Journeys in South Africa

Cape Town can hit you like a slug to the chest.

When you're on the airplane, just about to land, and the sight of Table Mountain rushing up to meet you blends with the reality of being in Africa--the motherland of sorts for all human beings--you can almost forget about South Africa's troubled past. And right before touching down at Cape Town International, a perfect view of the palatial waterfront mansions erodes any notion you might have of a third-world South Africa. It's almost enough to be duped; that is, of course, until the many rows of dilapidated housing in the blighted township nearby quickly enter the corner of your eye. It is very clear then that you are far from home.

 As the beat-up Toyota Corolla speeds away from the city's opulence to the peripheral townships of the Western Cape, I think a lot about where I am and with whom I am about to take up residence. A "colored" man, Keith Rose, has graciously offered to take me into his home. He shares the aged yellow car in which he picks me up--windows jammed, passenger seat wobbling out of its sockets--with his brother Vernon and his sister Priscilla. It revs on through the Cape Flats, the region surrounding Cape Town proper, where hordes of blacks and coloreds were forcefully moved under the apartheid government. As we pass the rubble of District Six, now memorialized in a museum in the heart of the city, Keith lays testament to the uprooting of the colored community in Cape Town during apartheid and its rippling impact on current generations. Most coloreds trace their roots to the Khoi and San peoples of South Africa, the original inhabitants of the land. During apartheid, coloreds were positioned politically between blacks and whites by the racist government, in order to divide the nonwhite opposition. Thirteen children, mostly colored, have been lost to gang violence in the Kaapse Flakter in the month before I arrive.

I came to South Africa on a summer research internship to find what has been missing for me during my time at Duke. Since reading about South Africa in my freshman FOCUS program, it had been my dream to experience first-hand the sights and sounds of the country. After two years, Duke's racial climate had left me dejected and cynical, unable to believe in the egalitarian ideals our university and country purport to uphold. By living with two families at different places within South Africa's racial spectrum, I hoped to immerse myself in a society wholly committed to the healing of its collective wounds.

The Corolla eventually leaves the main roads for Keith's neighborhood, Bridgetown, a predominantly colored township situated in Athlone, which has gained ill repute during recent months because of escalating gang activity. Bridgetown, on the other hand, has defied the recent trends: Gangs, drugs and violence are all on the decline. Keith's family receives me with open arms. His 11-year-old daughter, Loren, has prepared a welcome banner for me, while his wife Vivian serves me some refreshments the moment I come through the door. Germaine, the eldest son, will be home soon.

I spend my first night with the Roses watching Keith's videotaped performance with his gospel choir at the Baxter House, a major performing arts center on the campus of the University of Cape Town (South Africa's Cambridge and bastion of the white educational elite). Keith has recruited nearly 40 youth in Bridgetown and surrounding communities to perform the gospel music he writes. The Prophetic Ministry Productions Choir, as it is professionally known, has performed in Johannesburg and has been invited to sing in both the United Kingdom and Uganda.

Once Germaine arrives, he and Loren avidly begin teaching me Afrikaans, the colonial language of the colored people derived primarily from Dutch Afrikaners but with Malay and indigenous influences. With my seemingly colored complexion, Loren cannot imagine how I do not know the language, but we laugh as I awkwardly attempt the words in my thick American accent. Germaine, both a star soccer player and upcoming musician at the tender age of 20, is planning to study sound engineering in England to further his career, as well as to help the family music production business. Because of financial difficulties and the lack of a viable opportunity for study, he has spent the last two years after high school graduation at home.

The Roses live at 43 Sycamore Way in Bridgetown, just around the corner from the local petrol station and convenience store. As Germaine, his friend Enrico and I walk to the store to get some bread, Germaine reminisces, "It never used to be safe to do this at night. When we came here a few years ago, the gangs ran this place. Now things have changed." The work of his father has undoubtedly had a major role in that transformation.

I sleep in the same room with Germaine because the Roses have offered me Loren's bed--she has to sleep with Vivian and Keith in their room. There are five separate rooms in the tiny brick house, with a central walkway area connecting them--altogether maybe the size of a large triple dorm room at Duke. The house is equipped with prepaid electricity (though it occasionally "runs out" and needs refilling from the local electricity store) but has only cold running water. We boil water for bathing, and there is no sink in the bathroom so we brush our teeth and shave in the toilet. We use a washtub to bathe because there is no showerhead. The living room doubles as a dining room and entertainment center, outfitted with dial-up Internet access, TV/VCR and a stereo. Often these amenities do not function properly because of short circuits in the wiring. The coasters hung on the wall seem not only anachronistic but out of place, depicting quaint German homes in the bucolic European countryside.

At Duke, it's often hard to escape the social restrictions imposed by one's ethnic identity. But somehow being placed alone in a completely alien environment has enhanced my ability to escape those boundaries. My caramel complexion and afro hairstyle facilitate my assimilation, as most Capetonians think I am colored until I open my mouth. (And, after the first few weeks, I can feign the accent and even use a few words of Afrikaans.) Germaine and Enrico introduce me to the Gatsby--the epitome of junk food for coloreds--a sandwich filled with meat, eggs, cheese, fried vegetables, chips and a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise dubbed "perinaise." The pair show me how to play cricket, and we run across the streets of Bridgetown daily playing soccer with the other kids for hours past dusk, until we absolutely cannot see the ball. We build a blazing fire with dried pine needles and kindling, waiting patiently for the tight red coals to form. On top of these coals we place a metal screen necessary for a traditional braaivleis, or barbecue.

I feel more than just geographically removed from the hustle and bustle of Duke; it tends to obfuscate our priorities. So often we define "progress" as working hard and obtaining more wealth, but many students also spend a vast majority of their lives hating their majors, dreading the jobs at which they will work and ignoring their personal relationships. The divorce rate in America has climbed to over 50 percent, and we have the highest number of per-capita gun deaths in the world. We move away from the simple pleasures in life to pursue higher-order needs like advanced education and self-realization. Now, the reality is that America's obsessive focus on barometers like efficiency and wealth creation has made it the economic powerhouse it is today, but where has all this wealth really taken us? We face educational inequities that would make many developing countries stand back in shock, and the racism we have nurtured for decades--indeed, centuries--has developed into a peculiarly stilted dialogue among the ethnic groups of this country.

Forming healthy relationships in Bridgetown did not blind me, however, to the self-destruction so prevalent in that community. Whenever we play soccer we have to navigate the shattered glass and drug paraphernalia on the playground. The dank smell of dagga wafts across the field from the teenagers lighting up near the store. Graffiti exalts the names of the major gangs in the area perpetrating the drug traffic--Hard Living, Young Americans, Junior Mafia, Dixie Boys--unfortunate side effects of American "intervention" across the globe. I wonder what Snoop Dogg would think about his likeness being used as an idol by the gangs of the Western Cape. For the most part, among the younger crowd, my Americanness has been a huge positive: Everyone wants a piece of American glamour, although it is a bit difficult explaining that my South Carolina home is far from Britney Spears or Hollywood. However, there are times--particularly in conversation with the older generation--when the jokes about my coming "to help the poor South African peoples" sting quite deeply.

Keith and his fellow gospel artists are each extremely passionate about changing lives through God's music. As an agnostic-cum-free-thinker, I don't subscribe to the unquestioning acceptance of religious principles--especially considering Christianity was first thrust upon African peoples by explorers trumpeting the white man's burden. But as a student of community change and economic empowerment, I cannot deny the hand of religion in revitalizing Bridgetown and changing the lives of youth in the area. Enrico, a former drug addict on the path to dropping out of school, turned his life around under the guidance of Keith and the PMP Choir. By finding God he found meaning in his life. At a Friday evening youth service, teenagers from across the Cape Flats share their struggles: Peer pressure, achievement, relationships, a feeling of uncertainty about direction in life. Granted, most of us do not face the same life-threatening circumstances these South African teens confront on a day-to-day basis, but many of these same issues are central to the lives of all naïve, confused Duke students.

I attend one of the many memorial services for the late, great Walter Sisulu, a comrade of Nelson Mandela during the apartheid struggle and a true giant in the African National Congress--the party currently in power under President Thabo Mbeki. It is the first time I truly feel the voice of the South African people, the voice I have read and dreamt about only in my textbooks. In the Xhosa celebration of Sisulu's life, the predominantly black audience dances, marches and chants to commemorate a passionate, committed leader, and in so doing they renew their commitment to freedom.

Cape Town is not demographically representative of South Africa, as nearly 60 percent of Capetonians are colored. Compare that to the population of South Africa as a whole, which is about 77 percent "African" (black). Twenty-three percent of South Africans speak Zulu, though Xhosa is the primary language spoken by blacks in Cape Town. There is much debate in South Africa about what defines the colored population: Their language, their roots, the extent of mixed racial heritage in the community, their cultural history. But what is fascinating about this group of individuals is the extent to which their identity is influenced by society's constructed extremes of black and white.

Coloreds in South Africa, like many in the United States, occupy a region of society in the proverbial gray zone. Although their place was determined in large part by apartheid ideology, it is maintained by a lingering cultural psyche that sets limits on what is acceptable and what is not. In many ways these limits are defined by the two extremes of black and white. There is a common saying among the coloreds of Cape Town, which expresses their dual frustrations in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa: "Before we were not white enough, and now we are not black enough." While receiving many privileges not afforded to blacks during apartheid, coloreds undoubtedly suffered much white racism in that period. Now, nearly a decade after the first democratic elections in the country, coloreds do not receive the same disadvantaged status that many blacks receive for social programs and aid.

Yet these policies have most affected the collective identity of coloreds, beyond their socioeconomic status. Not unlike many minorities in the U.S., young colored people speak of "acting white" or "talking white"--a manner of speech associated with education and the use of by-the-book grammar, or even with being raised in a foreign country. While cracking jokes about white people and their collective style, Enrico and Germaine often make disparaging remarks about black Africans, most notably in reference to their large numbers at national gatherings and in the poorest townships. "It's a big black mess of darkies," Enrico would quip as he watched the black throng on television crowd into Johannesburg's Orlando Stadium for Sisulu's funeral service. To be fair, many coloreds refer to themselves as "lighties" and to whites as "whities."

There is considerable antagonism among the white, colored and black communities in South Africa. To reduce the country to three communities is a gross oversimplification, considering its 11 official languages. But, because of their privileged status in the eyes of white racists, colored South Africans do not face as daunting an uphill battle for equality as blacks. After my stay with the Roses, I witness these challenges firsthand, moving to the residence of Mfundisi (Reverend) Vuyani Mtini and his family, a tight-knit Xhosa group living in the upwardly mobile community of Montana, just adjacent to Gugulethu.

Gugulethu, which ironically means "Our Pride," has gained international fame as the site of both the Gugulethu Seven police massacre and the killing of American Fulbright student Amy Biehl. It is worth noting that the apartheid government made the forced removals more palatable to blacks by bestowing idyllic euphemisms on their townships: Langa ("Rising Sun"), Khayelitsha ("New Home") and Nyanga ("New Moon"), to name just a few.

As soon as I enter the Mtini home I have to contend with the fact that my appearance immediately constructs a barrier between the family and me. The infant daughter of Bulelani, Mfundisi's son, keeps shouting, "Umlungu! Umlungu!" The fear in her large, round eyes shines real and intense. She has just called me "white person."

After coming to terms with being identified as "white" for the first time in my life, I have to also understand the reality that within this home Xhosa is the primary language. Xhosa, pronounced with a click of the jowls on the molars, is a language that incorporates different types of clicks into a traditional Western alphabet. Being left out of the conversation for so long, I feel frustrated, but at some base level I am secretly glad that "my" language has not pervaded the whole world so much as to force everyone to interact with me on my terms. I spend the first night with the "kids" of the group, driving Nelson, one of Mfundisi's friends, to the hospital because his 18-month-old has experienced an asthma attack. The four-hour wait in the car outside the hospital has a silver lining after all because Nelson and Mfundisi's kids teach me a lot about the Xhosa language, black economic empowerment and African culture. I can see in Bulelani the same get-my-piece-of-the-pie attitude that pervades the minds of many poor black males in the United States--an inordinate focus on money, glamour and women--and the fastest ways to get them. I can't blame him, after the damage apartheid wreaked on blacks in South Africa. It is only a grossly distorted response to what has been wrongfully denied him and his community for so long. The sad reality for young people like Germaine and Bulelani is apathy has set in quickly after the struggle against racial injustice. While apartheid provided a unifying nucleus on which non-white could focus their energies and frustrations, the youth of South Africa today simply face the long, uphill battle for poverty alleviation and socioeconomic legitimacy. There are no more marches to be led or evil empires to be toppled. This new struggle, much less captivating but all the more important to be waged, is losing more South Africans to cynicism each day than were ever lost to the secret police or undercover assassins.

My ignorance of Xhosa limits my interaction with the Mtinis, but it remains clear that this lack of facility with English poses an additional barrier for blacks in South Africa in terms of job creation and societal de facto segregation. This language barrier is heightened by the fact that black Africans resist Americanization more than the colored community, whose links to whites have obviously influenced their style and customs. Like Native Americans, it seems that black Africans who want to maintain their unique cultural traditions must necessarily face marginalization in a white-dominated society.

Yet it is these cultural traditions that make the South African people so compelling to even the most casual of outsiders. In the face of rival ancestral claims to the same piece of land, virulent white supremacy and a clash of fundamentally opposed worldviews, South African blacks have endured. At a funeral prayer service, much like at Sisulu's memorial, friends and family celebrate life rather than mourn death. The entire service is in Xhosa, so I cannot understand a word, but it is unmistakably beautiful. Swaying to the harmony of the braided voices and the syncopated beatings of an expressionless, long-armed man on a green hand pillow, I think about how these songs must have buttressed so many through the trials and tribulations of that horribly evil system, and all that clouds my brain are the oft-repeated words of the apartheid protesters: "Amandla! Amandla!"

Mfundisi wears two official hats, one as pastor at Sivuyile Baptist Church in Gugulethu (affectionately referred to as "Gugs") and the other as a politician. He is an ANC Councilor for Ward 44, one of the four wards into which Gugs is divided. The challenges for civic engagement in Gugulethu abound--the lack of telephones and mail service hinders easy dissemination of public information. We drive through Gugulethu with a loudspeaker attached to the top of the car, enticing families to come out of their shacks to listen to the announcement of a public meeting in Xhosa, English and a sprinkling of Afrikaans.

Even though I have spent such a short time with them, the Mtinis treat me in the South African tradition--like family. The night before I leave they sing Christian songs for me, but with an altogether Xhosa flair--multipart, rich melodies artfully pieced together on the spot. The sharing of knowledge is inevitably contagious, and I show them as much as I know about American dance moves. Language notwithstanding, American popular culture is a common ground upon which most citizens of the world can meet. Not being able to sing with them reinforces the notion of my "whiteness" in South Africa, but I think the cultural exchange via dance helps to bridge the communication gap.

he Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg is an apropos ending to my time in the country. Seeing the likes of Henry Verwoerd and P.W. Botha rail against the "barbarous and semi-barbarous" peoples of the country, I wonder: How could a system in which hundreds of people changed their race each year perpetuate such discriminatory practices based solely on that illusive category? The worth of individuals was clearly demarcated during the period of Bantu education, as evidenced by per-pupil yearly expenditures: Whites, 500 rand; coloreds, 140 rand; blacks, 42 rand. It all amounts to some level of pure insanity.

Yet the story of the South African miracle reveals the opposite side of our ethical continuum: The spectacular resilience of the human spirit and the robust capacity for those who have suffered so greatly to forgive. Mandela spent 27 years in his Robben Island jail cell studying Afrikaner literature, history and language to better understand the "enemy," and upon being released from prison he promptly invited his captors to dinner at home. Anti-apartheid leaders like Steve Biko and Solomon Mahlangu, who said in 1979 that "[his] blood will nourish the tree which will bear the fruits of freedom," clearly understood their purpose in this world. And with resolute characters and stout wills they helped to overcome the injustice pervading their society.

Albeit limited in scope and impact, the world-renowned Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to address the atrocities of apartheid, has provided a space for public grieving and racial reconciliation in the newly formed South African democracy. Perpetrators of violent acts were encouraged to come forward with complete disclosure of their political crimes, in exchange for amnesty. Although inadequate in terms of economic repayment to victims, the TRC has attempted to provide a collective justice for South Africa--one that moves beyond retribution toward restoration. In the United States, while we continue to pre-empt similar proposals like that of Representative Tony Hall, D-Ohio, whose resolution calling for a Congressional apology for slavery was shot down in both 1997 and 2000, racial enmity continues to grow in the hearts of the disaffected. And the number of disaffected--black, white, brown, yellow and red--continues to grow, at Duke and across the nation. We are a house divided, a country and campus without an open, honest means for discussing our racial problems. It is said that the plight of African blacks and blacks in the U.S. cannot truly be compared because of the overwhelming majority that blacks enjoy in South Africa, but the changing demographics of America will drastically change the race debate in years to come.

In Allister Sparks's new book Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa, Archbishop Tutu reflects, "The world needs a South Africa that has succeeded." I needed South Africa this summer to mitigate my cynicism and remind me that there is hope for improving race relations at Duke and in this country. People across the globe need to see this nascent democracy, mend the scars of its past and succeed in uplifting an entire generation of denigrated nonwhite South Africans--not only for the symbolic value but also because the future success of the entire African continent hinges upon it. For South Africa to fail to achieve Mandela's grand vision of a nonracial covenant would surely deal a huge blow to the struggles for ethnic harmony everywhere. But, as Sparks reminds us, "When you have just escaped Armageddon, that is no time to become a pessimist."