March to Barcs: South African Retreat: Jail

February 18, 2018

HFB has never brought all three of its schools together on Table Mountain, but they did so last night. Maybe it’s a wonder that it ever happened, because Isilimela’s taxis were 45 minutes late and neither of Bellville’s vans were able to make it to the parking lot to the gondola that would take us to the top. But we did it. And after all of the gondolas at one half hour separation apiece finally brought us all up, the beauty of Cape Town from the heights and the wonder of this mountain were an exquisite shared event, the climax of which, after an hour of wandering through the cold thick blanket of fog, was an all HFB red-t-shirted singing event that brought over crowds of tourists and their phones.

Today we are in winery country for a one night retreat. Students are currently in mixed groups of five, discussing how history creates and guides current national, regional and global challenges; what aspect of history they need to understand better to effectively confront such challenges; and what they’ll do, in the present, to have a played a part in the future they desire, or fear.

We were primed for this discussion when Mandy, of Bellville, had us look out over Cape Town and think about how history affected the layout, shape and color of what they saw (how, for example, did the Relocation Act affect what they observed down below).

Pum, of Isilimela, is now asking where do your history textbooks come from, who writes them. An Isilimela student says, White people—Black history is written by White people. And have they captured history that values the struggles and experiences of Black people? One Isilimela student is saying partly White historians didn’t know to look to the paintings, the caves, the homes, to listen to the oral stories from the grandmothers, the history passed on in the night. Pum asks if the history they read is then a lie. But it’s not so simple as that either, she avers.

Pum is now asking if it is fair or unfair for a group to be held accountable for things in the past they didn’t do and weren’t a part of. One of our Roosevelt students says it would be unfair to be blamed for something he didn’t do, which then brings up almost all the hands of the other Roosevelt kids. An Isilimela student says White privilege must be acknowledged or no growth will occur, no change. A Roosevelt student adds, what our ancestors did was not our fault, but yes, it is still our responsibility.

Are there things in your history that, at times, today, within your life, make you want to hold another group responsible for what is happening to you, Pum asks. Can we be honest? And now only Isilimela hands go up—a pattern that will hold for much of the conversation. But a Bellville student is the first one to be called, and she says she wishes we didn’t name all our races all the time, because if we didn’t we could all be unified, human beings, together. But now we start. One Isilimela student says if it weren’t for Apartheid, a White person walking around Langa wouldn’t create such a buzz. Another Isilimela student says, If British people hadn’t come, we’d be rich people now because they took all our lands. Another says sometimes he feels if it weren’t for White people, we wouldn’t be living in shacks in the wasteland, and maybe we’d be more independent. Another says maybe she’d be living in the village of her forefathers, learning her own cultural ways rather than those of the West. A Bellville student says White people have been here for generations; but because of Apartheid, because we’ve been separating ourselves, some do not consider us Africans. Roosevelt students, entirely quiet for this part of the conversation, are called to the table. One finally says we have similar sentiments in the United States but the wounds are even fresher here. Another Roosevelt student says half of her family comes from the oppressor and half from the oppressed, and it leaves her divided—and she realizes she can’t just generalize about race or blame when she thinks of her own family. Another Roosevelt student says her family came from Ireland and is still very attached to that culture, but she still feels connected to White crimes that occurred far before her family arrived.

Pum now says, okay, so now we’ve played the blame game. What are we going to do with this negativity? What are you going to do? What is next for you? A Bellville student says she is going to be herself, accept herself, and make peace with other people. An Isilimela student wants to join other groups like HFB, groups that likewise allow him to meet with and hear from people from other groups. One Isilimela student wants to start a Xhosa school that is predominantly Xhosa and teaches in Xhosa; another wants to start a Xhosa museum.

And that is the beginning of the conversation. The pride, wisdom and anger of students from Langa is very important for our students to observe; and it also colors the enormous monument to Afrikaans we visited on the way over, a structure built over forty years and intended to be seen from very far away. There is no such structure for Xhosa or other Black languages and cultures.

Today some serious bridging is happening.

And now they are creating artwork representing where they are from within their mixed groups of five and providing an element that bridges to the artwork of their neighbor, connecting also 17 tables. I’m going to get back to that.

I just washed tempura paints from my hand after pressing it to a mural that will end up in a classroom here in South Africa. The morning light off the mountain outside of spectacular, but we can’t go far through the barbed wire fencing and heavy metal gate. This compound serves well as a retreat – a large kitchen gathering room in courtyard meets our needs for the three schools and our 100 students to group and circle and perform – but it was once a prison, and a number of funny features from window bars to heavy steel doors remind us of that.

We had a tense moment as a group on the way up to this place. One of the Afrikaner teachers thought it would be a good idea to visit a monument to Afrikaans on our way over, an edifice built in the 70s to memorialize Afrikaans primacy and continuing growth but that now, according to the teacher, has been flipped around to represent reconciliation. That was a hard sell for some of the Xhosa teachers, who had never been allowed on these lands and for whom, its towering thrust of granite rises far into the sky, could only see it as an extremely well funded statement of power, a middle finger that says it’s all still ours.