Warning: ok so this post might seem insensitive at times,
but I’m just conveying a conversation I had with a person I met today. It
really helped me understand the mindset and understand the impacts of apartheid
on a micro-level. This is apartheid removed from mass poverty, removed from
legislation and televised and reported atrocities. This I also use a ton of
words describing race in this post, but they’re the terms she used and they’re
even the official terms used in South Africa today.
Today was a free day! Hooray! It was good to have some time
to myself and do some random things like laundry and tidying and writing my
paper that have needed doing.
But then I had all afternoon to do whatever I wanted. It was
great. So I decided to wander. I think wandering might be the best way to get
to know a place, and I haven’t done much wandering in Stellenbosch. I did get
lost on my way into town. Realized people were staring at me like I didn’t
belong, and looking around me I quickly ascertained that I didn’t belong, but
it was the middle of the afternoon and lots of people were around, so instead
of panicking, I just calmly walked one block over and two blocks up and was
immediately back in an area where I did belong.
That in itself, to me is problematic. Sure I don’t belong in
areas of Chicago or even Evanston, but it was also weird how rapid the changes
are here. As in one block makes all the difference. This was also much more
like the “don’t belong” feeling in Evanston or Chicago. Very different from the
Kayamandi feeling of being an outsider but not in danger.
Anyway…today wasn’t supposed to be about learning. But I
guess the study in study abroad isn’t all in the classroom. In fact, most of it
isn’t, I’m quickly realizing. And some of it isn’t even related to my program.
For example, my navigating and wandering and getting lost in Stellenbosch
today. But hey, now I know my way around town very well. I have a mental map,
and I know where to go and where not to go. I also have a new friend in town.
Her name is Emma. And I’m quite proud of this friendship, because she is the
first South African friend I made entirely independent of my program. But no
worries – it rapidly turned into an educational experience too. #nerdwestern
So Stellenbosch has a bunch of boutiques and art galleries
that sell locally made things. I just wanted to kind of wander and window shop,
so I was casually walking into the ones that caught my attention. It’s really
nice to not be in a hurry, not really something I ever experience back at NU.
Always have somewhere to go, somewhere to be, something to do. But not today.
So I wandered into a little art gallery called Art on 5. It is owned by four local
Stellenbosch painters who make paintings and pottery. I caught a glimpse of
some of the prices and immediately decided I didn’t belong here either. But the
woman behind the counter smiled at me so sweetly so I asked her a dumb question
‘Are these all made by local artists?’ – I was about 99.9% sure the answer was
‘Yes.’ Which of course it was, but she was nice about it and told me a bit
about the artists. I hate those situations when you’re the only person in a
very small store besides the clerk behind the counter, so this was just me
making an awkward attempt at trying to make conversation and seem like this
place wasn’t about ten times outside my budget…but whatever. She went along
with it. Then my eye caught a shelf of cards and I saw one that had the
national flower, the protea, on it. I don’t know if you know what the protea
looks like, but it’s beautiful, and I looked at the sticker, and it was
completely affordable, so I decided to buy it. If you’ve seen my apartment room
in Evanston, you know that the only form of art I use on my walls is photos and
cards. So it could actually function as wall art for me too! And it saved what
I for some reason felt was a very awkward situation. But in hindsight (it’s
about 5 hours later…haha) I think I know why I felt prompted to buy this card.
While she was writing up my receipt (yes it was
handwritten), I asked her a few more questions about the art and then asked her
if the art in this gallery changed frequently. She started telling me a bit
about each of the artist’s busy lives and jobs and things so I ascertained that
was probably a no. Then I think she finally caught on that I wasn’t a local,
and she asked me where I came from. I told her the US and then asked her if she
was from Stellenbosch, which yes, she was. She lives in Idas Valley, which was
the town where I played hand clapping games with the little girls and was
informed I need an “African braid” in my hair by that precocious little girl who promptly started braiding my
hair. Well, the “So are you from Stellenbosch?” question – five simple words –
well, it was about 1:30pm when I asked that question. When I reemerged onto the
street, I looked at my watch, it was 3:15. Haha!
So what did Emma and I talk about for nearly two hours
(although we didn’t formally introduce ourselves by name until I was leaving)?
Well…everything. She told me about growing up in the apartheid years. How her
parents had grown up in the town of Stellenbosch but had been forcefully
relocated to Idas Valley at the time when the separate areas act was enforced
and all the black people had been sent to Kayamandi and the colored people to
Idas Valley. She pointed to the street outside and told me that when she was a
girl, she had not been allowed even to walk on that very street. But since she
had relatively fair skin, occasionally she could sneak in shops and watch
people work, but then when she was caught she’d get thrown out and sent back
home. She told me that her mother had worked in the home of a white family, but
that they had been very nice people and had never treated them badly and had
always driven her mother home at the end of the day, but would have to drop her
off a few streets over for safety reasons. I couldn’t quite tell if she meant the
white family’s safety or her mother’s safety. She told me about her aunt who
had married a German man, but they had had to run off to Namibia when they got
married because at the time the Immorality Act forbade people of different
races from getting married. When her aunt and uncle had come back to South
Africa, they came and had stayed with her family in Stellenbosch but her uncle
had actually gotten thrown in jail for a few days. I asked her if it was
perceived as a bad thing or a betrayal of sorts among the colored community for
a colored person to marry into the white world. She said “absolutely not! If
you could get a white suitor and sort of become white, then good for you! Go
for it! Your life is only going to get better if you marry a white person!”
She told me all about her school, an Afrikaans school for
colored children. And then she told me about the protests that had started and
the resistance. She said that the apartheid system was bad but that when she
was a kid she didn’t know or realize it was bad because it just was. She had
been born into it. Nobody ever talked about it at home. It was hush hush. If it
was ever talked about it was done so under the table. She said she occasionally
would hear about protests in the black communities but that she never ever went
there. It wasn’t safe, and why would she want to go? If she would sneak
anywhere, it would be into a white community. She described the protests at her
school as peaceful and calm. They would sing the songs of resistance but then
they were done and went back to class and studying and working hard so that
they could improve their situations in life. She said university was out of the
question for colored people in her community. But she loved learning,
especially history. She likes reading books now that she’s older, because in school
the only history books they ever read were about Hitler and Stalin. I really
wanted to ask her if they portrayed Hitler as a bad guy (since apartheid had
been founded on Nazi principles) but couldn’t bring myself to go there. She
said they never learned anything about South African history, so nobody knows
the history of South Africa or the local areas. She then proceeded to tell me
all the random things about Stellenbosch and South Africa that nobody knows…of
course I knew none of them either, but it was fantastic to hear them! For
example, how the Boers knew nothing about winemaking, so the French were
brought in, which is why lots of things have French names here. She kept on
saying a word that sounded like throat coughing, and then I kept asking her what
it was, and she kept on saying ‘The French’ and then I realized she was saying
‘the Huguenots’ except that word pronounced in Afrikaans is about is different
as it gets from the American English pronunciation of that word. Ha! She told
me about a big monument dedicated to the Huguenots in Paarl (a nearby town) in
gratitude for them teaching the people here how to make wine. When I finally
realized she was saying Huguenots was when she started talking about their
weird, isolationist, rigid religion with its ridiculously strict rules. But
apparently they were all about the winemaking.
In the midst of all of this, she was telling me about her
family and her kids and her life and her childhood. It was really interesting.
She kept on saying “we coloreds” or “we colored people.” And then, what was
perhaps even more interesting to me was when she was talking about current
things. This was conversation style, so it was not in chronological order of
the history of South Africa. It was 21st century, 20th
century, 19th century, 18th century, and even 17th
century sprinkled everywhere. But lots and lots of talk about the present day
and post-apartheid and post-Mandela, which in her mind are two different
stories.
She talked a lot about the colored community today and a
black Cape Town journalist who a few months ago had written all about the
problems with colored people in South Africa and how the colored community
around the country had reacted to that. Apparently this journalist had accused
colored people (brief interruption, but how the hell can someone make such a
generalization in the 21st century and get away with it?!) of being
lazy, drinking a lot, and being violent and gangsters and had alluded to the
Cape Flats smile as her evidence of that. I had actually been told about this
the day before by one of my journalism student friends here that the Cape Flats
smile is the term for a Cape Flats person who removes the four front teeth. I
didn’t really know what it meant or why it was done, but at least I could place
what she was talking about. So then I asked her “what does it mean… why is that
done?” She said it is some kind of statement or identity thing. People just do
it. I then asked her if the people who live in Cape Flats are black or colored.
And she said they were all colored.
Then she again started talking about the end of apartheid
era resistance and how the colored people had resisted peacefully, just making
speeches and things like that. But that the black community had used violence
and burned everything down – clinics, schools, services, etc. I’m not sure how
I feel about this, but she had called it ‘stupidity.’ She said there was no
reason for that, because then they complained that they didn’t have clinics
orschools, but they had just burned them down so how could they have any right
to complain about that. She talked about the sense of entitlement that she
seemed to think the black community has still as a result of that. She talked a
lot about the fire and how she was frustrated that the colored community and
white community had done a run and fundraised all the money for the houses that
were rebuilt in the black community – Kayamandi. Then she pointed across the
street at a woman – a black woman whose house she said had burned down in the
fire 3 months ago. She told me that this woman clearly has clothes and is
dressed fine, and that that’s because of the generous white people in the town,
such as her bosses – the artists who own the gallery – donated all the clothes,
but that the black people are still asking for more.
She went in the back for a sec and grabbed her book that she
is currently reading, After Mandela. I’ve
heard of this book before. Well, she told me it was “bs.” Mostly. She said,
sure Mandela was a great guy and he brought the country out of apartheid, but
what now? It’s a disaster. The black people still have nothing. They have and
will vote for a black president, even though he does nothing for them. They are
still unemployed and living in shacks and hungry. She said the government did nothing about the fire, nothing
to save the people or give them relief. She said the mayor of Stellenbosch is a
colored person and he tried to, but the provincial (white governor) and
national (black president) governments did nothing.
This woman’s son is at a technical university and her
daughter is in an Afrikaans high school, because the English high schools are
too expensive. She said she prays for them every day, because she doesn’t know
what will become of them. She then launched into a big discussion about how the
churches here are great and very integrated and generously and selflessly give
to the communities – regardless of race. She told me she’s religious but then I
think she felt the need to explain that her religion isn’t harsh or severe or
superstitious or anything like that. She said it’s casual and modern and
non-judgmental. And that the churches around here donate lots of money and
books and clothes for kids to go to school. And that the churches have branches
everywhere, and they really try to integrate the communities.
She then talked about the Boers – weird to hear someone
using that term to describe people still alive. That’s a term I thought was
reserved for history books. Wrong again. She told me to be careful of the Boer
girls in town because they think it belongs to them. They think everything
belongs to them. They were unfortunate to lose their land in the Anglo-Boer war
and from the French wine farmers, but they need to get over it and stop
thinking that Stellenbosch, that everything belongs to them. She said they had
everything – wealth, education, land, power – and now they’re bitter and they
lost it.
Sure apartheid might be over, but the divide is still there.
I’ve never used words to describe race so much in one conversation before.
Probably not even in my whole life put together. In the States, this
conversation never would have happened. I feel weird about it. And you might
think she’s racist, but that was not the vibe I got. I felt like she was trying
to mentally get over apartheid, but that try as hard as she might, she can’t
rid herself of the idea that race means something and defines a person. She
went into this lovely tangent about how we are all one human family and we have
to look out for each other. It can’t be black, white, colored, foreigner, etc.
We have to care for each other but we have to pull our own weight. Yes yes yes.
If only people could replace the things that were pounded into their brains as
children with this truth.
Apartheid was really successful. It broke people up into
groups. And it separated them. But
it didn’t just separate them physically and socially; it taught them
that they are separate. It separated them mentally. That there is something
different among so-called races. Although colored people were second-class
citizens and had none of the privileges white people had and were forcibly
removed from their homes and denied basic rights, they were treated much better
than black people. They weren’t third-class citizens. Since apartheid has
ended, the colored people have been given their human rights back, and no
longer are officially second-class citizens. But in reality, she told me she is
scoffed upon and stared at when she goes to a restaurant with her boyfriend, a
foreigner from Switzerland, a white person. It’s weird, I didn’t register this
woman as black, white, colored, or anything when I saw her standing behind the
counter when I first walked in. She was just a nice-looking lady I wanted to
have a conversation with. But to almost every person in this country, and
perhaps most importantly, to herself, she is a colored person. It just blows my
mind.
Sure, legislative apartheid is over. The mental apartheid is
not.
This doesn’t
even cover all of our conversation – obviously – we talked for so long. But
basically, it ended with her apologizing for keeping me so long, talking about
the challenges of parenting and trying to be softer and less strict than her
parents’ generation, but still instilling good values and respect in her teenage
children who are “cheeky.” She thanked me for coming in. As she walked me to
the door, we finally officially introduced ourselves and I reached out my hand
to shake hers, but she took it and then gave me a huge hug, told me to come
back and visit her whenever I wanted, that next time she would make us some
coffee or tea or something while we sat and chatted, and – almost in tears -
that family is the most important thing and that my mother must be missing me
very much. (I miss you too, Mom!)
So now I have a new friend. And a place I know I can wander
over to if I am in need of a hug or want to chat about anything about South
Africa. Sure, she’s not a professor, she doesn’t have any college education,
she hasn’t written the textbook on apartheid. But she lived it, which is more
than anyone else that has ever taught me about apartheid can say.
My lesson for the day: ask and you shall be told, listen and
you shall make a new friend.
