February 11, 2018
February
11th marks the 28th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, a day
marked by a parade running through downtown Cape Town. Also on this day,
leaders of the African National Congress communed with locals in many places in
overt contrast to President Jacob Zuma, who was removed from party leadership a
few weeks ago and has been asked to resign now. This was our first morning in
South Africa, and we were due to go to Mr. Moss’s church. We were not the only
visitors. A camera crew and security were there too, and we were told we might
be joined by current ANC president, Cyril Ramaphosa. The 32 Bellville students
joined us in the church as we piled in the aisles an hour early, anticipating a
prayer service mostly in Xhosa, and perhaps a visit from an important
dignitary. We were in fact joined by ANC Treasurer General Paul Mashatile, and
when all the phones came out to capture his entrance, it reflected what
Siyabonga told me later, that this was a very respected and important man. The
event was captured on news (footnote 1).
For us,
the politics of the moment--a president people believe is corrupt in a moment
another future is possible--mattered much less than what we were experiencing
in our first moments in South Africa. Women in the church wearing red shirts
and white collars and bonnets, designating their membership as a religious
community helpmates; younger women wearing blue, marking their membership in a
similar guild; a group on stage wearing black, signifying church offices; two
women in robes of green, telling us of their status in the ANC; and others
standing with percussive pillows over a choir no less melodious or loud in the
prayers before God than any in the pews everywhere else in the church but our
own. Everything was loud and vivid. We sat in the heat for three and a half
hours, listening to one of the women in red tell the government politicians
that they were not the bosses but the servants, and as the priest too told the
new church officers that they were not the bosses but the servants; and as it
turned out, when we finally left, Ms. Plesha having made remarks to the church
immediately before the Treasurer General, the religious part of the church
service had not even started.
We were
worried about the students, who before the wilting hours in the hothouse of the
church, had each declared in a check in that that they were tens or nine and a
halfs, so excited about the climate, the mamas, the children in their houses,
their adventure; we were worried we had done too good a job warning students
about the water situation and that they were not drinking as they should.
After
church, Mr. Moss led us first to the Gugulethu memorial to Amy Biehl, the young
white Fulbright student who was killed by an angry mob in 1993 (Footnote 2), an
event featured in a book HFB used to read, Mother
to Mother; then he led us a couple blocks forward to a memorial dedicated
to the Gugulethu Seven, young black activists killed by the police in 1986
(Footnote 3). We stood in silence, the Roosevelt students in their school
whites and slacks, the Bellville students in church dress. Our students had
studied the Gugulethu Seven; but how can they comprehend the kind of racial
tension and violence described? How does it focus our thoughts as the
temperature in our own country seems to be rising?
We then
went to Isilimela School for lunch. The large room, now missing its HFB mural,
was full of loving people—HFB students and teachers from Isilimela, Bellville,
Roosevelt, and the mamas, too.
Roosevelt
went to the teachers’ work room to panic about their school presentation they
would soon be performing.
And
after it all, the heat, the church, the memorials, the panic, we checked in
again with students. Still tens.
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