Our tour started at the District 6 Museum. District 6 was declared an all-white area under apartheid and all non-whites were forcibly moved over the course of a couple of years and the area was bulldozed save for white-owned properties and religious institutions (churches and mosques).
The museum was really great – it contained a mix of photos, memorabilia, and memories of District 6 as well as the history of what happened. There is a sheet two stories high on which people wrote their memories, some of which are just incredibly meaningful. Between the memories and the apartheid-area signs that look like they are right out of American history (save for the Afrikaans on them) there’s a great sense of “let’s not forget the past” which is very important obviously but at the same time I feel like there is such tunnel vision when we look at one thing and ignore the injustice in the rest of the world. Hearing about the South African students who protested being taught in Afrikaans and many were killed (including twelve-year-old Hector Peterson) reminded me of what happened recently in Burma where the monks and the students bravely tried to stand up to the junta and were rewarded with death or imprisonment (or worse). More on this in a bit…
Between the stories and the photos you can get a real sense of the strength of feeling a lot of these people had for their home. Maybe I’m imagining it but I could literally feel the pain and the loss in the air of that building. It was poignant but also really uncomfortable, so I was a bit relieved when we left.
It’s always sad to return to a place you used to live and find it different, and how heart-wrenching to have it completely taken away from you and destroyed. This reminded me in substance quite a bit of what happened in Boston with the demolition of the West End so that it could be redeveloped. At the time the West End was filled with narrow streets, tenements, people packed in, disease … but it was also full of immigrants, so I believe part of the desire to disperse it was similar. People were uprooted, the area was bulldozed, and almost no one received compensation if I recall correctly, so the parallels are striking. To this day, the West End doesn’t have any sort of community feel (at least to me), and it also lacks a museum.
One of the most amazing things there was this huge laminated map on the floor. A university had been built over part of the former District 6, so people could not reclaim their land after apartheid. So they wrote on this map where they used to live, to help reclaim the space. It’s amazing that for a place a world away a lot of the names are familiar – Worcester, Hanover Street (the main thoroughfare just like the North End in Boston); there was even a family on the map named Rodgers.
After the museum we did a quick stop in Langa which is the oldest township in Cape Town, to see the barracks where the male migrant laborers (and later entire families, three to a room) lived, and some of the new housing the government is building. Following that, we went to Guguletu township and saw the monument to the Guguletu 7 and to Amy Biehl, whose stories we learned about in class prior to the trip.
We were dropped off at the waterfront, I went to look at the market before our ferry left for Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela, Jacob Zuma and others were held as political prisoners and forced to do hard labor in the limestone quarries which permanently damaged their health (lungs and eyesight, at least). This was a massive tourist trap which is unavoidable I suppose but at the same time it really detracted from the experience. I wasn’t able to get a feel for the place like I could in Cambodia at Tuol Sleng, for example. The memories of this place are lost amongst the thoughts and feelings of the tourists.
I didn’t realize but all of the tours of the prison itself are by former political prisoners. The tour guide for the first half of the tour was saying that some prisoners cannot bear the thought of coming back but for others coming and working here, or even living here as employees are allowed to do is cathartic. But for some, they have a hard time adjusting back to normal life the same as any person who has been incarcerated for a long time, so this is one of the few jobs some of them can actually do. I wonder which is the case for our guide – is he here by choice or by necessity?
So yes, we can recognize that we are privileged to have been born in America and for me to have been born with a skin the color where I rarely experience racism and when I do it’s surprising and shocking. I’ll probably never be put in a situation where I can choose to struggle for the right thing or be put in jail as a freedom fighter but it’s hard not to ask myself what I would have done had I been in America during the Civil Rights era or South Africa under apartheid. Back to Burma – would I be the sort of person who had the courage to give up my life or my freedom for the struggle for freedom? Probably not, I often think, but I suppose you never know. Then I ponder the immortality achieved by Steve Biko or Nelson Mandela and wonder was it worth it; I imagine Mandela would say yes, and Biko is not around to say. But Mandela in a way is one of the lucky ones – he doesn’t have to worry about not being able to reintegrate into society and work as a tour guide.
The view from Robben Island and the ferry ride back was amazing. This city is achingly beautiful in a way that doesn’t even translate in pictures, very much like San Francisco (which according to the innkeeper is Cape Town’s sister city). You can’t tell from the maps how hilly Cape Town is, just like San Francisco. That backdrop of Table Mountain is like nothing else I’ve seen before – it’s hard to imagine a more perfect way to frame a city.
I left the main group and came back to the guest house to work. Apparently dinner was Mexican which I probably would have disdained anyway, but Mary enjoyed it which was great because it was her birthday today.
I sat out on the porch for a while as the sunset. Far away I could hear some singing, and periodically the whine from the Table Mountain trams. The view from the house is just perfect – the gap in the trees frames the skyscrapers just perfectly and the clouds were a shade of pink that did not come out in the photos. It’s hard in a place and time like this not to reflect on my life, where I am, and how I feel about everything.
When it comes to this trip I find my mind spinning somewhat with the intersection of past and present, here and elsewhere, and also a very fundamental confusion. I’m here, and what I’m doing and what we’re all doing is helping in some small way but it’s hard to reconcile the arrogance of swooping in from the outside with the reality that very little will change when we leave, and really who are we, and me in particular, anyway, to come and try and fix or change it? This isn’t my country and what do I really know anyway? Well ok I do know startup, fixed, and variable costs pretty well which has turned out to be one of the most useful things I taught last week. But change has to come from within and maybe that is the sort of thing outsiders can help organize or maybe not even that.
These kids are helping us as much as we’re helping them and I think the same question of follow-through that I ask of them I can ask of myself. Government is like business – in theory you think it should take care of people’s basic needs (heck our taxes are high enough) but in reality it doesn’t and people do need to fill the gap, just like in business people need to keep a watchful eye for the big picture and what’s not happening and sometimes fill in even when it’s not “their job.” Part of me definitely feels like if I finish up in a week, go on safari, go home and go back to school and work like none of this ever happened then something is fundamentally wrong. But at the same time, inertia is a powerful thing. I suppose it’s like anything, if you want to do something you need to make it a priority.
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