“I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one’s birth, whether one acknowledges it or not. An African child is born in an Africans Only hospital, taken home in an Africans Only bus, lives in an Africans only area, attends Africans Only schools, if he attends school at all…His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life. This was reality, and one could deal with it in a myriad of ways…I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight.”
Monday, March 21st, was Human Rights Day in South Africa meaning both a day of celebration and reflection. And for me, a day off school.
Warning: History lesson ahead.
The public holiday commemorates the establishment of the South African Human Rights Commission set up to promote respect for human rights and protect the development of those rights in South Africa. Introduced in 1996, it also pays homage to the events that occurred on march 21st in 1960. Due to the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952, Africans had to carry a refrence book at all times or else serious trouble. Since, the Pan Africanist Congress(PAC) didn’t stand for such a thing, they proposed an anti-pass campaign beginning on the 21st. African men were to participate and present themselves to the police for arrest. Unfortunately, at the Sharpeville police station the growing crowd caused a scene, trampled wire fences, and police began shooting. The result was 69 dead and 180 wounded. The anti-aparteid movement always honored the day and now all South Africans remember it as a symptom of the oppressing system that they’ve overcome.
"A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.”
On Sunday I learned about a different education system in South Africa. Robben Island.
“Education is the great engine of personal development…It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that seperates one person from another.”
Each one, teach one was the motto of the political prisoners of the island. From exchanging information at the lime quarry to discussing it in the blacks-only toilet, a network formed to informally educate one another. The discussions during these times became the backbone to the country’s constitituion and billof rights today. Our tour guide, like all the tour guides on the island, was a former political prisoner who benefitted from this pedagogy.
“As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be knwn for years to come. There are victories whose glory lies only in the fact that they are known to those who win them. This is particularly true of prison, where one must find consolation in being true to one’s ideals, even if no one else knows of it.”
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| Mandela, Sislu, Sobukwe, and our tour guide straight chillin' |
Since I was FINALLY getting to visit one of Mandela’s homes, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of history resting heavy in the air on the island. Unfortunately, my tendency to make inappropriate jokes didn’t disappesr because of it. Note to self: calling the penguin colony scurring around recarnations of the ANC will not make your tour guide smile and pretending to be locked in the jail cell of Block B will only warrant glares from the Sweedish couple. In other news, Paul Waters should be proud to know the Irish made it to the waters in Cape Town, mounting a celtic cross on Robben Island.
Luckily my house all made it back on the last ferry in time to watch the sunset on the V&A Waterfront and to PASSOP’s Night for Rights.
Want to know what PASSOP is?
A Little More Mandela...
“I learned that courage is not the absscence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear myself more times than I can remember, but hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
“As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be knwn for years to come. There are victories whose glory lies only in the fact that they are known to those who win them. This is particularly true of prison, where one must find consolation in being true to one’s ideals, even if no one else knows of it.”
“The policy of aparteid created a deep and lasting wound in my country and my people. All of us will spend many years, if not generations, recovering from that profound hurt. But the decade of oppression and brutality had another, unintended effect, and that was that it produced the Oliver Tambos, the Walter Sisulus, the Chief Luthulis, the Yusef Dadoos, the Bram Fischers, the Robert Sobukwes of our time—men of such extraoidenary courage, wisdom, and generosity that their like may never be known again. Perhaps it requires such depth of oppression to create such heights of character. My country is rich in the minerals and gems that lie beneath its soil, but I have always known that its greatest wealth is its people, finer and truer than the purest diamonds.”
*All quotes from A Long Walk to Freedom
