearly flipped over on the wires like a hapless cartoon character. “It’s not the best image,” he called out to me sadly. “This is certainly a thing that in South Africa, normally, blacks would do.” FLIP BUYS DOESN’T think most Afrikaners should insulate themselves from the coun- try at large, as the Oranians do. AfriFo- rum’s manifesto explicitly insists that the ethnic minority take part in the South African state. Yet its surging popularity reflects the fears among many whites that the vision of an integrated South Africa Panashe Chigumadzi is a novelist and activist. may be dying. table was littered with dirty dishware In Buys’s office, a secretary brings us two and notepads. Many white South Afri- can homes are kept spotless thanks to cups of strong coffee. While we sip them, the help of black maids. But I realized Boshoff was proud of his mess; it was a Afrikaner work ethic. The Orania theme Buys contends that AfriForum’s member- political statement. Across the country, song, performed by a barbershop quartet, a traditional labor structure reinforced plays frequently on the local radio station: ship will only continue to grow as black unequal power dynamics between blacks and whites: Blacks did the grunt work— Everyone understands people push more and more for a society laundry, farmwork—that whites didn’t Self-reliance want to do. Is what it’s all about! that reflects their languages and values Orania can present a difficult transition “What AfriForum doesn’t understand for some whites. During my recent visit, I and prioritizes their economic needs over is that, given our history of oppression, spent an afternoon at a farm with Boshoff’s psychologically, it’s too hard for us not to son, Carel IV. Before he moved to Orania, white people’s. He points to his 24-year- act like exploiters,” he told me. In Orania, he was a philosophy student; now he’s try- a former mining town Boshoff and some ing to build up a new business creating old daughter as an example. “My daughter of his fellow founders bought wholesale cattle-branding devices. A friend of his in the early 1990s, Afrikaners would reject was videotaping the afternoon to make an is an art student, so she’s very liberal,” he racialized class dynamics—and the prom- advertisement for a rancher’s magazine ise of integration. Alone in Orania, Afri- called Red Meat. Despite his recent career says. Recently, she started a business with kaners would be the elites and the janitors. change, Carel still looked as if he belonged in the classroom. Donning polished amber a young black woman, fulfilling Mandela’s More than 20 years after its founding, Cavalli shoes, a burnt-orange dress shirt, and five years after my first visit, I returned and a tweed jacket, Carel awkwardly swat- dream of a country in which whites and to the desert. Orania has grown into a mod- ted a steed’s rear with a tree branch to try est settlement of 1,000 people support- to direct him toward a pen to be branded. blacks stood together. But Buys says she is ing 50 small businesses, from hair salons “Come, come,” he cooed. to stores selling candied pecans. And it Snorting, the cow refused to move. Car- simultaneously becoming more ethnocen- remains deadly serious about its mission. el’s business partner grabbed another one The town office building peddles gift cards by its collar and hauled it into the narrow tric. I ask him if his daughter’s Afrikaner extolling “self-reliance” and miniature stat- pen. Now braying loudly, the others began uettes of the Orania mascot, a little boy roll- to back toward the field’s main gate, which identity is important to her. “Not five years ing up his shirtsleeves to represent the new Carel had forgotten to close. Carel ran over to block their way. ago,” he says. “Now it is.” The cattle, now spooked, broke into a stampede. “Oh, no, no!” Carel cried, hold- He remembers watching TV with her and seeing South Africa’s current presi- dent, Jacob Zuma, dancing in a leopard skin and sacrificing cows for good luck in an election. Zuma is a populist who appeals to and champions blacks’ sense of Afri- can identity, once demeaned as brutal and savage under apartheid. Buys’s daughter, though, was distressed by what she saw. “I may be liberal,” Buys recalls her say- ing, “but this thing in South Africa isn’t going to work.” Q EVE FAIRBANKS is a writer based in Johan- nesburg. She’s working on a book about South Africa. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 55

Schizophrenics and other people with unquiet minds are locked up, medicated, and stigmatized. LISTEN TO THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD radicalPhotograph by Hannah Whitaker Now a movement is telling them they might not be sick at all. BY SAMANTHA M. SHAPIRO 56 JAN | FEB 2017



O When his mother struck him a second time, he hit her back. ONE AFTERNOON ABOUT SEVEN YEARS AGO, recliners arranged in a loose circle. Hadge was nervous. He took a seat in a stuffed In his 20s, while working as a janitor Marty Hadge tentatively stepped out- rocking chair set apart in a corner. and selling drugs to scrape together col- side a two-family, white-shingled house lege tuition, Hadge self-medicated with in the former mill town of Holyoke, Mas- What came next, he hoped, would help alcohol and heroin to drown out the sachusetts. Hadge, who was pushing 50, him silence the urgent voices in his head voices. Over the years, he spent time in lived in one of the units, alone. He wore that had repeated the same cruel refrain nearly every hospital in western Massa- 280 pounds on his 5-foot-2 frame, a side for going on 40 years: Kill yourself. chusetts, from Springfield to Deerfield effect of consuming antipsychotic med- to the Berkshires. He was told at differ- ication for several decades. His skin was Hadge started hearing voices when he ent times that he had bipolar disorder, marred by a haphazard array of tattoos was a small child. Born in West Roxbury, borderline personality disorder, major and scars from hundreds of small cuts a suburban neighborhood in southwest depressive disorder, trauma, and schizo- he’d inflicted on himself. Going out in Boston, his mother was an alcoholic who phrenia. Hadge didn’t put much stock in public wasn’t easy for Hadge, but he was beat him. A neighbor sexually abused him. the diagnoses because they kept changing. desperate to save his own life. When he was 4 or 5, Hadge remembers hav- ing a waking vision of four “dark ghosts” He was prescribed numerous drugs, He didn’t have a car and was afraid of on the stairs leading up to the neighbor’s including Haldol, Thorazine, Lithium, taking the bus, so Hadge set out on foot, apartment, an omen that he would die if Effexor, and Lamictal. “I was drugged to walking down roads dotted with hand- he returned there. where I couldn’t get off the couch, but painted Pentecostal church façades, liquor I still heard voices,” Hadge says. Some stores, and auto-body repair shops. Moun- As a preteen, other voices began calling meds damaged his neurological system; tains and the smoke-stacked ruins of brick to him. Sometimes, they told him he had his face would freeze in strange expres- factories sat in the distance. At the end of to commit suicide or murder his mother. sions, he struggled to read and to remem- his mile-and-a-half journey into down- “They said I had to make a choice, that the ber thoughts, and he sometimes shook town Holyoke was a cozy room at the both of us could not live together,” Hadge so hard that he fell down. Periodically, Western Mass Recovery Learning Commu- recalls. “They could go from being a whis- he stopped taking his pills “to feel alive nity (RLC), which offers assistance to indi- per to yelling so loud it was hard to think.” for a little while.” He would end up in a viduals overcoming trauma, addiction, Once, when he was about 12, his mother hit locked hospital room, naked, not know- and other challenges. Bookshelves were him with a cast-iron pan. Schooled in Bible ing where he was. cluttered with self-help books, plants, an verses about honoring thy parents, Hadge old boombox, and a clock in the shape had never fought off the beatings. That Things got so bad that, when he was of a sun. About eight people, all part of a day, though, a voice urged him to retaliate. 41, Hadge’s college-aged daughter from a support group, sat on worn couches and long-gone romantic relationship declared You have to do this, do this right now! herself his caretaker to prevent him from it shouted. being committed to a psychiatric facil- ity. A caseworker from social services regularly visited the house in Holyoke, which Hadge’s daughter owned, and was happy as long as the patient took his pills. Hadge, though, was too bleary to func- tion outside the walls of his home. And the voices were still there, telling him, You’re too screwed up to fix. With nowhere else to turn, Hadge Googled “peer support and mental health” one day, hoping to find a pro- gram like Alcoholics Anonymous, which had helped him quit heroin. He discov- ered that RLC hosted one that prom- ised “a non-pathologizing, open way of understanding and supporting peo- ple through the experience of hearing voices.” The support group was part of 58 JAN | FEB 2017

the Hearing Voices Network (HVN), a two- T There is no definitive test decade-old international health and social for schizophrenia. Diagnosis justice crusade. THE CONCEPT OF MADNESS has existed for is based solely on observations thousands of years, but the diagnosis of of symptoms. In 2013, Thomas So Hadge found himself sitting anx- schizophrenia, derived from the ancient Insel, then-director of the iously in the rocking chair at RLC. From Greek words for “split mind,” was coined U.S. National Institute of Mental his many encounters with doctors, he had only in the early 1900s. It was based on Health, wrote on the agency’s learned that if you talked about voices, patients’ inability to distinguish what website, “In the rest of medi- you got in trouble: locked up for longer was real from what was not. Symptoms cine, this would be equivalent periods or given more medication. But he included delusions, hallucinations, and to creating diagnostic systems observed as Gail Hornstein, a professor of hearing voices. When Sigmund Freud’s based on the nature of chest psychiatry at Mount Holyoke College who theories dominated the psychiatric field, pain or the quality of fever.” led the HVN session, encouraged people schizophrenia was believed to be the For some experts, the fact that to identify their voices, listen to them, result of emotional issues, in particular the most damning of psychi- even answer them. If music came on in atric labels—made more so by another room, someone might pipe up, cultural depictions of schizo- “Is everyone hearing that music playing? phrenics as incurable, violent Do we have consensus reality on that?” lunatics—is based on imprecise criteria signals, at the very least, the need To his astonishment, Hadge realized to name it something that more accurately that the gathering took one thing for captures its multifaceted nature. (Japan offi- granted: Everyone’s voices were real. The cially renamed schizophrenia “integration goal was not to get rid of them—it was disorder” in 2005.) to engage them. The ethos was nothing Research now points to both biomed- short of radical. ical and environmental causes of schizo- phrenia. A growing body of studies shows a Even though no one took notes, mon- strong genetic component—it tends to run itored attendance, or would report what in families—and an association with abnor- was said to outsiders, Hadge was too scared malities in brain structure. The U.S. Cen- to speak. He returned the following week ters for Disease Control and Prevention’s and kept coming back for six months, fas- Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, cinated but never saying a word. A turning one of the largest research projects about point finally came when Hornstein posed the lingering effects of early-life trauma, found that the death of a first-degree rel- VOICES ative in childhood resulted in a 39 percent had berated and intimidated greater chance of being diagnosed with schizophrenia as an adult. Other studies Marty Hadge for most of his life. have found higher rates of the disorder, Now, FOR THE FIRST TIME, believed to afflict between 0.5 and 4 per- cent of people worldwide, in urban areas he started asking them why. and among poor and minority populations. What nearly everyone who studies a question: “If you were walking down the the effects of having a withholding or cold schizophrenia agrees on is that the diag- street and someone was following you, mother. Later in the 20th century, profes- nosis often has an abysmal impact on peo- wouldn’t you stop and ask them, ‘What sional opinion swung toward the belief ple’s lives. In the United States, people do you want?’” that schizophrenia is a disease of the brain; identified as schizophrenic are incarcer- that model was reflected in the Diagnos- ated at very high rates; compared with Voices had berated and intimidated tic and Statistical Manual of Mental Dis- the general population, the percentage of Hadge for most of his life. Now, for the first orders (DSM). individuals with serious mental illness is time, he started asking them why. four to six times larger in jails and three to four times larger in prisons. Mortality also takes a blow. Some studies show that FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 59

a schizophrenia diagnosis can take 25 to H experiences, potentially even 30 years off a life, through suicide, an acci- vehicles for personal growth. All dent, or lack of access to medical care. HVN BEGAN IN THE NETHERLANDS in 1987 as a major religions have a story of a collaboration between Dutch psychiatrist heroic voice-hearer, proponents Outcomes may vary across borders and Marius Romme and a patient named Patsy like to point out, from Joan of cultures. Research from the World Health Hage, who had taken medication but still Arc to the Prophet Mohammed. Organization published over the last 30 heard voices. She asked Romme why, if peo- years has found that people in some parts ple believed in a god they never saw, they Today, HVN groups exist of the developing world with schizophre- so quickly dismissed the notion that what in about 30 countries, from nia have better outcomes than those in she heard was real. Romme was intrigued. Europe to Australia to East developed countries; for instance, they Asia. The network holds a global are nearly six times more likely to be able Through a television call-in program, conference each year; it will to work. There are a number of hypoth- Romme invited people to share their expe- gather in Boston this August. eses as to why, including that the nature riences with voice-hearing. Hundreds In England, there are more than of life in poor contexts—less regimented 180 groups, including one in and more community oriented—makes most prisons in London. In the it easier for people with schizophrenia to United States, where the move- get by. And some experts say the answer ment is still finding its footing, there are may be non-Western cultures’ tendency some 85 chapters. A few years ago, the Con- not to frame psychosis as a dreaded, per- necticut Department of Mental Health & manent disease. Addiction Services helped establish groups in the state. In 2015, the Foundation for As an anthropologist at the University Excellence in Mental Health Care (Excel- of Puget Sound, Juli McGruder spent lence for short) began a three-year project several years in Zanzibar. She found that to expand the network’s national reach by anyone who violated social norms—from training 100 group facilitators. Hornstein of speaking out of turn to hallucinating— Mount Holyoke College is working on the was seen as possessed by a spirit. People Excellence initiative and notes that demand who would be diagnosed with schizophre- nia in the West, then, were not seen as Americans were more likely to hear sick; they were under attack by outside VOICES THAT THREATENED, forces. Rather than stigmatizing them, their communities offered support and while foreign subjects heard family ministrations. members, friends, or deities. Research by Stanford University responded, and a significant proportion for HVN chapters far exceeds the money anthropology professor Tanya Luhr- claimed they were untroubled by their available. “If we had enough…we could be mann points in a similar direction. She voices and had never been treated by psy- doing a training every day of the week for and colleagues interviewed voice-hear- chiatric professionals. In 1988, Romme many years to come,” she says. ers in the United States, India, and West organized a conference on voice-hearing Africa. Americans were more likely to hear in Maastricht. Two years later, the first There is no formal structure or leadership voices that threatened and belittled, while peer-support groups started gathering. They to HVN. Although founders are encour- some foreign subjects heard family mem- rejected clinical terms like “schizophrenia” aged to participate in network-approved bers, friends, or deities and engaged in and “auditory hallucinations” and consid- trainings, anyone can start a group based “back-and-forth relationship[s] with the ered voices part of some people’s natural life on a set of basic principles: During meet- voices.” Luhrmann argues, “I think the ings, there should be no assumption that consequence of the American idea that the mind is broken is so horrifying and upset- ting for people that they feel assaulted by these voices.” The insight that how people interact with voices might affect what they hear overlaps with HVN’s central tenet: Hear- ing voices is only a problem if it causes a person distress. 60 JAN | FEB 2017

attendees are “sick,” and members, who of his voices are related to trauma or are that patients might be forced to stay in the are treated as experts in their own experi- spiritual in nature—“of a higher power.” facilities even longer. ences, should make decisions together. Col- They come to him when he’s having trou- lectively, the network sees itself as nothing ble recognizing his feelings or when an During a three-day training at a Holy- short of a human rights campaign in defense environmental trigger reminds him of oke community college last June, Hadge of a marginalized group. some unresolved emotional issue from and Caroline White, an HVN colleague, his past. “The warning type,” like the dark educated a group of some 30 attendees Hornstein cites a historical comparison angels on the stairs or the ones that tell him about how to lead their own groups. White, to illustrate the big picture: Homosexual- to kill himself, “almost never get big any who is 34, opened the training. Thin with ity was listed as a psychiatric disorder in longer,” he explains. As soon as he hears long dark hair, she was clad in black Adidas the DSM until 1973. Today, gay people are them, he uses HVN guidance to respond. sneakers and a black dress. “In order to pick a protected class of citizens. By removing For the most part, his voices have become up new tools, sometimes we have to put homosexuality from the DSM, Hornstein reassuring, “like hearing or seeing friends down old tools,” White told the audience. says, “Psychiatrists were admitting that the or…things that are comforting.” She handed out small pieces of paper on problems gay people faced weren’t necessar- which clinical words were written: “prodro- ily the result of some intrinsic pathology, but After years of profound isolation, HVN mal,” “oppositional,” “high functioning,” reflected the homophobic assumptions of has also given Hadge a social group. “I “command hallucination,” “schizophre- society and long-standing medical models.” learned how to have a conversation again, nia.” For the duration of the event, White explained, the terms had to go. M how to interact with people, MARTY HADGE SPENT DECADES trying to ignore build myself up,” he explains. “Many of us have been taught to use his voices. Now, though, he listens and Hadge weaned himself off all these words, but it’s really important to attempts to compromise with them. If one medication. His psychiatrist learn to describe our experience in our own shouts, Throw that chair across the room! said he had to stop taking Hal- words,” she said. Hadge added, “We need he will gently tip it over instead to see if dol, because it can inflict brain to create the meaning of our experience. By that’s enough to appease the voice. damage over the long term; his calling it a hallucination, we are saying it’s Such are the strategies that several years daughter was nervous about false, it’s a symptom, or a sickness. Whereas of HVN meetings have given him. Over him going cold turkey but sup- having a vision is more neutral and can be his time with the group, Hadge has real- ported a gradual process. After defined in lots of different ways.” ized that, when he was a child, some of his kicking meds, Hadge slowly voices were actually helpful companions— regained his ability to read and One by one, attendees ceremoniously the voice that told him to hit his mother, think more clearly. crumpled the papers they had been given for example. Some voices, Hadge adds, into balls and described how discarding “were expressing feelings that there was Eventually, he was asked them felt. Charlie Davidson, a clinical no space for me to express.” to learn how to facilitate HVN researcher from New Haven, Connecti- Hadge has come to believe that most meetings. Hadge was skepti- cut, noted that he was bound legally to use cal that he could handle the many of the words in his diagnostic reports. responsibility, but also stunned Hilary Andreoli, a voice-hearer who also that he’d been asked. For his works in a clinical setting, tilted her head whole adult life, the medical system had back in relief when she tossed “schizophre- treated him as too fragile to withstand fail- nia” into the communal heap of trash. “I’m ure. Being encouraged to take a risk was a overjoyed to throw it in the middle of the revelation. room and never use it again,” she said. As it turned out, Hadge was a top-notch facilitator. He now travels around the coun- White spoke about religious voice-hear- try leading HVN trainings. His official title ers, including Mohammed: “He describes is “community bridger and trainer.” Last hearing a voice from the sky that moved spring, he led grand rounds at the Mas- through him like a powerful wind.” Many sachusetts Mental Health Center to give of the experiences that lead people to doctors an overview of what HVN does. “be slapped with” psychiatric diagno- He regularly goes into the local psychi- ses, White added, “are common in Kun- atric units where he used to be locked up dalini awakening.” Everyone then broke and supervises peer-support groups— into groups of three. Two people took although he cannot always call what is turns trying to have a conversation, being discussed “hearing voices,” for fear while the third person spoke to them through a wrapping-paper tube in order FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 61

to simulate a voice-hearing experience. It linked psychosis to creativity and dis- mentally ill people, says treating schizo- A few voice-hearers shared their per- cussed the idea that giving people a schizo- phrenia as anything but a disease is danger- phrenia diagnosis may harm them, not ous. “Focusing on the content of auditory sonal experiences with the room. One HVN help. In a study conducted at University hallucinations is a waste of time,” Torrey participant—who asked not to be named in College London, 16 people were asked to argues. “Schizophrenia is as much a dis- this article—said he’d been accompanied dialogue directly with a computer avatar ease as tuberculosis. Like Parkinson’s, with no distress for many years by the voice representing their voices. In follow-up it’s a disease of the brain.” He points to of a friend who had died when he was 16. research, three people reported that they research indicating that people who have “It’s the most important relationship in my had stopped hearing voices, and all oth- psychotic episodes that go untreated often life,” the man told the room. “I would never ers experienced a decrease in their voices’ have worse long-term outcomes than those want to lose that.” In HVN, he had been intensity and frequency. An expanded who receive medical care. relieved to find a forum where he could $1.7 million randomized study of avatar discuss the voice without being judged. therapy is underway with 142 new patients. Joseph M. Pierre, co-chief of the Schizo- phrenia Treatment Unit at the VA West Los White said that she had been medicated HVN’s engage-the-voices approach, Angeles Healthcare Center, acknowledges starting when she was a teenager. In her though, has never been the subject of rig- that voice-hearing exists on a spectrum: 20s, she lived in a halfway house. When orous clinical evaluation. Because the net- Some people experience pleasant visits from she got involved in HVN, she found ways work grew up outside formal health and dead relatives, while others are haunted and to comprehend her voices and friends who academic spheres, some of its members harassed by voices whose origins they can’t helped her—including some with whom are wary of formal research. Many refer locate. Pierre says there is a fine line, how- she played roller derby for a while, under to themselves as “survivors” of the med- ever, between destigmatizing mental illness the name Mazel Tov Cocktail. ical establishment. In a 2014 speech at a and romanticizing it. “Sometimes, people’s conference in Austin, Texas, Hadge said: lives are transformed by cancer in positive “I learned how to be assertive,” said “There’s a huge divide between intent and ways—for example, gaining perspective White, who is now married. “I can talk impact. What some people call treatment, on what’s important in life and what they back to my voices when they taunt me: other people like myself call torture.” The want to do with it,” he explains as a point of ‘I’m Mazel Tov Cocktail. Who do you think statement was met with applause. comparison. “But that doesn’t mean that we you are?’ Now I have strategies. I can read should think of cancer as a gift, taking time a book out loud or ask them, ‘Could you Larry Davidson, a psychiatry profes- to understand its meaning in your life at the come back in a half hour?’” sor at Yale University, is seek- expense of seeking medical care.” ing funding to determine if S it would even be possible to Some individuals have spoken out SOME ASPECTS OF HVN’S methods have made study HVN. It’s a tricky prop- against HVN based on personal experi- inroads into the mainstream. In 2014, the osition. “The things research ence. Susan Inman, author of After Her British Psychological Society released a requires—recording progress, Brain Broke, a memoir about her daugh- report, “Understanding Psychosis and symptoms before or after treat- ter’s schizophrenia, wrote an article for Schizophrenia,” which suggested that ment—none of those are con- the Huffington Post that criticizes the hearing voices should not necessarily sistent with the hearing-voices “alarmingly de-medicalized approach” be considered a sign of mental illness. model,” he explains. “It’s not a of the 2014 British Psychological Society clinical service, and people are report and HVN. “Many people might want not assessed. Participation can- to be part of a nurturing group providing not be recorded.” advice on how to respond to disturbing Critics of HVN see the net- voices or other difficult experiences, since work’s core beliefs as a risky underfunded mental health services hav- reversion to the era when en’t met these needs,” Inman notes. “It’s schizophrenia was seen as problematic that the only group meeting an emotional problem and these needs for voice-hearers uses ideas that don’t support science-based ways of patients didn’t get proper medical care. understanding their illnesses.” E. Fuller Torrey, a medical researcher who specializes in schizophrenia and bipolar In 2013, a journalist named Robert disorder and who founded the Virgin- Whitaker was invited to speak about the ia-based Treatment Advocacy Center, dangers of antipsychotic drugs at a confer- which promotes laws allowing forcible ence hosted by the Virginia-based National commitment and medication of severely Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Ran- 62 JAN | FEB 2017

dye Kaye, a volunteer NAMI trainer who “SURE, MAYBE if we lived helps families with mentally ill children in a tribal culture, he’d be and who wrote a book about her son’s schizophrenia, Ben Behind his Voices, A MEDICINE MAN, says some audience members were “out- but we live in Fairfield, Connecticut.” raged” by the presentation. “On a Facebook thread, one [family] posted that their son some ramen noodles for her in the kitchen- thought of seeing people from his child- was doing incredibly well on medication ette near the room where his HVN group and excited enough about recovery to go gathers. (Journalists aren’t allowed to hood was so upsetting that Hadge decided to the NAMI conference,” Kaye explains. document those meetings.) He brought “He attended the HVN presentation and an almost preternatural calmness and to go back on Haldol temporarily, just to decided he didn’t need medications. He empathy to the situation. “I try to talk to lost his job, lost his car, lost everything people like there’s someone in there,” he make it through the experience. He said because of what he heard there.” explained a little sadly, “because I know what it’s like.” that Hornstein told him, “That’s an excel- Kaye admits that there might be value in HVN-style support groups, but only as These days, Hadge has lost lent use of medication, Marty.” a supplement to medical treatment. She some weight, and his dark would never encourage her son to join the hair is graying near his tem- Before joining HVN, Hadge faced multi- network. “Sure, maybe if we lived in a tribal ples. Because he took med- culture, he’d be a medicine man,” she says, ication for years, his speech ple hospitalizations every year; in the last “but we live in Fairfield, Connecticut.” sometimes slurs and his hands shake from nerve damage— four years, he had been admitted just three O so badly that he cannot use a touch screen. He has to look times for episodes that, in his words, “inter- ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON last June, Hadge directly at a speaker in order opened the front door of RLC, where he to follow what is being said. fered with the ability to navigate the here first encountered HVN and now works. A Any external voice without a blond woman who looked to be in her 30s face still presents trouble. In and now.” The stays were different from was sprawled in the entryway wearing two 2014, when Hadge was on a lay- different shoes. He bent over to talk to her. over in Atlanta on his way to previous ones. With HVN techniques, an HVN training, the airport’s “Are you OK?” Hadge asked. “Can I help automated announcements Hadge was able to understand what had you get up? Do you need an ambulance?” bombarded him. “I was already tired, and all these voices were happened—often, activation of bad child- The woman was agitated and confused. just coming out of the ceiling. I started los- All she could manage was, “Not good. Not ing my shit and yelling: ‘Shut up! Every- hood memories—and tell himself he would good. I’m not good.” one, shut up!’” he recalled. Other people he was traveling with reminded him that get through it. Also, when he’s in a hospital, Hadge took her inside and microwaved he was in control: “They said, ‘You’re not making sense, Marty.’ They told me to put he isn’t alone. “I have friends now, and they on my headphones to block the sound and to focus on not yelling so I wouldn’t get come and visit, bring me cigarettes,” he says. arrested.” Hadge managed to calm down and make it onto his flight. At RLC, Hadge implored the woman he’d A few years ago, when his mother died and he had to travel for her funeral, the brought inside to have some water. “When I get into a state, I can forget to drink for a really long time and the dehydration makes things worse,” he explained. “Is there any- one you want to come get you?” he asked the woman gently. “Is there anyone I can call?” He urged a coworker to find her some new pants, because she had urinated in hers. By the time she left the building, about an hour after Hadge had found her, the woman could manage full sentences. She looked him right in the eye. “Thanks a lot,” she said. Hadge nodded. Hadge says HVN has given him pur- pose and lent coherence to his days. He has what he’s always wanted—“a life that’s worth living.” Q SAMANTHA M. SHAPIRO is a writer living in New York City. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 63

“GMAP has deepened my appreciation of the complexities of international relations and has opened the door to new career and academic opportunities.” – Ko Unoki, GMAP 02 Head of Strategic Alliances (Asia), Bayer Yakuhin Ltd., and author of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Global Empires (2013), International Relations and the Origins of the Pacific War (2016). ђђѡȱ ȱќћȱѡѕђȱќюё New York City February 16, 2017 Washington D.C. February 22, 2017 Visit us at fletcher.tufts.edu/GMAP and contact us at [email protected] for more information, to RSVP, or to schedule a Skype or phone call with a member of our admissions team. 12,600 Afghan citizens told us what they think about corruption, security, women’s rights, migration, and the Taliban. READ THE REPORT AT ASIAFOUNDATION.ORG

MAPPA MUNDI NATIONAL SECURITY ECONOMICS BOOKS CULTURE THE FIXER The elderly used Step 1: Elect a Davos Man’s W.H. Auden, Han- Arthur Wamanan to burden societ- would-be tyrant humility problem nah Arendt, and on where to ies. Now they are to the White has come home Philip Roth are feast on lamprais fueling economic House. Step 2: to roost. Is the agents-in-waiting and see religious growth around Realize error. world witnessing for the Trump deities in the world. | P. 66 Step 3: Panic. | P. 68 his last gasp? | P. 70 resistance. | P. 72 Colombo. | P. 74 Illustration by LIA TIN

mappa mundi by DAVID ROTHKOPF Age Boom Why now is the time to retire the idea of retirement. 66 JAN | FEB 2017 death of truth—momentous as those developments were and as ominous as their implications may still be— the 2016 election is just the most recent infamous day in U.S. history. No, there is something much bigger going on than what has been dominating your Twitter Feeds for the past year. The finan- cial iceberg America seemed to be careening toward for the past 30 years, the unfunded retirement health care liability that many sound-minded politicians and economists warned would bank- rupt us all, looks quite different now. What once seemed like America’s terminal calamity—a looming problem that was so large it could never be managed—has not only diminished, it has actually changed character. This once-existential threat to the U.S. economy now looks very much like a potential bonanza. You can see it in the gleaming billionaire faces of U.S. President Donald Trump’s cabinet—and indeed in the face of the president himself. After all, he is the oldest president in U.S. history and his Illustration by MATTHEW HOLLISTER

OBSERVATION DECK cabinet has the highest median age (65) of these individuals are increasingly import- by, there may be resentment against those any in the country’s 240 years. ant economic assets. According to the who stay in the workplace longer and com- AARP, which advocates for older Ameri- petition for jobs may grow more intense. But in a strange way, this group of bil- cans (and, in the interest of full disclosure, But throughout history, similar concerns lionaires and former generals is a mani- is an active FP advertiser and sponsor), have been resolved through economic festation of what may be the most positive Americans 50 and older produced $7.6 tril- growth. (The same argument was made transformation that has taken place in lion in economic activity and were respon- when women started to enter the profes- America since the IT boom. They are, by sible for over a third of new businesses in sional workforce in the 1960s.) Certainly, the any traditional standard, old. And, as their America. It isn’t surprising the group is huge economic output of older workers now new boss would note, they are energetic. economically powerful: Today, there are suggests that might well be the case again. They are working. At the time they took roughly 1.6 billion people in the world who office, their median age was roughly that are 50 or older, a number that is expected Government and corporate leaders alike of retirement. But they, like lots of other to double over the next 34 years. will have to consider new training require- Americans in their mid-60s, are just getting ments for careers that extend 60 years. started on a new chapter in their careers. According to the National Institutes of But workplaces that contain more experi- Health, the number of older people who enced workers also contain greater means It used to be a paradox of the workplace: choose to continue to work has increased for training new workers and more institu- The physical burdens of labor would force during the past two decades. Today, tional memory. If people work longer, they the most experienced workers out of the roughly a third of U.S. citizens age 65 are will pay taxes longer rather than drawing marketplace. They would enter retirement continuing to work past the typical retire- down on retirement-related entitlements. and become a costly burden on society. ment age. And those numbers are increas- Then, having less to do, many lost a sense ing—especially for women. In 2008, the As a result, it could well be, as it often of purpose and value and would begin to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported decline, compounding their cost quite apart that the number of workers 65 and older from breaking the hearts of their families. grew by 101 percent between 1977 and 2007. While male employment grew for This detrimental pattern was a result of the nature of work and the nature of life. IT USED TO BE A PARADOX OF For many Americans, working in the 20th century was hard and physical. Correspond- THE WORKPLACE: PHYSICAL LABOR ingly, the average life expectancy of the DEMANDS WOULD FORCE OUT American man in 1900 was 46 years. It is THE MOST EXPERIENCED WORKERS. often observed that when the conservative Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck— those 65 and older by 75 percent, female is, that while politicians dithered over pos- the first to propose government-sponsored employment for the same age cohort grew retirement in Germany in 1881—set retire- at almost twice that rate. sible solutions on how to pay for an aging ment at age 70, it was roughly as long as most people could ever expect to live. Working without retiring has become an society, medicine and the marketplace ambition for many Americans. According to But today, the picture is different: Life a 2015 Federal Reserve study, 27 percent of came up with another idea—having an expectancy for women in countries like Americans said they would “keep working Japan, Switzerland, and Singapore is in as long as possible.” Another one in eight aging society help pay for everyone else. excess of 85 years, while the life expectancy respondents said they don’t plan to ever for men has reached 80 years in at least a retire. And while many keep working for Indeed, it could well be that Bismarck’s dozen countries. These statistics are only financial reasons, 44 percent reported to the changing more rapidly. Today, a 1-year-old insurance company Transamerica that they big idea has finally hit its own retirement in the United States has a 50 percent chance kept working to stay active and engaged. of living to 100. And it is likely that over that age—at around 135. We are going to need new 100-year life, that child is likely to work Of course, having so many people who from age 20 through age 80 or even older. are continuing to work raises challenges. ideas and vocabulary to define the promise If productivity makes jobs harder to come But far from being a drain on society, of what could be the next big development in the productivity boom—making the most of our most experienced workers in ways that are better for us and for them alike. Q DAVID ROTHKOPF (@djrothkopf) is CEO and editor of the FP Group. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 67

national security by JAMES BAMFORD Bigly Brother Donald Trump has inherited a ready-made surveillance state. Will he use it to impose absolute power? 68 JAN | FEB 2017 new data center in Utah, I heard another warning. Sitting in an Ital- ian restaurant, William Binney, a crypto-mathematician, described how he had automated the agency’s global eavesdropping network. He had quit soon after discovering that George W. Bush’s administra- tion had turned the system on the American public, just as Church had cautioned might happen. “They violated the Constitution set- ting it up,” Binney told me. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way.” He held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” Binney said. In 2013, Edward Snowden echoed Binney. “A new leader will be elected, they’ll find the switch, say that, ‘Because of the crisis, because of the dangers we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power,’” Snowden said in an interview with Glenn Greenwald. “And there will be nothing the peo- ple can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny.” Illustration by MATTHEW HOLLISTER

OBSERVATION DECK Is Trump about to start the ignition? The watching.” Also troubling are the repercus- companies a competitive edge or to quell public doesn’t yet know all the details of sions that Trump’s opponents might face. his plans for the NSA and other intelligence Infamously, Trump said on Fox and Friends dissent abroad. Trump could rescind that agencies. It probably never will, given the in 2013 that Snowden is “a terrible traitor” clandestine nature of surveillance. Yet the and, “You know, spies in the old days used directive and issue another one that might signals to date are disturbing. to be executed.” Trump’s CIA pick favors exactly that course of action. “I think the provide him with intelligence on rival com- In one campaign speech, Trump said of proper outcome would be that [Snowden] the ability to hack his political enemies, “I would be given a death sentence,” Pompeo panies to his business empire or on foreign wish I had that power. Man, that would be said on C-SPAN last February. power.” He has also expressed support for groups opposed to his policies. the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata, As president, Trump is also going to be which is now outlawed. “As far as I’m con- able to alter U.S. spying machinery more or As proof that his administration should cerned, that would be fine,” Trump said in a less as he sees fit. Having a Republican-con- December 2015 radio interview. “When you trolled Congress will help if, say, he wants to be granted more spying power, he might have the world looking at us and would like to overturn the Patriot Act and restore metadata destroy us as quickly as possible, I err on the collection. But he will have plenty of room to also point to a sweeping surveillance bill side of security.” His recent picks for attorney maneuver even without Hill support. Exec- utive Order 12333, which dates back to the passed in the United Kingdom in late 1980s, governs most of the NSA’s activities. The order focuses on the agency’s data collec- November. Dubbed the “snooper’s char- tion from overseas locations—but because so many U.S. communications pass through for- ter,” the bill requires telecommunications eign links, it has a major effect on Americans. companies and internet providers to keep records of individuals’ browsing histories for 12 months and to give security agencies access to the data. One press freedom group said the law “could effectively serve as a death sentence for investigative journal- ism.” The home secretary, though, called it “essential” and “world-leading legislation.” TEMPERING THE EFFECTS OF It’s easy to imagine Trump, always one for TRUMP’S ORWELLIAN TENDENCIES competition, seeking to retake the lead. WILL REQUIRE WHATEVER Tempering the effects of Trump’s Orwel- RESISTANCE WE CAN MUSTER. lian tendencies will require whatever resis- tance Congress, courts, and activists can muster. It will also require personal atten- tion. Just as technology can be a weapon of the powerful, it can also be used to defend general (Jeff Sessions) and head of the CIA John Napier Tye, a former State Department against them. Recent advances in end-to- (Mike Pompeo) agree. “Congress should pass official, was alarmed when he discovered a law re-establishing collection of all meta- how vulnerable the order was to abuse; in end encryption services and atomizers that data, and combining it with publicly available a 2014 Washington Post op-ed, he argued financial and lifestyle information into a com- that it had “never been subject to meaning- hide web browsing are becoming more com- prehensive, searchable database,” Pompeo ful oversight from Congress or any court.” wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the former chair of mon and user-friendly. Americans would 2016. “Legal and bureaucratic impediments the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed, to surveillance should be removed.” telling McClatchy in 2013 that “the executive do well to educate themselves about how to controls intelligence in the country.” Trump has presented distressing views protect their privacy. Otherwise, the Trump on spying that would target specific com- Then there is Presidential Policy Direc- munities and individuals. “I want surveil- tive 28. Issued by Barack Obama in 2014 years could prove to be the nadir that Frank lance of certain mosques,” he told a rally following the Snowden revelations, in November 2015. He has called the Black PPD-28 established guidelines for the Church once presaged—“the abyss from Lives Matter movement a “threat” that, NSA’s international spying. Surveillance “[a]t a minimum, we’re going to have to be can’t be used, for instance, to give U.S. which there is no return.” Q JAMES BAMFORD (@WashAuthor) is a colum- nist for FOREIGN POLICY and the author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on Amer- ica. He also writes and produces docu- mentaries for PBS. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 69

economics by GILLIAN TETT The Emperor Has No Clothes Davos Man once represented the inevitable arc of global progress. No longer. 70 JAN | FEB 2017 spread in 2017 and send shock waves through the global economy. One portent, ironically, is in the annual survey of global experts that the WEF conducts. Traditionally, when participants have been asked to cite the biggest risks to global stability, they’ve pointed to dangers like climate change and fiscal crises. In recent years, however, the issues topping the worry list have been income inequality, migration, and interstate conflict. Those answers partly reflect tangible facts; income inequality has risen in many Western countries, and geopolitical tensions are high. However, the results also expose an existential problem for Davos Man: Trust in the elite is crumbling fast. Take a look at a different survey that Edelman, the public relations group, releases every year. It asks people around the world which institutions they trust. In the immediate after- math of the 2008 financial crisis, overall trust in business and government declined. The number has gone back up, yet last Illustration by MATTHEW HOLLISTER

OBSERVATION DECK year, only 53 percent of people said they is nominally a Republican and certainly of middle-class jobs, people keep being trusted business. A mere 43 percent said ranks in the wealthy set, his worldview has uprooted by disasters and shrinking oppor- the same of government. proved directly opposed to that of Davos tunities, and aging populations make it Man: The president-elect wants to erect hard to unleash dynamic growth. Most striking and important is the gap trade barriers, reduce immigration, and between informed and mass populations. meddle in corporate decisions. He does not At the very least, the elites who fall Four years ago, it was just nine percent- just want to “Make America Great Again.” under the banner of Davos Man can take age points. In 2016, the disparity was 12, He wants to put America, himself, and his a small collective step by showing more the highest ever recorded by the survey. allies first. humility: a recognition that they do not Informed groups were bullish, but mass have exclusive rights to—nor are they populations reported trust levels below Similar ideas are spreading across con- always right about—the future. As Tony 50 percent. They also said they were more tinental Europe. In December, 59 percent Blair, former prime minister of the United likely to trust people like themselves than a of Italian voters rejected a set of constitu- Kingdom, noted during a December con- CEO. When 2017 results are released, I sus- tional reforms proposed by Prime Minis- ference in Washington, D.C., leaders must pect the gap will have widened even more. ter Matteo Renzi, forcing him to resign; take seriously the unease of their citizens. as with Brexit, this seemed to represent a “People are insecure and anxious,” Blair For other signals of revolution, look no howl of rage against globalization. When said. “They see their communities and further than the ballot box. Despite numer- voters went to the polls in Austria the same societies around them changing.” ous exhortations from the likes of Interna- day that Italians did, they chose between tional Monetary Fund officials and U.S. a right-wing populist and a former Green President Barack Obama, voters in the Party chief. Centrists, who had dominated United Kingdom could not be persuaded the country’s politics in the recent past, to reject Brexit. “Today, too many people were knocked out in an earlier vote. The in positions of power behave as though Netherlands has Geert Wilders. France they have more in common with interna- tional elites than with the people down the ELITES DO NOT HAVE EXCLUSIVE road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the street,” Teresa May, the RIGHTS TO NOR ARE THEY ALWAYS new British prime minister, declared a few RIGHT ABOUT THE FUTURE. months after the vote in what rings as a recrimination of Davos Man. “But if you has Marine Le Pen. Nationalists are getting Turkeys do not vote for Christmas, as believe you are a citizen of the world, you louder and more popular in Germany, too. are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t under- they say, and elites are never going to reject stand what citizenship means.” What could send the pendulum swing- ing back toward the surety of progress— the promise of globalization, in 2017 or any Then came the U.S. presidential elec- toward everything Davos Man represents? tion. Elites were so sure Hillary Clinton It would require slashing income inequal- other year. But to stop the trust gap from would win that PaddyPower, a betting plat- ity; making governments more trans- form, paid out “winnings” to people who parent, deft, and accountable; curbing widening and the ballot-box revolt from had gambled on the former secretary of migration flows; boosting economic growth state’s future before ballots were even cast. and employment; making corporate giants spreading and getting nastier, they need to The confidence was driven partly by Clin- and banks less powerful; and narrowing ton’s polling numbers, but it also reflected the information gap between elites and use their resources, including their swanky a collective disbelief that voters would ever everyone else. That’s a wildly tall order, choose the crude nationalism displayed by though. Don’t bet on it happening any- gathering in the Swiss Alps, to talk hard Donald Trump’s campaign. time soon—not when the Middle East is slipping deeper into conflict, advancing truths. Otherwise, Davos Man may face a Of course, voters did. And while Trump technology continues to wipe out swaths frosty death. In the meantime, he should brace for a turbulent year. We all should. Q GILLIAN TETT (@gilliantett) is U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times and author of The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 71

books & culture by ADAM KIRSCH “dark times,” finsteren Zeiten, with partic- ular sympathy: “When you speak of our failings,” the poem implores, “Bring to mind also the dark times/That you have Reading in the Dark It remains to be seen what kind of times In the age of Trump, literature will follow the election of Donald Trump. But in the days and weeks after Nov. 8, writ- can sustain those ers felt sure that the coming era will be very searching for the courage to resist difficult indeed. Almost every writer who went on record after the election believed the politics of division. that the Trump presidency would usher in a new age of racism, anti-Semitism, per- On the eve of World War II, the German writer Bertolt secution of minorities, and possibly even Brecht composed the famous poem “To Those Born worse. The Russian-American journalist After.” Brecht addressed himself to a posterity that, Masha Gessen and the Yale historian Tim- he believed, would be unable to understand how it othy Snyder warned of a coming Putin- felt to live in a time of acute moral and political cri- like presidency and gave advice on how sis. What defines such a time, he wrote, is that disas- to live when civil society is under siege. ter becomes the only possible subject of thought, Gessen predicted that the first victim of the crowding out everything we think of as ordinary life: Trump administration would be the free “What kind of times are these, when/To talk about press: “Many journalists may soon face a trees is almost a crime/Because it implies silence dilemma long familiar to those of us who about so many horrors?” ¶ Brecht urged his read- have worked under autocracies: fall in line ers to consider the actions of people living in these or forfeit access.” Just as Trump was an unprecedented kind of candidate, so he promises to inau- gurate an unprecedented kind of American regime. At such a time, turning to literature might seem like a gesture of retreat, even a form of denial. But in fact, the opposite is true: For it is literature that offers us the most meaningful record of what it feels like to live in dark times and how to, in the words of the poet W.H. Auden, “show an affirming flame”—how to keep humane values alive, even if they can’t prevail over barbarism. A reading list for the age of Trump should begin with Auden’s Collected Poems. Like Brecht, the English-born Auden lived through the 1930s—which he called a “low, dishonest decade”—as one of the age’s most acute observers. A committed leftist in his youth, Auden would move to 72 JAN | FEB 2017 Illustration by EDMON DE HARO

OBSERVATION DECK America during World War II and turn to liarly homegrown phenomenon—not a platform—a slogan that Trump revived in Christianity in his later work. He even came fascism of mass parties and torchlight ral- 2016, heedless of its historical resonances— to regret some of his early revolutionary lies, but a postmodern authoritarianism in allies the country with Nazi Germany. His poems, with their seeming endorsement which celebrity, propaganda, prejudice, and administration starts a project, disarm- of violence, and tried to omit them from entertainment are all mixed together. The ingly named “Just Folks,” to remove Jew- the canon of his writing. But it is the early writer who first predicted such an Ameri- ish children from their families and send Auden whose work readers need today, can administration is Sinclair Lewis, in his them to live with Christians in the Midwest, with its combination of dread and cour- 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here. age in the face of that dread. His poem “September 1, 1939,” written to mark the Buzz Windrip, the fascistic president of outbreak of World War II, was widely circu- Lewis’s novel, was partly based on the Lou- lated after the 9/11 attacks, but its message isiana demagogue Huey Long, but today is even more fitting today: “The enlight- he seems premonitory of Trump. Lewis enment driven away,/The habit-forming describes him as “a tireless traveler, a bois- pain,/Mismanagement and grief:/We must terous and humorous speaker, an inspired suffer them all again.” guesser at what political doctrines the peo- Hannah Arendt, another European TRUMPISM IS A PECULIARLY writer who became an American during the war years, asked how Western civiliza- HOMEGROWN PHENOMENON NOT A tion could have produced the catastrophes FASCISM OF MASS PARTIES, BUT of the 20th century. Many of her books are A POSTMODERN AUTHORITARIANISM. classics of political philosophy, but it is her essay collection Men in Dark Times that ple would like.” His character is absurd, ostensibly in order to help them assimilate. may speak to us most directly today. Tak- violating every rule of political decorum, ing her title from Brecht, who is the sub- but this only makes him more popular. It Pogroms break out, and an American holo- ject of one of her probing essays, Arendt helps him to appear authentic, even as he examines how history shaped and mis- plays on Americans’ hatred of the press, caust looms, until Roth wrenches history shaped the lives of her contemporaries— mistrust of foreigners, and economic griev- including Pope John XXIII, who liberalized ance. Only after taking office does Win- back onto its proper course and has FDR the Catholic Church through the Second drip introduce the full panoply of fascist Vatican Council, and the German revolu- techniques, from storm troopers to con- return to the presidency. tionary Rosa Luxemburg, who spent years centration camps. The ironic warning in in jail for her advocacy of communism. Lewis’s title was meant for the America The key to the novel’s power is Roth’s Such men and women show what it means of the 1930s, an island of democracy in a to live an exemplary life in the face of world where fascism was on the rise; but sense that American history, which lib- tyranny—and what price has to be paid it is equally relevant in our own time of for courage. right-wing populist movements. erals like to think of as a story of progress These European examples, however, are Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot and gradual inclusion, can so easily go not perfectly suited to explaining our cur- Against America is an even more eerily pre- rent American reality. Trumpism is a pecu- dictive cautionary tale. In this counterfac- the other way. Roth reminds us that every tual history, Roth imagines an America that elected the Nazi sympathizer Charles Lind- historical moment carries within itself the bergh president in 1940, instead of FDR. Lindbergh, running on an America First potential for disaster. It takes the courage, vigilance, and cooperation of all citizens, including writers, to ward off the dark- ness—and perhaps a good deal of luck, as well. When that luck runs out, literature can’t change history, but it can at least serve as a witness. Q ADAM KIRSCH is a poet and critic. He is the author, most recently, of The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 73

the fixer interview by AMANTHA PERERA Colombo, Sri Lanka Arthur Wamanan on where to rub shoulders with hipsters and eat spicy curries. WHERE TO VIEW ART COLOMBO HAS MORE than earned its reputation WHERE TO SPOT for chaos. Sri Lanka is not even a decade DEMOCRACY IN ACTION The NATIONAL ART removed from a 25-year civil war, during GALLERY is the best which the capital endured frequent suicide INDEPENDENCE place to see the bombings and security forces were ubiq- work of local paint- uitous, staging raids and blocking roads. SQUARE has become ers. My personal Colombo is no longer threatened by mass the unofficial capi- favorites are Cub- violence, but its residents are anything but tal for wedding pho- ist George Keyt and idle. Political leaders regularly organize tos. It’s also a site Senaka Senanayake, demonstrations in public squares. Last for demonstrations. who is a bit more summer, thousands of trade unionists pro- In March, guards stylistically conven- tested government efforts to restrict their kicked out a couple tional. His works rights and students marched against the for sitting next to often depict a nat- commercialization of education. each other, which ural jungle setting, was allegedly inde- with lots of bold This developing metropolitan region, cent. Soon thereaf- colors. Up-and- with a population of around 5.6 million, ter, an Occupy-style coming artists is one of extremes. Take the Central Bus protest took place sometimes display Stand, which serves as the city’s fast-beat- and the government their work in road- ing heart—a hub for urbanites traversing canceled its con- side stalls outside Colombo’s sprawling grid. Loud, grimy, and tract with the the museum. You’d chaotic, the terminal teems with commut- guards’ security think those items ers and hawkers selling cigarettes, snacks, firm. It was a big would be cheap, but and bottled water. Yet just 10 minutes away deal because one of the painters is peaceful Viharamahadevi Park, Colom- in the past, officials quoted me 20,000 bo’s largest public green space. Originally took a hard line rupees (about named Victoria Park for England’s revered against protests. $135) for a piece. monarch, the name was changed after the country became independent in the mid- CINNAMON GARDENS 106 ANANDA 20th century to honor the mother of an COOMARASWAMY ancient Sri Lankan king. Today, the space NEIGHBORHOOD MAWATHA is a haven for families seeking shade and joggers hugging the tree-lined perimeter. WHERE TO FEAST Photographs by GANIDU BALASURIYA “Some people don’t like Colombo. They Sinhalese is Sri Lan- say that it’s noisy and dusty,” says fixer ka’s largest ethnic Arthur Wamanan. “All that is correct, but if group. For a taste you look closely you can find another side of their cuisine, try to the city—one with quiet streets, comfy GREEN CABIN. Lam- cafes, and some great theaters.” prais—steamed yel- low rice with a mix Wamanan, 32, is a newspaper editor who of fried veggies and has fixed for Time, Der Spiegel, and other meat served in a international outlets. On a recent humid baked banana leaf— morning, he showed FOREIGN POLICY all is very good. But the commotion and comforts that Colombo different parts of has to offer. the country use dif- ferent flavors. If you want something a bit spicier, go for Jaffna food, which is from the north. 453 GALLE ROAD KOLLUPITIYA 74 JAN | FEB 2017

OBSERVATION DECK WHERE TO MEET LOGISTICS HIPSTERS LAST CALL BAREFOOT, a gallery, bookstore, craft Most clubs close store, and café, is by 4 a.m. quite popular among expats, jour- TABLE MANNERS nalists, and other laid-back types. The People usually eat space is owned by dinner from 7:30 a gray-haired man to 9 p.m. A normal who always has his tip is 10 percent. laptop in tow. His name is Dominic NIGHTLY SPENDING Sansoni, perhaps the most prolific If you’re going to travel and maga- high-end restau- zine photographer rants and clubs, it in the country. You might cost as can meet him and much as 10,000 maybe even buy rupees (about $70) one of his coffee- per night. table books. RESPECT 704 GALLE ROAD Sri Lankans are WHERE TO RELAX WHERE TO APPRECIATE WHERE TO KEEP sensitive about ARCHITECTURE THE FAITH disrespectful reli- GALLE FACE GREEN is gious imagery. a large public green The landmark CAR Most Sinhalese are A few years back, space that looks GILLS building in Buddhists, whereas a foreigner was out onto the Indian the Colombo Fort Tamils, Sri Lanka’s deported because Ocean. It was built area was built in the second-largest she had large in the late 19th cen- early 1900s. It was ethnic group, are tattoos of Lord tury and used to originally the res- primarily Hindu. Buddha. host horse races. idence of a Dutch The NEW KATHIRESAN Today, people just military com- TEMPLE is a beautiful come to hang out. mander and later Hindu sanctuary The best time to was taken over by in the city. The arrive is in the late the first British gov- façade is decorated afternoon, when ernor of Ceylon, with hundreds of the street-food as Sri Lanka was images of deities. stalls start setting known during colo- up. I recommend nialism. It’s now a SEA STREET kottu, a stir-fry department store— of torn pieces of roti, you can get almost egg, vegetables, anything there. and spices. 40 YORK STREET GALLE FACE FP (ISSN 0015-7228) January/February 2017, issue number 222. Published six times each year, in January, NEIGHBORHOOD March, May, July, September, and November, by The FP Group, a division of Graham Holdings Company, at 11 Dupont Circle NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20036. Subscriptions: U.S., $59.99 per year; Canada and other countries, $59.99. Periodicals Postage Paid in Washington, D.C., and at additional mailing offices. POST- MASTER: Send U.S. address changes to: FP, P.O. Box 283, Congers, NY 10920-0283. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Printed in the USA. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 75

the final word by ERIC KLINENBERG Demographics aren’t just about identity. They’re about how and where different populations interact. Social infrastructure is the network of physical spaces and institutions—from sidewalks to public parks, libraries to cafes—that, when robust, promote community-build- ing activities among otherwise diverse clans. When these resources are degraded, however, they discourage interaction, leaving dif- ferent demographic groups—however you define them—to fend for themselves. The stakes are real: Weak social infrastructure breeds economic isolation, political misunderstanding, and the social divi- sions that fuel the most dangerous forms of xenophobia. Particu- larly in the wake of the recent U.S. election, the need for public and private investment in this infrastructure couldn’t be more urgent. ERIC KLINENBERG IS A PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. HE’S WRITING A BOOK ON SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE. 76 JAN | FEB 2017

ASIAN VIEWS ON AMERICA’S ROLE IN ASIA The Future of the Rebalance STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE INCOMING U.S. PRESIDENT ON FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS ASIA Find out what leading experts are advising the next U.S. administration on free trade and investment, the rise of China, territorial disputes, nuclear proliferation, and America’s presence in Afghanistan. READ IT HERE: asiafoundation.org