In our Mind the Gap framework we speak of how Xers cannot remember insitutionalised apartheid. I am one of them. Graeme posted earlier about the Youth Day public holiday on 16th June here in South African that commemorates the youth riots of 16th June 1976. Being a white 26 year old South African I have found the last decade and a half of transformation quite bland. This is for a few reasons. In part, I was sheltered from the news and experience of emergency state-like events of the 1980s because of propogandised media and the comfort of white suburbia. And then, as Barrie would say, a fish does not know it is wet as it has no benchmark of dryness to measure against. I grew up, and began my conscious awakening amidst the changes in South Africa, not really knowing where we had come from in terms of institutionalised apartheid.
And so, in recent years I have begun to explore my history as a South African … the history not taught to me when I was in school. I visited Soweto for the first time on June 10th this year. Feeling surprisingly safe, I drove past a sign that pointed to the Hector Pieterson Memorial. I decided then to visit the Memorial before the 16th. The Memorial requires a post of its own, but on the day I picked up a book called I write what I like by Steve Biko. In wanting to get in touch with significant characters of the past few decades, I’d heard a little about Biko and thought this book would be a nice starting point to learn about the man who headed up the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa.
Biko, under his pseudonym Frank Talk and through transcripts of his trial in 1975, speaks of how the physical manifestations of apartheid i.e. segregation resulted in significant emotional and psychological results that were the real intentions behind the regime. As the National Party came to power in 1948 apartheid gained momentum with the 1st generation of blacks experiencing the effects of the inferiority complex manifested by the system. As the years went on, we had a new generation (Boomers) who were born into the system, who in a manner similar to my growing up in a new dispensation, never knew of the relative freedom enjoyed by the parents before 1948. They inherited the inferiority complex. We then had young black who began to recognise this malaise and began to develop a renewed sense of self in their balckness. This movement was embodied in Biko’s Black Consciousness philosophy where balck people “rediscovered their soul”. This was the generation who protested against the teaching medium of Afrikaans on June 16th.
Biko was in his 20s at this stage. As a 20-something myself, I am amazed at how articulate and intellegient Biko was in his second language of English. He wasn’t ahead of his time like most social revolutionaries. No. Instead, he was beyond his years as a social commentator and revolutionary.
Now comes a new generation who have been born into the Rainbow Nation where apartheid is history. Standing in the Pieterson Musuem I was surrounded by a hundred black school children on tour. They were at least 10 years old. Being directed by their Boomer teachers, these youths displayed an intruge in facing a world they have not grown up in. Their teachers were serious about getting their students to understand the pain of the past and the amazing changes that have taken place in our country. And so, we have 3 generations who have experienced every side side of a revolution: forced segregation, protest, freedom. How does a new generation get in touch with the pain of the past and the joy of the freedom they do not have to fight for?
Some older whites may be surprised at my interest in Biko’s writing. In many ways he was demonised through propoganda and the media. The reality is that Biko’s writing is articulate, powerful, tough, brash and direct.
I write what I like
How does a new generation get in touch with the pain of the past and the joy of the freedom they do not have to fight for?
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that they should get in touch with the pain of the past, though like all other citizens, they should learn not to take their freedoms for granted.
I disagree with Dragon. I think if we don’t get in touch with the pain of our past we live in denial (and how must that look to those who were hurt? Are we somehow saying what they went through is unimportant because they should get over it already?).
This is especially true if we embrace ubuntu, which in this case would mean “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
Dragon, I wonder if you’d like to elaborate a little more on why you disagree with the idea of getting in touch with the pain of the past?
In the South African context, it is a controversial stance to take becuase we have pockets of resistance in some white circles who suggest exactly the same thing as an escape from taking responsibility for the past.
For me, I have wrestled with the feeling that I did not actively contirbute to the injustices of the past. The reality though is that depsite the fact that I never did anything overtly to contribute to the system (at least knowingly) I have benefited from the system in being a white. This advantage makes me culpable and leaves me in a position where I really need ot get in touch with the past so that I can understand how I have come to where I am.
Is it really possible to “get in touch with the pain of the past” if it’s not your pain? What do you mean by “get in touch”?
I’m just thinking of those 10 year old school children at the Pieterson Museum. Possibly when they reach their teens or 20’s the significance of their history will dawn on them. But the “pain” of that past is probably not going to be as real for them as say for their parents.
Personally – I don’t think it has to be about getting in touch with the pain of the past, more about acknowledging that past and the pain and stuffering that those people went through. And learning something from it.
I think these feelings will change over time, becoming more abstract. Imagine SA, twenty, fifty, a hundred, two-hundred years from now. They will still have unbutu, which I view as a kind of philosophical outlook reminiscent of the golden rule.
I don’t believe thinking of it that way is deserving of guilt nor should it be considered a traitorous attitude. Being born white definately has given you an advantage. Your attitude towards others, no matter what color they are, is admirable. I think Simone had a point, though. Can you really get in touch with the pain of those born under different and more difficult circumstances? After consideration of the above thoughts, is it really necessary?
When I speak of my journey to get in touch with the pain of the past, I am not referring to a real experiencing of the pain that was felt. There are some Chirstian sects that annually re-enact the crucifixition so that they can “get in touch” with what Jesus experienced. No, this is not my journey in the slightest. There are two barriers that make it impossible for me to get in touch with the pain that the majority of our people experienced: time and ethnicity. I cannot go back to feel it and by virtue of me being white I have been distanced from the pain that has been delt and experienced by the blacks in South Africa.
What I am referring to is best understood as a tourists plight. We visit destinations we have heard of to try and experience them, but by-and-large, to see them. This is my journey … I am wanting to be exposed to and see what I was shielded from as I was growing up and that which was not taught to me about events prior to my birth.
I agree with both of you, Dragon and Simone, that the feelings and significance of the apartheid years will move on, change, or dwindle. This is a truism of history. However, how will we as South Africans choose to remember the past? It is the ac tof remembering that holds the greatest promise fo rthe way in which we integrate the past into our current realities. Remembering can also be danerous in that people might not let the past just be the past (this is the origin of the struggle in the Gaza I see at the moment).
So, Simone, when I speak of getting in touch and you speak of acknowledging the past, I think we are sayign the same thing.