Perceptions (2 of 4)

How does one de-personalize history? How does one not take personal the history of “one’s people” and all the crimes perpetrated against them?

How is it ‘up north’? You came by a plane flown by black pilots? (black people can pilot planes?) You didn’t just jump the border? But you don’t look like you’re from 'up north'… I respond… but all the while my heart bleeds at my braa and sisi’s ignorance… the conventional wisdom fed the masses during apartheid: even with the oppression, they’re better off than we who are ‘up north’. It seems true enough now because there are plenty of refugees in South Africa… surely an indication that things ‘up north’ are really awful.

Still in iKapa, I head over to Robben Island, home of Mandela for 21 years… and yes, many other political prisoners came through here. Very interesting juxtaposition of the ritzy Victoria and Alfred waterfront (departure point) and the (destination) island that is a “prison known all over the world for its harsh conditions” 12 km from shore. Apparently only one prisoner – a san chief? – ever tries to swim for it… and dies before reaching shore. My companion laughs and remarks: “black people can’t swim”. Today this stretch forms part of the whole adventure/ultra sport circuit... you know... those macho, endorphin/adrenaline-pumped addicts athletes who think the iron man is for babies. The water is freezing cold… Antarctica is, after all, the next stop south of here. There’s a constant cool breeze cold wind called the ‘cape doctor’ ‘cause it sweeps the coast clean of what ails it (pollution). We go on a bus drive around the island… to put everything into perspective before we arrive at the actual prison building. We’re taken to the place where prisoners did their hard labor… a quarry… they were required to dig up one spot, cover it up the following day, dig it up the day after that, cover again… apparently this breaks one’s spirit ‘cause you’re spending your time, energy, life… and have nothing to show for all your efforts. We are told that as a result of this practice, Mandela’s eyes are ruined… by the dust or is it by the glare? And it’s one of the reasons (as well as age) that flash photography is disallowed during his functions. We are told of a man (and it’s terrible that I forget his name, ‘cause he is an important struggle icon… that’s the problem of being too Nellie-focused) who is in solitary confinement because it is too dangerous to let him speak with other inmates… something about his words being too potent. Other inmates pass by the little house he is confined to, and if he is out walking in the yard, he takes a fist full of soil, and slowly let the soil fall through his fingers… a sign that the struggle continued.

The prison is very sanitized… makes you wonder what the big deal is… yes the cells are small, but look, they're clean, and prisoners had an area to walk out into and stretch their legs. Prison tours are run by former inmates… I ask our guide what he was in for… he abashedly indicates... theft… but hey, he does catch the tail end of the freedom fighters, and can tell us about how they are educated (even with the jailers’ best efforts to keep them ignorant)… Nellie invites his jailer to attend his presidential inauguration… as a VIP. Some say it just shows you how next-to-Jesus he is… I say it’s a wonderful way to kill two birds with one stone: show your magnanimity to the (incredulous) world, and give the jailer (and his kind) a bloodied nose by making sure he understands, up close and personal, that you are now, and always have been, greater than he… but then again… I am by no stretch of the imagination, next-to-Jesus, so of course I’d think such base thoughts. The jailer later writes a book titled ‘Goodbye Bafana’ . [I watch an AFCON game where Bafana Bafana, the SA national football team (translates to ‘the boys, the boys’ - the women’s national football team, not to be left behind, is called ‘Banyana, Banyana,’ the girls, the girls), is beaten by another African team… someone suggests to his South African counterpart… you need to change the name of your national team… you can’t send boys to do a man’s job… you’re sending Boys up against Indomitable Lions and Super Eagles! What is in a name indeed].

The Rhodes memorial is interesting enough… perched a distance up Table mountain (right next to UCT), horse galloping up towards Africa… it’s in the news because it’s been vandalized … probably just kids doing their ‘urban art’ thing and not someone pissed at what it stands for … I learn that this very hard working man (imperial conquest from cape to cairo is hard work people!) is buried in Bulawayo… must find time to go see what that looks like.
Trips to the breakwater lodge and District 6 Museum prove to be the last straws… kill my appetite for historic context. I decide I cannot cope with “knowing and thinking too much” … time to live in the unconscious present!

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After a lengthy moratorium on history lessons, I imagine it’s safe to ‘do Soweto’.
I will later visit another Soweto attraction, Wandie’s restaurant. Large tour buses outside, Wandie makes a pretty penny ‘cause his place is a must-do on the touristy Soweto beat. He started out as an illegal shebeen (an irish word that you would swear is local), he tells us (as he mingles with his guests), and took advantage of the advent of democracy, and the growing interest in Soweto to expand his business. He’s bought out the neighboring plot and is expanding his business … There’s high demand for his product and other places have opened up to absorb the overflow from this demand… none have his popularity (yet) though. Long tables, all sorts of business cards on walls and ceilings (you're encouraged to find a spot to stick yours), photos of Wandie and famous world personalities on the walls. It’s a buffet style setup, and I serve up as much delicious ‘traditional’ fare as I can. A dish is low on matumbo, so I ask for it by name… not knowing what else to call it… and am pleasantly surprised to discover that matumbo is its name here as well. That food is mmm mmmm good to the last morsel.

But first off, am disappointed to learn that it’s actually an acronym that stands for SOuth WEst TOwnship, its direction from central Johannesburg… Yes, guilty as charged… I wasn’t paying attention the day we did south African history in school. I start at Vilakazi street, only street in the world where two nobel peace prize winners once lived… Mandela’s old diggs (I think he spent just one night here after his release from prison), Winnie’s diggs until after 1994, and Archbishop Tutu’s house just round the corner (not open to the public). The Mandela house is made of simple red brick: living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen. I get there and find a Kenyan tour guide… Talk about enterprising Kenyans! Even so… this is wrong bwana, let a South African give the tour at such an important historic place. These sentiments are expressed to him, and he explains he’s married to one of Winnie’s nieces(?) and is therefore South African by proxy? He lived in the US for a long time, then moved to SA with his family. He charges no entry fees, takes you on a 20-30 minute tour of this very small space (depends on size, curiosity and knowledge of the group), explains the context in which most of the pictures displayed were taken, relates the South African struggle to your country (was your government pro or anti…) [In case you’re interested: Kenya’s role here is bittersweet: our government was pro-apartheid… just not in as overt a manner as, say… Malawi. Yes our passports were stamped ‘valid for travel anywhere but to South Africa’ but that was just politics, we supported apartheid in subtle ways. On the other hand, our struggle for freedom, “was an important example of resistance to colonial rule, which gave South Africans hope in their own struggles”, ultimately leading to the political impasse then to the negotiated settlement… Kenya also made another significant contribution to SA’s history… one I’ll relate shortly).

There are pictures of Mandela’s 1st wife and her sons… one of whom was killed allegedly by the apartheid government in a bid to break Mandela’s will while he was in prison (the other was recently felled by aids). We’re told she left Nellie ‘cause of his politics and his wandering eye (not necessarily in that order). There are pictures of a smiling, defiant, beautiful, fiery Winnie in her combat fatigues, afro, and her right fist in the air… you can hear her “amandla!” rent the air, and the “awethu!” from the energized crowd. Here we see pictures of MK (Umkonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC) soldiers, essentially a line up of the future cabinet. I catch a glimpse of Chris Hani, a man I feel should have been president, but who would not live to vote in the first democratic elections. The finance minister is pointed out to me and I can’t believe he once had a head that full of hair! There’s also a picture of Peter Mokaba, he of “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” infamy, said to also have been felled by aids.

There’s a picture of a woman who slightly resembles Winnie, but she is rail thin, sunken eyes, broken spirit… nothing like the proud and fierce woman we know… A distant relative? Turns out it is Winnie… there was a time when wives of the freedom fighters were put into solitary confinement, a bid to break their spirits and those of their husbands… they emerged looking broken, haggard, rail thin. Put together, if you will, apartheid brutality and these women… let your mind run riot, then tell me you wouldn’t forgive anything these women, this particular woman, did thereafter. She herself has said “The years of imprisonment hardened me … Perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions wouldn't be blunted, as they have been in my case. When it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life, I no longer have the emotion of fear … there is no longer anything I can fear. There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn't any pain I haven't known.” She was ‘banished’ to middle-of-no where Free State as a result of her continued political activities. We are shown bullet holes from when the house and Winnie and her girls were shot at.

This woman holds a very special place in my heart… I would never have known there existed a Mandela were it not for her, with her sauce and courage, beauty and defiance… always on the TV making bold (and very controversial) statements: “we will win!”, “with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall set this country free,” and her right fist always held up in salute of the comrades, fellow fighters. During her divorce case in 1996, my father and I didn’t talk for a week because he said she was a woman of dubious morals for continuing to see her ‘boyfriend’, even after her husband was freed from prison… oh the trials of an African woman… having to be all things to all people… and receiving no kudos from any of them.

Winnie’s own house (said to have been built for her by a benefactor from the US) is not too far from Vilakazi street… when I visit Soweto, I make a point of driving by there, waving at the cctv cameras perched atop a high perimeter wall, and mouthing “we love you Winnie!” done in the hope that I’ll run into her, she’ll shake my hand, and I’ll never wash it again!
You can imagine the level of conflict in my mind when Mbeki (T-boz) rebuffs Winnie in 2001. Both people I admire, but situations like those insist you pick a favorite. .. said to be yet another manifestation of the continuing power struggle between those who fought from exile and those who fought from within.

At the end of the tour, having answered your questions to your satisfaction… the Kenyan tour guide makes the simple request that you donate whatever amount you desire to the tour guides. A very smart practice. Perfected by taxi drivers I’ve encountered in TZ and Zambia… they tell you to pay what you think their service is worth… you struggle with your conscience because you don’t want to appear mean – especially after they’ve looked after you so well – so you give a decent amount… usually. Right outside the compound there are curio sellers selling anything but Mandela/struggle-themed items… masks, necklaces, etc.
A short while after, Kenyan tour guide gets ousted from that position. After all, how can a foreigner tell tourists about Mandela? Are there no South Africans who can do this job?

I go back post-him, pay a R20 entry fee, get a 5 minute tour (this is the bedroom, these are some pictures taken during the struggle, these are the honorary doctorates sent to Mandela after his release from jail, etc.), and end up relating what I can remember of his tour, to those with me. The tour guide listens in, curious… how come I know all this? Inside the house compound in the small room where you pay your entry fee… they sell t-shirts and caps printed with Mandela’s visage. Yes, it’s great to indigenize a business, just make sure you get the full measure of knowledge before you kick out the consummate professional.

Not far from these two houses, just up the road, is the spot where Hector Pieterson fell and further up, a memorial and museum in his honor… in honor of the June 16 student uprising. The Museum building looks a tad strange to me…too open… the curator says it’s a new building, in line with contemporary museum architecture… something about fires in museums? A trip through it doesn’t leave me in tears, just pensive about what I’ve learnt… I gain the distinct impression that if it were not for June 16, 1976, the day those school children decided they were fed up and did something about it! SA would still be under apartheid… with the older generation urging us to take the high road… as if the high road ever won a fight of this kind [I have heard that even Gandhi’s high road of passive resistance involved the British officials finding feces on their desks or paths every morning… thus their morale was worn]. God bless those June 16 children.

The museum display is a whole lot of TV monitors with loops of stories around that particular day, the build up to the day, etc. What stands out are a couple of loops: one taken at a ‘whites only’ beach (camps bay?) with a bikini’d white woman who says into the camera: “oh no, we don’t want to become like the rest of Africa, look at how they’ve failed to govern themselves, look at …” and she reels off a list African countries that were thriving under colonial rule but are now ‘failed states’ and impoverished due to black rule… another monitor shows a PSA (public service announcement) detailing what the national government is doing to ensure that your kid’s future is catered for… we see white kids riding bicycles in suburbs which have no walls or fences, white kids in school, and it tells you of the jobs available for them in offices, factories, and shows you the recreational opportunities… rugby, swimming pools, parks with white families braaing and enjoying themselves…

Another video shows a tween girl standing up in class explaining why she’s superior to a black person… black people can only look after the house and the garden, she says… and me, looking on incredulously… surely this never happened… children did not say such things… Someone suggested that research ought to be carried out on the effects of such rhetoric (that they’re superior and everyone else inferior) on young white people… wonder if it’s seen the light of day… These are the impressions I’m left with after visiting that museum… this, and that haunting picture of Hector being carried in the arms of that young man, his sister running alongside... their screams that can still be heard all these years later.

Closer to Johannesburg’s CBD is the apartheid museum, a social responsibility project of the consortium that owns the adjacent Gold Reef City Casino. When you pay for entry, you’re given a plastic card which indicates “white” or “non-white”, and are obliged to use one of the corresponding “separate but equal” entrances. As you walk through these entrances, you learn about the official date of the de jure enactment of racial segregation, of the laughable criteria used to determine racial categories. Randall Robinson once said that when he first landed in SA he felt right at home… because Jim Crowism was in full effect here… complete with the pencil test.

Video of the history: the San, the Bantu, Jan Van Riebeck, the British, the British vs. amaZulu, the siege of several African tribes by the occupying forces, the decisions by chiefs of these tribes to surrender instead of fighting to the last man. Why did they surrender? I’ve always asked… why would you concede to being treated like sub-humans? Wouldn’t you rather die than put up with such treatment? But if they had all chosen the path of death instead of acquiescence, who would be getting BEE’d today? Wouldn’t this be another USA? Natives in reserves without a prayer of ever coming to power, non-natives owning all? (This doesn't apply if you subscribe to the "Bantu as invaders of the San" school of thought). Now I see the (sometimes) wisdom of the rhetoric of wiser, cooler minds… bide your time… and keep believing that someday you’ll be free. So to the chiefs who chose to give in: I ain’t mad at you no more… I finally see your point. I learn that contrary to my perception, it isn’t originally about race, it is about mining, labor, profit-making… when Johannesburg booms as a mining town, white labor gets too expensive for the capitalists to quickly become fabulously wealth, so they engaged cheaper black labor. The white laborers are understandably upset, and the protest moves to the (easy, obvious) racial level with everyone conveniently forgetting that it is about economics and the exploitation that is capitalism to begin with.

Lasting impressions are made by pictures of mineworkers, skinny, naked, going through a full body cavity search to make sure they don’t smuggle the diamonds/gold out the mine. In Orapa, Botswana, I ask a man who works at the diamond mine there whether the men are still searched that way… he says they have x-ray machines, but given the deleterious effects of consistent exposure to x-rays over time, the miners are fine with the full body cavity search. Think about that the next time you’re blinging that diamond that’s forever.

The display that strikes fear deep into my heart is… no, not the ropes hanging from the ceiling… the riot police vehicle. I don’t know why. On the days I see and feel its menacing presence on the streets, I take off in the opposite direction… Here, I gingerly peep into the back, to see what it looks like on the inside. Monitors showing video loops galore in this museum as well… you see people being tossed over razor wire (encountered a debate over who invented razor wire: SA or Germany? Someone actually wants to take credit for this?), the masses toyitoying, facing police with teargas and antiriot gear, images of impimpis flushed out and necklaced… tumultuous times.

Then on to the negotiations, which is where the sweet Kenyan contribution comes in. After a lot of back and forth, meetings that fail to come to a resolution, Buthelezi wanting to postpone the elections, Mandela stating categorically that “April 27, 1994 is sacrosanct” and the elections will go ahead on that date, Buthelezi saying that the Zulus will not take part in the vote… the violence that erupts [During this spate of violence, a colleague says she encounters many toyitoyis… and becomes a darned good sprinter (assuming she wasn't one before this)… there are heaps of tomatoes at street corners… if you smear your eyes and face with fresh tomato teargas won't sting as much, so she says… Am sure we’ve since moved on to tear gas with much more harmful chemical effects].

After internationals Kissinger & Co fail to broker an agreement, just days before April 27, in walks Professor Washington Okumu and like a good Kenyan, he does the impossible... gets them to agree… and in so doing, averts civil war. Over a decade later he tries to work the same miracle for the Narc marriage, but finds true the adage that a prophet is not appreciated in his own home.

I learn of the difference between the end of apartheid and the end of the Nazi regime. The latter came to an end abruptly… so there was not time to get rid of the documentary evidence of whodunwhat… The former, however, had all the time in the world to get rid of documentary evidence. Truckloads of documents destroyed, records washed 'white as snow'… monsters exonerated of wrong-doing with one strike of the match... you may know someone was a spy, but without documentary evidence, uta do?

How does one de-personalize history? How does one not take personal the history of “one’s people” and all the crimes perpetrated against them?