LEIMERT PARK : Network Links Teens in U.S., S. Africa

The boys asked one another about school, teachers, what’s in fashion and one another’s favorite music--a typical conversation between high school students who have just met.

This one, though, was unfolding over thousands of miles.

At Kaos Network, a coffeehouse-style arts center in Leimert Park, seven African American teen-agers spent a morning querying their South African counterparts about everything from hairstyles to South Africa’s shifting political landscape via videophone.

The telephone and video hookup, set up between Los Angeles and Grahamstown, South Africa, allowed the students to exchange words and images.

“You look like one of the guys in (the rap group) Kris Kross!” exclaimed Bongani Noyikwa after seeing the black-and-white image of Chris Bailey, a Westchester High School senior sporting an oversize jacket and close-cropped hair.

Amid the laughter that broke out around the room, Bailey replied, “Well, if I was, I would have a lot more money and live someplace else.”

Miles Griffith, a student at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, a Westside high school, took the microphone to ask Mfuzo Nano what he thought of newly elected South African President Nelson Mandela.

“Oh, great!” Nano said enthusiastically. “Mandela, he is the king of kings.”

The cultural exchange was staged by the Southern Africa Education Campaign, a Washington-based organization begun last year that sponsors educational and cultural events for Americans and Africans here and overseas.

The campaign seeks to promote stronger American ties with South Africa and neighboring countries such as Angola, Tanzania, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland.

Kaos founder and filmmaker Ben Caldwell provided the videophone communication for the session.

Campaign coordinator Lisa Cannon said she wants to ensure that the attention centered on South Africa’s recent historic elections does not fade in the United States.

“We don’t want to lose impetus in the interest in Africa,” she said. “Too many images of Africa kids see on TV here are negative--war, poverty, abuse.”

The students chosen to connect with the South African group are in the Los Angeles Community Outreach Program, an independent college preparatory and motivational program.

Program founder and director Clifford Brazil said there is much that his students--the majority of whom are from central Los Angeles--can learn from their South African peers.

“There are parallels they can make to our own society,” he said. “We are beyond certain struggles that they haven’t gotten through yet. Talking to people in another part of the world puts things in a different context.”

Zosukuma Kunene, 18, startled the South African group when he sat down at the microphone and started speaking in a rapid mix of English and Zulu. “My parents are South African, but I was born in London, after my father was exiled,” said Kunene, who grew up in View Park.

“I haven’t been there since the eighth grade. . . .I’m still not sure if I want to live in South Africa, but I do plan to go to school there for a semester.”

Although students easily discovered that they listened to the same reggae bands and shared a disdain for school uniforms, more complex issues sometimes left both groups at an impasse.

When Nano asked Charity Bailey what she considered herself--black, African American or simply American--the 17-year-old hesitated and answered black.

Bailey asked Nano if he considered black Americans to be true African brethren?

Nano hesitated, then his reply came crackling over the mike. “I consider you all to be Americans, equal to all other Americans.”

That, said Bailey instantly, would be nice, “but it’s not true. . . .We are not equal as you say.”