Apartheid

I'm gearing up for my study tour to South Africa and Zambia next weekend.

In preparation for the trip, I checked out quite a few reading materials from the Lakewood Library about all things South African and Zambian.

And how could I avoid the subject of apartheid in my studies of South Africa? I can think of few other issues that have so greatly impacted this modern era. The outcomes of this struggle (the TRC, for example) are an interesting study for the rest of the world.....can you imagine! Peaceful reconcilition of struggle! The Republic of South Africa has made great strides in the right direction, anyway.

The following is a passage from the book that I read earlier today, titled Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee (won the Nobel Prize for Literature, interestingly). The story is narrated from the perspective of a white woman, later in years, widowed and abandoned by her only daughter, wrestling with a cancer diagnosis and only just understanding the atrocities of the apartheid. Her only companion is a vagrant that has set up shop (his plastic tarp and half bottles of sherry), uninvited, in her backyard. This particular piece is of many that illustrates the complexities of emotion embroiled in this dark era of a nation from a weak, desparate woman's perspective:

"So why should I grieve for [Bheki--son of her "domestic"/maid, recently killed in a shantytown shooting]? The answer is, I saw his face. When he died he was a child again. The mask must have dropped in sheer childish surprise when it broke upon him in that last instant that the stone-throwing and shooting was not a game after all; that the giant who came shambling toward him with a paw full of sand to stop into his mouth would not be turned away by chants or slogans; that at the end of the long passageway where he choked and gagged and could not breathe there was no light.

"Now that child is buried and we walk upon him. Let me tell you, when I walk up on this land, South Africa, I have a gathering feeling of walking upon black faces. They are dead but their spirit has not left them. They lie there heavy and obdurate, waiting for my feet to pass, waiting for me to go, waiting to be raised up again. Millions of figures of pig iron floating under the skin of the earth. The age of iron wanting to return.

"You think I am upset but will get over it. Cheap tears, you think, tears of sentiment, here today, gone tomorrow. Well, it is true, I have been upset in the past, I have imagined there could be no worse, and then the worse has arrived, as it does without fail, and I have got over it, or seemed to. But that is the trouble! In order not to be paralyzed with shame I have had to live a life of getting over the worse. What I cannot get over anymore is that getting over. If I get over it this time I will never have another chance not to get over it. For the sake of my own resurrection I cannot get over it this time. "

How many times are we removed and indifferent to the sufferings of others? It is only when we see their faces that we begin to understand.

It's the faces that I have to look into that worry me. I'm immune to the problems and successes in the world until I look them in the face.

This is why I love and hate the work that I do.