Day 1: part 1: lecture and lunch

Our first full day in South Africa was a doozy. This is only half.

We spent the morning in lecture with Prof (I'll-get-his-name-from-my-notes-later), a doctor of Theology in the Dutch Reformed Church. His story was one of a man, notably a white, well educated man, who had realized that he was part of a great evil against his fellow man. And it was quite moving; his understanding that he, too, was trapped in a system of racial segregation that made everyone less human. But at the same time, you could see that he thought and hoped that his realization would somehow absolve him of the fundamental racism that was bred into himself. He struggled to connect the racism of society and within the church to the ways in which to actively make himself un-racist. How do you remove this poison from yourself?

**it is here that I should make my first personal note. It's an excellent question, one that's I'm struggling with too. How does one honor one's own past while acknowledging the sin of your forebears? How can one become an antiracist when it has possibly--horribly--become as much as part of your being as your very DNA? It's within your childhood, your environment, a portion of the fabric that sustained your life before you were born and continues to nurture you today. It's sickening. And I saw in this man a life that had acknoledged the evil, fought courageously to end apartheid, and now stood inert, confused as to why the work of the past wasn't good enough anymore. He had helped to end apartheid, and had been a loud voice for the movement of the Dutch Reformed Church as well, but 15 years out of the end of apartheid, the system remained and he couldn't figure out why.

So 50 years after the end of our apartheid, after the passing of Civil Rights, how do I respond to the fact that civil apartheid continues in America? That the color of your skin still affects how much you will earn, where you will live, and the quality of your life? This battle is much more insideous, because it is harder to see the system once its gone underground. In this regard South Africa and the U.S. seem eerily similar. And I must find a better answer for myself.

After the lecture we went to lunch at a restaurant known as "Roots". This restaurant is in the little shantytown of Khayamandi. It's not exactly a township per se, as it is more like a very poor suburb of Stellenbosch itself. It's more prosperous than most, as it is basically located within a larger and wealthier city, making it more possible for its inhabitants to get jobs, transportation, food, water, healthcare, etc. But more on that later.

Roots is owned by a young man who grew up in Khayamandi, and wanted to give back to his community. The restaurant, let me first say, was fantastic. Now that I can look back on the whole experience, it was the most authentic and good food that I had during the entire trip; homemade, like something Id've found in a great soul-food spot somewhere in the Arkansas river bottoms: Simple food made well. The young man who owned the restaurant actually introduced himself as Roots, so I don't want to be confusing--Roots WAS Roots.

Roots was situated on top of a hill not far from the main entrance of the community. I think it is a nice spot, overlooking the better portion of the community; the actual small homes with brick walls, real roofs and a small yard enclosed by a fence. It looked a bit like what my grandmother would call "base housing", in that most all of the homes were built the same (by the government, incidentally) for higher class 'coloreds' during Apartheid.

Ah, FYI: During apartheid, all life was governed by the National Party (NP) of South Africa according to strict racial lines, of which four were most clearly recognized. Each had subsets of class within them, but the major ones were (in order of importance)

Whites

Coloreds (depending on who you talk to, these were either native Cape Townians, or people of mixed heritage. They were literally darker than white folks, but lighter than black folks).

Indians (As in, East Indians, from India)

Blacks (specifically NOT referred to as natives or South Africans).

Apartheid was developed within many Acts of Government over several decades. You can read about most of them here: http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blsalaws.htm

Of these I foudn the most damaging to be:

""Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No 55 of 1949

Prohibited marriages between white people and people of other races. Between 1946 and the enactment of this law, only 75 mixed marriages had been recorded, compared with some 28,000 white marriages.

Population Registration Act, Act No 30 of 1950

Led to the creation of a national register in which every person's race was recorded. A Race Classification Board took the final decision on what a person's race was in disputed cases.
Group Areas Act, Act No 41 of 1950Forced physical separation between races by creating different residential areas for different races. Led to forced removals of people living in "wrong" areas, for example Coloureds living in District Six in Cape Town.

Group Areas Act, Act No 41 of 1950

Forced physical separation between races by creating different residential areas for different races. Led to forced removals of people living in "wrong" areas, for example Coloureds living in District Six in Cape Town. " http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blsalaws.htm

Apartheid didn't end officially until 1994.

The continuing social damage of these Acts were still very apparent in society, literally drawn on the streets of Khayamandi. On one side of Roots were these tracts of decent housing, if dull. But on the other side were the shacks--I am told, good shacks.

There isn't an easy way to describe what they looked like other than to say that most shacks were one story and one room, although some had two or even three rooms added to a main one. Some buildings were obviously once trailers or storage blocks, but the vast majority were cobbled together from found objects: wood, fencing, sheets of corrugated iron, shipping pallets and recycled siding. This is not to say that they weren't well put together or neat; the insides were often quite tidy and clean. Some were clearly carefully constructed of well purchased materials, but most did not have electricity (if it did, it was from a line radiating off a pole like a bristle-brush...and certainly didn't look safe). I'm told the greatest danger in the townships is fire, and I believe it. The shacks reminded me of chicken coops and backyard storage sheds; thin structures that did the job, but not necessarily very well. We were also told that most people fall ill during the rainy season, because their homes cannot keep them dry or they literally wash away.

Although the road we entered was paved, many were not. We stuck to the paved roads. After lunch we headed up the hill to meet Joseph, the unofficial mayor of Khayamandi and the man in charge of leading and maintaining relations between the Khayamandi Legacy Center (day care, creche, meeting house and preschool), the soon-to-open HIV clinic, and the orphanage, as well as a host of other community organizations we did not see.

The picture I have posted (hopefully) is the best one I have of the moment of the view in front of the Legacy Center. It is of a pile of brick rubble from a destroyed building, backed by the security fence surrounding the center and school's playground. Razor wire is pretty common, and beyond it was both the excellent playground and the centers lush garden, which it uses to stock a market stall. Proceeds go to the Center's working budget I believe. And beyond all that is a phenomenal view of the valley and far off mountains. It's this kind of picture that I found myself before all the time in South Africa--a vista of breathtaking beauty behind a difficult human scene, but one in which resilience and humanity were vibrantly aware of itself.

There was no pity here. That's important. Pity was not a useful emotion, because this town was full of people working hard and doing the best they could with what they had. The thing that made me the most angry was that they had to try so damn hard in the first place.

Maybe it was because I had left my own young daughter behind, but I kept seeing small children, about two years old, wherever I looked. And its images of them-- playing alone, in a street full of glass, hugging mothers, running, laughing, barefoot, scarred and smiling--that I think of the most. Because as soon as I think of the kids, I think of their mothers.

I'm thinking a lot about the mothers.