A Land of Hope and Forgiveness

Ubuntu. It is an African secret, Dr. Chiwoza Bandawe, a faculty member from South Africa teaches us. In Zulu, ubuntu is known as Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person through persons). It is both a philosophy about how people live and relate and a way of seeing the world. Ubuntu is a story about people and culture and resilience. “The concept of unbuntu,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “embodies an understanding of what is it is be human and what is necessary for human beings to grow and find fulfillment. It is an ethical concept and expresses a vision of what is valuable and worthwile.” Contrary to “I think and therefore I am,” the African ubuntu is best summed up by Mbiti as, “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore, I am.” This identity of “I am because you are” shapes the African community and is the greatest secret in South Africa. Traits like hospitality, self control, patience, empathy, and interdependence between individual and community are leading the new South Africa.

We are here in South Africa as history is being written. Wait too long, and the remnants and scars of apartheid will be healed but hopefully not forgotten. No where is this change more apparent in this changing South Africa than on the new coat of arms. “People who are different come together.” This new South African coat of arms is written in Paal, like Latin, a dead language no longer spoke by anyone. It represents the 11 languages, many peoples and complex group of people under one government. Indeed, South Africa is a new beacon of hope. Long described as part of the “Dark Continent,” Africa as a whole has a long and complicated history. Misunderstood, complicated, and rich in culture and tradition, Africa is the oldest continent, such a land mass that is could encompass Europe, New Zealand, North and South America and still have space. Almost 1 billion people live here and the languages number in the thousands. But this so-called “Dark Continent” has many silver linings despite the looming problems of world debt, high inflation, HIV/AIDS, unemployment and political instability. There is hope. Proof of this developing optimism is one of the largest and richest countries in Africa, South Africa. Hidden under the sins of apartheid, a Boer or Africaaner word meaning separate or apart, South Africa has made leaps and bounds since 1994, even recently moving toward gay marriage in this very African land. Described as the most liberal Constitution in the world over (it explicitly forbids discrimination based on sex, religion, sexual orientation, race and ability), South Africa’s new government is moving beyond hatred, embarrassment, and blame to forgiveness, well-noted with the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC).

Even greater a sin than apartheid are the legacies and scars of the slave trade. Here in Cape Town, like Lagos and other coastal cities like Lagos, are remnants of the slave trade days and seeds of colonialism, the powers that once carved up this rich land to corral cheap labor and pillage the land of its resources. Goods and people were traded for centuries at these port cities, and slavery became the dominating and influential experience of many Africans. The dangers of the slave trade were high, and the obviously lucrative trade became more and more popular as the colonial empires grew larger and needed cheap labor. A quick look at these lands, independent only since the 1960s, and you can notice the neo-colonialism influences including the exportation of their resources to pay the interest on burgeoning debts. Obviously to leave out slavery is to forget one of the single largest influences on this great continent.

The slave trade in Africa was a complex endeavor, often explained as the “triangle trade.” Each part of the triangle is represented by the goods and people that were moved similar to the global trade we see today. Products like rubber, sugar and cotton were shipped from the New World to Europe, slaves were rounded up and sent to the New World from Africa and armaments, violence, forts, Christianity and warfare were shipped to Africa from Europe. This is a tough story. As we talk about large groups of people forced to leave their land and their forced labor, we look for scapegoats and someone to pay. However, the role in slavery includes not only Europeans, the largest influence, and arguably the initiators and worst offenders, but also people in Africa like the Ashanti and others who participated. Over time, the comparable if not superior states (politically one could argue) in Africa were diminished due to the slave trade, as the people declined and were forced to focus on basic needs. In the name of European interests in the extraction of people and goods from this land, they fomented wars, rebellions and violence in order to divide and rule, and later, start the slave trade.

When we watch the world news or read about this enormous continent, we are inevitably reminded about the hunger, debt, poverty and problems of 1 billion Africans. We see starving children and desperate families trying to eek out a living on drought-ridden soil. Food shortages in the 21st century are indeed a result of colonialism if not the slave trade. The extraction of resources for European industrial purposes resulted in a perpetual shortage in the 19th century, problems that have continued to this day. To give one example of the legacies of colonialism, Cameron still calls its country the “French Game Park”, where France hunts and poaches to this day. In fact, the former French President Francois Mitterand was a Cameron French Company Executive. Still, between the first World Wars, occupation and territorial colonies are solidified and indeed peaks. To this day, trade between African independent states is about 5% of their total trade, a holdout influence of British, French, Dutch and Portugues policies of dividing and conquering. The dream of a pan-African state or special trading partners like NAFTA is far out in the future.

Europe’s wartime needs initially encouraged their exploration and later imperialism across the world—but this could not last forever. This violence spilled over into the New World and Africa, but over time, they were no longer able to hold back their colonies’ desires for self-rule. We see new world powers develop after the World Wars, namely the U.S.S.R. and the United States, two vehemently anti-colonial states after the 1940s. These superpowers had their own interests, including propping up old empires, but not ruling other lands and people.

From this great land of diversity, came one of the most horrific and devastating experiences of racial segregation in the human history, apartheid. From the Cape of Good Hope, the mix of colonial influences, including Portugues, English, and Dutch, apartheid originally started in the 19th century, culminating in the murder and oppression that drew world-wide media attention in the 1980s. In order to control the overwhelmingly Black population, the Africaans and White minority legislated separation and pass laws to monitor every behavior and thought. “The apartheid government,” my guide Godfrey who led me into a Cape Flat township told me, “had a lot of time on their hands to tell us how to do everything.” Through the 20th century up until 1985 (and the end of apartheid in 1994), pass laws ensured Black South Africans were either at work or at home. There was no mobility either economically or physically. Some migrant workers left their families never to see them again to work for petty wages in Cape Town. Others discussed politics only to end up in unmarked graves in Zimbabwe and remote parts of the Karoo. Over 80% of the population had no voting rights, no voice in a country where they were an overwhelming majority. Even to this day, 75% of all faculty at the University of Cape Town are White, 62% of the total are White and male.

Equity courts and the forced removal land claims continue to this day. Some folks have returned to the land they were forced off and the courts continue to address the past wounds. It truly is a remarkable story to tell about the man who, imprisoned for 27 years at Robben Island and other prisons, would become President of South Africa. Nelson Mandela walked out of jail in Johannesburg in 1990, a man blinded by the numbing and backbreaking work of the limestone mines, and asked his country to forgive. The TRC led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu asked offenders to come forward and admit their crimes in return for amnesty. Some government officials went to jail, but there was no war, no revenge. This is the power and hope of ubuntu in South Africa.

My last day in South Africa I visited a township. I had debated back and forth whether or not to take a tour and invade other folks’ privacy, morality and sense of pride. The tour was well worth my personal conflict. We visited the District 6 Museum, a tribute and rememberance to the forced removal of Black South Africans from Cape Town proper to outlying shantytowns or townships. The ultimate goal of these removals was the creation of small Black nation states with their own small government within the larger South Africa. However, the goal couldn’t be further from the truth where most folks lived with no water, no power, and lost their houses, land and dignity in these forced removals. Moved outside the city, these townships like Langa, Khaletzcha and others were towns of poverty and despair but also community. Even with great poverty these people were happy within the context of their neighbors and friends. We visited Vicky’s Township Bed and Breakfast, an example of a new entrepreurship in Black South Africa. The majority of resources, jobs and opportunities are reserved for White Africaans, but this is changing. Vicky’s example shows the community involvement and a new type of business. Vicky takes care of her neighbors and they take care of her customers. With collaboration, reciprocity and empowerment, Vicky helps her neighbors and they protect her clients from the crime and dangers of township life. Other visits on the township tour included cultural centers that teach artwork, metallurgy and other trades to curb the overwhelming unemployment the townships face. On one corner you see small tin houses with vegetables for small, and on the next you see the ngamo or traditional healers that are very popular in South Africa. It was a unique tour to see how the majority of South Africans actually live.

“There is no future without forgiveness,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said. Never has a statement is been truer for the new South Africa. On December 16, the country celebrated the Day of Reconciliation, a national holiday. Twelve years old and still asking for forgiveness and rife with old and new problems, including racial ones and HIV/AIDS, South Africa and the Truth and Reconcilation Commission that addressed a lot of the sins of the past have moved forward. The people still clamor for more healing and forgiveness, but the country has come a long way. “One head,” the Zulus wisely say, “does not carry a roof.” This statement reflects the spirit of ubuntu and the strength of the South Africans. Indeed, this is the twelfth year since apartheid was dismantled and there is hope. This upcoming graduating student cohort is the first class to be racially integrated through their entire educational experience, 12 years. Despite the continued segregation of Black, Africaans/White and Colored South Africans in employment, housing, and general life, there is hope in education and young people. All that Africa has suffered and all that Africa has endured, may the youths of South Africa utilize their potential, their story and the ubuntu philosophy to uplift and empower others.