Even though apartheid ended a year after I graduated from high school so I was plenty old enough to comprehend it, I don’t think I knew much about it, only that it had to do with Blacks and whites living separately.
But in my world, Blacks and whites seemed mostly separate already (a reality that I assumed was by preference, not design), and since apartheid wasn’t slavery, I wasn’t sure what the problem was exactly. Apartheid was bad, I was told, but how? It didn’t make sense to me.
Constitution Hill: in a solitary cell, looking out
So here’s a question: for those of you who were alive during apartheid, what were you taught about it? How much did you understand?
***
Day Three We headed to Sophiatown, a community in Jo’burg.
It used to be that Sophiatown (pronounced with a long ‘i’) was a mixed-race town, so vibrant and rich with writers, artists, and musicians that it was referred to as “the Chicago of South Africa.” But in 1954, the forced removals began. City officials arrived in the wee hours one morning, forced people from their beds, divided them according to race (Black, colored, Indian, and Chinese), and relocated them into separate communities from Sophiatown.
“Waiting for the Trucks”
In Meadowlands, a community in Soweto where the Black people were taken, the small houses were so identical that residents often got lost trying to find their way home. The forced removals took years to complete, and in the end the entire town was razed but for the Anglican church and the home of Huddleston, the English Anglican Bishop who deeply loved and supported the community.
Huddleston: in Christ the King Church photo credit: Betty Shenk
As we toured Huddleston’s home, I couldn’t help but notice that it was the white man’s legacy we were learning about, and I found myself wondering what Nkosi would say about that. Sure enough, later Nkosi pointed out that everyone knows about Huddleston, “But what about all the Black community leaders? Why aren’t we hearing their stories? It’s not because there weren’t any — there were lots of Black leaders in Sophiatown.”
Before Sophiatown was destroyed, the Anglican church boasted a glorious mural with Black angels, painted by one of the sisters.
But after the forced removals, the Dutch Reform church took over the building and painted over the walls.
A church white-washing its walls, quite literally.
In 1997, the Anglicans bought the church back, and since then the mosaic was added, but the original mural is still buried beneath the white washing. For years, former Sophiatown residents would make the long trek back to this church for important events like marriages and funerals. This church was a touchstone for them, the one remainder of their former lives.
While we ate our lunch outside Huddleston’s home, Mbali Zwane, our tour guide, performed some of her poetry. Prior to reciting “I Confess,” she told us that when she was a little girl, she had been late for class one day. As penance, she was told to go to confession, but when she got there, she didn’t know what to confess.
I thought about that poem a lot in the days that followed. “I Confess” wasn’t just about a little girl bewildered about what to apologize for, I realized. Rather, it was about something much deeper, much more insidious and troubling. Under apartheid, melanin-enriched skin was a crime. People, simply because of their skin color, were offensive, their very presense an afront. Just by existing, they were doing something wrong. They were wrong.
What is the impact of such lunacy on the human psyche?
How does a person confess that.
***
The Hector Pieterson Memorial tells the story of the June 16, 1976 student uprising in which hundreds of students marched to protest of the government ruling that Afrikaans (a form of Dutch and the language of the minority whites) be the medium of education. That day police opened fire on the children, killing 176 (and the death count rose in the days that followed). Hector was one of the first children to be killed.
The museum courtyard was strewn with bricks, each with a name of one of the slain.
A quote from Hector’s older sister, Antoinette Sithole caught my eye. “When my brother was killed in the June 16 student uprising, he was just a 13 year old school boy. But this does not justify the heroism around him as a martyr… He was an ordinary child without glamour. Why the glamour around his death?”
Later that evening when someone expressed awe-filled admiration for these children who were so brave, I shared Antoinette’s quote. “When we label people as heroes,” I said, “we distance ourselves from them. Pedestaling people is a form of self-preservation. They are special, they are different, so I don’t have to be like them.”
“The hero story,” Steve added, “is propaganda, and the purpose of propaganda is to cover up the mess so you can’t see what’s actually real.”
“I find it interesting that our current practice is to pin all our hopes on one hero,” noted Andrew, a theologian and one of our group leaders. “Just listen to our language: our political leaders are the people ‘in power.’ Our job is to vote. That’s it. That’s the extent of our power. Everything else is up to our hero leaders.”
“We are living in a filthy rotten environment with a vocation of detanglement,” said Steve, whose sentences were so jam-packed with truth that they often sounded poetic. “It’s our job to take a long, hard, loving look at what is real and then ask ourselves what is actually happening. There’s a reason that most people don’t do this: it’s hard.”
But remember the manbaby? The sleeper must* always wake up.
***
*Which isn’t totally true, I pointed out. Some people are really, really good at sleeping. Naps are good, Steve said, laughing, so take naps, my friends, and then keep waking up.
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. Singers: Lehlohonolo Mei, Mmeli Thanduxolo Dlamini, Zenande Emmanuel Marcus
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.
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.
