the invisible majority

Day One
I woke refreshed. The sun was shining and . . . the power was out in the dorm section of St. Benedict’s.  

I learned later that someone had stolen a part off something (the transformer?); it’d be a number of days until the part was replaced, so for the majority of our time in Jo’burg, I got cold showers (which weren’t that bad, really), cold-water washed my hair in a sink in another part of the building, and set my travel mirror up on the window ledge so I could apply my sunscreen and mascara. 

Breakfast that morning was rusks (a biscotti-like cookie), coffee and tea, fresh fruit, a raw oat type of granola, a raw oat porridge/muesli, and yogurt, but then, when we were almost done eating, the cooks brought out Breakfast Number Two: fried eggs! Canadian bacon! tomatoes! beans!

This two-course breakfast marathon, it turned out, would be the pattern for most of our breakfasts in South Africa. I immediately realized I’d have to pace myself accordingly.

Each day with Iziko started with a contextual Bible study, which I gotta admit kinda made me roll my eyes. Sitting around talking about scripture? Fun-fun. But I told myself I was there for the ride, so I’d go along with it. And the set-up was nice: comfortable chairs circling a woven mat scattered with photos, burning candles, incense, and various South African paraphernalia, all of which Mzi (pronounce “em-ZEE”) explained that first morning. 

Mzi asked us to share three things: What brought us? What did we hope to learn? And what gift did we bring?

What did I bring? For the last few months leading up to this trip, I’d battled low grade dread, anxiety, and apprehension. There was the safety issue, of course — that was the easy one to fixate on. My younger brother spent one of his college semesters in South Africa and when he heard I was going, his first response was, “You know South Africa’s pretty dangerous, right?” 

But more unsettling than the element of danger was a deep internal foreboding. What was I getting myself into? I was acutely aware that I was making a decision to learn about something — about myself, about my country, about my history, about the world — that I didn’t fully understand, and that I maybe didn’t want to understand. I was choosing to expose myself to pain in ways that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle. Whatever was coming, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to feel good. I made sure I packed Xanax.

That morning, when it was my turn to speak, I teared up. “It’s the jetlag,” I cry-joked. I don’t remember my answers to the first two questions — probably the obvious, like curiosity and learning and wanting to see another part of the world — and for the third question, I said I wasn’t sure what I brought. “I’m a down-to-earth sort of person,” I sniffled. “I have lots of question, and I’m often skeptical about things.”

And then Mzi spoke up. “Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, said, ‘Cynicism is an act of love.’ I think cynicism and skepticism are quite similar. Being skeptical can be an act of love.” 

That statement hit me at my core. If I’d been alone, I probably would have dissolved in a huge puddle of snot and tears right then and there. Here I was, a white woman in a Black country worried about getting “it” wrong, insecure about my ability to understand the depth of the issues, emotionally shaky. And yet when Mzi shared that quote, I suddenly felt seen. I felt valued. Mzi’s words were a gift, maybe even a blessing. Maybe I had a place here after all? Maybe my presence was acceptable, even good?

Just a little, I felt myself begin to relax.

***

An absurdly abbreviated timeline of South Africa’s colonial history:

• 1488: Portuguese sailers arrive, and the South Africans chase them away. The Portuguese report that the South African are savages.
• 1652: The Dutch East India Company arrives. The South Africans don’t want them there, but the DEIC insist they are different. Fine, the South Africans say. Refuel and go on. But instead of leaving, the DEIC builds a castle/fortress. Then they build a second building — a slave quarters — and import slaves from all over the world. 
• 1795: the British arrive. For the next 100 years give or take a couple dozen, the British fight with the Dutch, the Dutch fight with the Zulus, etc, etc. 
• 1833: The British abolish slavery, largely in part because, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, there is a greater need for consumers rather than workers.
• 1887: Gold is discovered in the area that is now Johannesburg. At that point, there were only about 300 white people in that area, but only nine years after the discovery of gold, Johannesburg, named after two white men named Johannes, had become a stronghold.
• 1901 Bubonic plague: Black people are blamed for it, thus providing an excuse to evict them.
• 1913: The Natives Land Act is passed which allows for segregation of land based on race.
• 1932: Orlando East, a settlement on the outskirts of Jo’burg for migrant gold workers, is formed. This is the beginning of Soweto, a.k.a. the South Western Township.
• 1948: The Dutch establish an apartheid government. Over the next few years, a total of 148 laws to keep Blacks separate from whites will be passed. South Africa’s apartheid government studied, and drew inspiration from, the US’s Jim Crow laws.
• 1950: the Group Areas Act, the division of the country into areas (determined by the government) to separate people by race, is passed.
• 1953: Bantu Education, an inferior education for Blacks, was formed.
• 1960s: The rise of Black consciousness.
• 1976: A student uprising, in protest of the government’s directive that Africaans be the language of the schools, launches the horrors of apartheid onto the global stage, and intensifies the protest movements.
• 1994: Apartheid is abolished.
• 1996: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins to hold hearings.

***

Of all the Iziko leaders, Nkosi was the most reserved. He’d listen to the conversations, his hat and glasses obscuring his eyes, but when he spoke, it was like a fire hydrant had been turned on: his whole body would vibrate with energy, and the words would come rushing out, each phrase a verbal fist-punch.

For example:

“I am jealous of the South African story!” Nkosi said that first day, his words hard-clipped. “Who gets to tell the story? It should be Black people telling the story, not white people!” 

“I am speaking to you,” he contined, “in the language of the minority! And the minority can’t even bother to learn the language of the majority! Because the majority is invisible to them!” 

It didn’t take me long to figure out that when Nkosi spoke, I’d better listen. Actually, that was true of all the Iziko leaders. But Nkosi, I found, was the most raw and unfiltered, the most edgy. He ran hot, and I adored him for it. 

***

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (11.6.23), seven fun things, four meal deliveries: what I learned, what we ate, the quotidian (11.5.18), the quotidian (11.7.16), meatloaf, musings from the coffee shop, for the time change, awkward.