Appologies for the late post, but having just eturned from South Africa yesterday and attending classes all day yesterday and today, things have been relatively hectic. After the dissolution of the group, my brother and I hopped on a bus for nearly a 24 hour bus ride through the South African interior from Cape Town to Durban via Bloemfontein. While the bus ride was long and eventful, the end result was not.
The purpose of our travel to Durban was to visit with our maternal grandmother for 3 days before returning to the states. Our grandmother was vehemently anti-apartheid, and while she was not an activ or violent demonstrator, she definitely fought battles in her own way. She has two adoted Black children, whom she took in at a time when it was not actually possible for her to legally adopt a Black child. Her first Black child, Patrick, she actuaally took in in the 70s, in the thicket of the apartheid era. She told us of the pains and trials she had to go through in order to have Patrck registered as "Coloured", such that he might be legaly allowed to live in the same home and attend a decent school. Patrick is now grown and lives in Johanesburg with his wife and two children. The child that I know best is my uncle Peter. Peter came to live wih my gandmother in the 80s, and he was legally adopted as her Black child in the 90s. After finishing his matric, Peter came to live in the States, initially in Florida and later in Colorado with us. I love Peter, and our family bond is as thick as ever, despite the difference in race.
Our grandmother normally has out ex-aunt in law staying with her to look after her, as her sight is almost completely failed. When we visited however, our aunt was visiting family in Johannesburg and our grandmother had a care taker living with her at the time. Her name was Nu, and she was a 28 yar old Zulu born in a suburb of Durban. My grandmother openly professes "her love of Black people", and she was no different with Nu. It is one thing to be anti-racist and anti-apartheid, but my grandmother leans in a far left direction of openly professing her admiration and love of Blacks every opportunity she gets. While this is revolutionary and uncommon, I wonder to what end this love gets. Is it foolhardy to initially trust and take in a person whom you have never once met into your home? Even though this person is in an initial capacity, mt grandmother admits that she did not know Nu at all when she first opened her doors to her.
This revolutionary attitude of my grandmother is an anmaly which has plagued me constantly, even more now after seeing how she opened her arms to Nu. My grandmother is an old Afrikaaner, and she admits that most Afrikaaners her age were supporters of apartheid, and that she does not have may companions her own age due to this fact. This has been weighing on my mind, as I wonder whether or not the attitude of my grandmother will reflect the new attitude towards Blacks which is to come in South African society, and whether or not this is an effective attitude to undertake.
Again this causes me to believe that the most important acts of reconciliation are still to come with the rise of the younger generation. Now that I am no longer in South Africa however, there is little I can do to observe and influence the thoughts and views of the population my age. I do suppose that the best I can do is to keep in contact with my cousins in the country, and to further extend my observations of progress and change when I return next summer. I will be incredibly interested to see what attitudes have changed or shifted when I return, and in what direction they lean. Will they lean far-left like my grandmother or bltantly racist like my initial contact with my cousin? With suc drastically different experiences on either end of my trip it shows that South African society is as divided and unreconciled as ever. There is still a very long walk to freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment