Into The Heart of Apartheid

I grew up fascinated with race.  When I look back, I think it was largely due to living on the property where our parents worked, a court- adjudicated school for the most troubled of boys.  Beyond their juvenile delinquent status or ethnicity, we knew the Paradise boys as playmates, protectors, even friends.  My siblings and I understood early that conduct disorders and even criminal behavior were often acts of desperation rather than malice.  For us, race, class, and socioeconomic stigma were trounced by relationship; it was an invaluable education, and one of the most primary influences of my life.

Bullet-marked trashcan shield used by students,
on original stove in Mandela's home

My perpetual interest in understanding the dynamics that draw us together and tear us apart drove me through all sorts of booklists and influenced my choice of church.  It motivated me to pursue friendships across boundaries of race and class and misinformation: not always comfortable, but always worth it.  It propelled my move to the most segregated of all American cities, and was the reason I chose my workplace over the nationally renown, upper-class competition on the north side.  It was even one of the most significant motivators of this trip, the ultimate study of relationship the world over. 

And so, to South Africa I flew.  I had heard that Johannesburg was the heart of ZA’s racial history, and that Soweto, or the southwest township, was the heart of Joburg.  Knowing very little before I arrived only enhanced my nerves, but I remained steadfast that to Soweto I would go, and in Soweto I would stay.  Happily for me, a young Sowetan entrepreneur opened the most bohemian of hostels right in the heart of the township several years ago, so I had a pad from which to launch.

When I wasn’t writing in the treehouse (!) or schmoozing with the locals around the campfire, I was intrepidly exploring the neighborhood.  And what a neighborhood it was.  I had been coached on how to greet in Zulu and how to politely decline marriage proposals, but I hadn’t been coached on how to manage my emotions.  Because boy did I have some feelings, walking towards Vilakazi street, a few modest blocks boasting the homes of both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.  It was here, right here, where young Hector Pieterson was shot and killed by the riot police in 1976, as thousands of students were peacefully protesting the government mandate that their classes be taught in Afrikaans, a language not spoken among the native Africans, and thus, a language wholly ineffective at educating a single student in this segregated community.

The death of this innocent twelve-year-old was the match that lit the flame of the Soweto Uprising, a deadly conflict between unarmed black students and white police.  These students would become the least likely symbol of resistance against the apartheid regime, and would gain, finally, the outspoken international disapproval of world leaders against the system that benefitted few and oppressed many.  Almost 20 years later, their opening act on the world stage culminated in the release of Mandela and the official end of apartheid.  

As I made my way through the neighborhood surrounded by local children being released from the very same school where Hector and his friends boycotted nearly 40 years ago, I tried to swallow the giant lump in my throat.  These young people, many of whom are grandbabies of the uprising, shone with a quiet power, little agents of change from a system that even today doesn’t educate them equally to their white peers in the more affluent surrounding neighborhoods.  More than any other Sowetan encounter, it was these students that inspired me, reminding me to believe in the potential of even the least assuming.  Quite a legacy for young Hector: I’m so very sorry he didn’t live to see it.