Day Two
After our morning’s contextual Bible study, we loaded into the bus and drove to our first site of struggle: Constitution Hill and the adjacent Prison Complex.
While we waited for our tour guide, our leaders pointed to the walkway running along the side of the courthouse. “See those women over there? They have been camping out for the last year in protest of the reparations that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission promised but did not deliver. Two of the women died over the winter because of the cold.” Almost immediately, a couple people from our group wandered over to talk to them.
GBV = Gender-Based Violence
“What are they doing?” Pokie said, when she realized what was happening. “Why are they going over there?”
“Should we go get them?” someone offered.
“No,” she said, frowning. “They’re already there.”
Later when Pokie told them they should not have gone over, they asked, “But don’t they want us to talk to them? They’re making a public statement.”
“Yes, but why would they want to talk to you? How will you help them? Who is benefited by you talking to them? Those women are living their lives. Don’t interrupt them and making them tell their story to you. Why would you do that?”
This woman, I realized then, wasn’t going to coddle me. She was gonna make me think, and then rethink my thinking. Being around her made me feel nervous, and a little bit scared.
Also, excited.
***
In the prison complex, we meandered through the rooms that housed the male prisoners, both political and criminal. (When Mandela was held there, he was placed in the white section because they feared he’s start an uprising if they placed him in the Black section.)
Yes, that’s Ghandi in the photo. He served 4 terms in this prison, 7+ months in total.
We read the testimonies and looked at the devices used to beat and torture the prisoners. We saw the small row of outdoor toilets and listened to the tour guide describe the indignities of the strip searches: in front of everyone the men were required to jump into the air and spin to give everyone a clear view of their genitalia.
One of the notes that a visitor to the prison left on a cell wall.
The prison was equipped to house 900 people, but it usually had about 2000. The men were fed a sparse diet, and proportion size was based on race. They were allowed to wash their plates once every three months, and showers happened once a week, if that. Disease was rampant.
In the back of the prison was the row of isolation cells.
Prisoners were held there for up to thirty days, and often fed a diet of rice water — water that had been used to wash the rice prior to cooking.
From there, we crossed the patio to South Africa’s Constitutional Court. The building, which was inaugurated in 2004, was designed to specifically counter the atrocities of apartheid and is rich with symbolism, all of it pointing to openness, light, and accessibility, a government for all the people.
photo credit: I’m not sure
For example, on the outside of the building, the phrase “Constitutional Court” is written in the twelve national languages, one of which is sign language. Inside the spacious foyer, light floods in through huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Clusters of metal “leaves” stretch from pillars that list like giant tree trunks. Slits in the ceiling allow natural light to filter down. Benches, and wooden “stumps” are arranged in clusters. At the entrance to the courtroom, there’s a sign listing all the upcoming cases, open to the public, and a TV mounted on the floyer wall plays when the court is in session so that anyone may watch. In the corner of the foyer, one of the former prison guard towers remains, built into the building as a reminder of what had been at that location before.
The interior of the courthouse is visible from the street through a low window that stretches the length of the room. (When I went back outside, I crouched down to peer through, to double check that it wasn’t tinted glass. It wasn’t.)
photo credit: I’m not sure
Nguni cow hides, a symbolism of equality and a sign of royalty, line the front of the bench where the judges sit. A portion of the walls are made from brick that was taken from the prison’s demolished guard towers.* Our guide told us that participants in the court system are referred to as “applicants” and “respondents” (as opposed to plaintiff and defendant), and that this was the first court in Africa to vote in favor of pro-choice and equal marriage rights.
Afterward, I walked down the long interior hallway.
On one side was an art gallery, and on the other side were large windows that looked out over the protesting women’s encampment. There was one picture in particular caught my eye: a giant naked manbaby, sleeping.
photo credit: Tany Warkentin
The label read: “The struggle by many white South Africans to face up to the exploitation and abuse of Africa and its people is explored. Sleeping, in Kentridge’s work, is a metaphor for a state of ignorance, a return to the imaginary, which conveniently allows the external world to be forgotten. However, the sleeper must always wake up.”
***
And then, back into the bus for the 30-45 minute drive to Soweto, a large suburb that was first started in the late 1920s to house the migrant gold mine workers.
I sat with Pokie, and while we munched our packed lunches of wraps, fruit, chips, and juice (which I spilled all over my pants), she told me about growing up in Soweto (also from Soweto: Trevor Noah) and living with her grandparents during the week while her parents worked. She pointed out her grandparents’ house and the elementary school she attended, as well as the two landmark cooling towers from which daredevils can bungee jump, which is something she said wants to do someday, crazy lady.
The now-defunct Soweto power plant (to the left of the towers) provided power to Jo’burg, not Soweto. Soweto didn’t get electricity until the 1970s (I think).
There is one road into Soweto, and there is a military base at the start of it — if there was an uprising in Soweto, the police barricade the street to contain the unrest.
the military base
When we arrived in Kliptown, an informal settlement within Soweto, George Ranaka, our tour guide, greeted us and then led us into the Freedom Charter Memorial.
photo credit: again, not sure
Inside the concrete tower, he explained each of the ten clauses inscribed in a huge concrete table. These clauses had been drafted by the South African Congress Alliance in 1955, and as George explained them — equal human rights for all, the people will share in the country’s wealth, the people will govern, work and security for all, etc, etc — I found myself wondering how he could speak without sarcasm, without rancor. Did he not see the irony?
When George finished, three young men entered the memorial to sing for us. “Young people don’t have many ways to earn money here,” George said, “so they get creative.”
The first clip of the medley is “Asimbonanaga” by Johnny Clegg and Savuka, a tribute to Mandela.
George led us out of the memorial, across a road, and up on a bridge that overlooked Kliptown.
photo credit: Arloa Bontrager
As a 40-year resident of Kliptown (he moved there when he was two), George knew well the complicated logistics of getting medical attention, the annual flooding that resulted from being situated in the marshlands, the overcrowded housing and sanitation issues. He told us about the children’s program he works for, and how they provide food to dozens (hundreds?) of children, as well as educational and emotional support. “We have the Freedom Charter,” he said, “but this is our reality.”
***
On the bus out of Kliptown, I asked Pokie how the South African people, in the face of such extreme poverty and racial injustice, keep from being bitter? How does it not eat them up inside? Emotionally speaking, how do they manage it all?
“We have this word: ubuntu,” Pokie said. “Ubuntu means generosity or hospitality. It’s how we approach each other, with an attitude that says ‘your needs are as important as mine.’”
Her answer didn’t really get at my question, at least not in the way I was thinking about it. Maybe we were missing each other — a communication sideswipe — or maybe she did answer my question and I just wasn’t yet able to fully understand it yet?
This happened to me a lot in South Africa: I would kinda understand, but not really. More often than not, I tried to keep my mouth shut in those moments. “Just sit with it,” I’d coach my ever-impatient self. “You don’t have to understand everything right away. Learning happens in layers. Give it time.”
***
Stopping at a street market on our way to supper, I met some other touristy-looking folks. When the older gentleman asked me where we were from, I told him and then asked him where they were from. The older couple was local, it turned out, but they’d met the three young adults who were with them on Facebook — they were from Kenya. One of the young women was a YouTuber(!), and her channel is all about road-tripping through Africa.
And then Pokie joined the conversation. Within seconds, she and the Kenyans were deep into a foodie debate — Pokie accused them of undersalting their food, they criticized South African coffee, etc, etc. — and then they were exchanging numbers. Pokie would be heading up to Kenya next year, so they’d reconnect then.
Later I asked Pokie if that sort of thing happens often.
“What sort of thing?” she said.
“Meeting strangers on the street, exchanging contact information, and then actually getting together with them?”
“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes.”
***
We ate supper at Sakhumzi, an all-you-can-eat buffet chock-full of all the South African classics. The first time I went through the line, I got the basics: beef, chicken, pap (cornmeal mush), veggies, steamed bread, etc.
The second time, I got brave: tripe (intestines) and pig knuckles.
tripe on the top left; knuckles on the right
The tripe tasted fine, but I found the soft-cartilage texture a bit . . . tricky. As for the pig knuckles, they had good flavor but were mostly fat. At least I tried them!
***
Steve, who had flown in from Cape Town earlier in the day, was in charge of our evening debriefing.
Steve and Nkosi in Kliptown.
Some snippets of our conversation…
“The work of resistance,” Steve said, “is the deconstruction of civility.” Because who gets to say who is civil and who’s not?
“But I recently read that Margaret Mead said that the first sign of civility was the discovery of a broken femur that had been healed,” someone countered. “It seems to me that civility is a good thing.”
But is it? The mission to civilize has destroyed civilizations, someone else pointed out. And what’s the difference between modernity and civility? Or development and civility? All of these “good” words we use, Steve argued, words like develop and civilize and modern, are colonizer language, rooted in a colonial mindset, and deeply problematic.
“Civil society” is government in society, Steve said. In South Africa’s case, it’s the white people, the colonizers, who have decided who is civil and who is not. We decide whether or not we will negotiate with someone based on if they are sufficiently civil according to our standards, our white colonizer standards.
“I am not represented here,” Nkosi said, flailing his arms wide. By “here,” I gathered that he was implying everything in our physical setting — the buildings, the infrastructure, the educational system, the whole structure of South African society, all of which had been built by the white colonialists. “This is my country and yet I am alienated everywhere I go.”
Round and round the conversation went. Turns out, it’s pretty hard to see our “good” language from a different perspective — a colonizer perspective.
“We don’t need answers,” Steve said, “and there aren’t any. What we need is better questions, and then more better questions. Refusing answers is the work of solidarity. This is the work that pushes us through life. It’s okay to sit in discomfort, to marinate in the pain.”
photo credit: I’m not sure
“Allow the haunting.”
***
*About those recycled bricks: skeptical-minded me couldn’t help but wonder if, while those bricks were meant to symbolize a memory of what had been, might they also symbolize that the old practices were still present, baked into the new government? Nothing is ever clear-cut, I don’t think. Nothing is pure.
This same time, years previous: guest post: Friday is cleaning day, the quotidian (11.9.20), of mice and men and other matters, maple roasted squash, pumpkin cranberry cream cheese muffins, let me sum up.
