Madiba's Birthday

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It was Nelson Mandela's birthday. He turned 94 on July 18 and for one day, everyone was under the spell of Mandela. Blacks, whites and everyone in between, everyone loves Madiba or tata (father) as he is called here. We only saw pictures of the man and only a small crowd of people was allowed on his party, but an entire nation celebrated his birthday by doing 67 minutes of charity work that day to honor his ideas.

67, since the man devoted 67 years of his life to fight for equality for his people and all other cultures. Exactly on that day, the nation was relieved from a period of bad weather, and the people Mandela fought for could take a break from all the water misery that plagued the townships. The sun and warm temperatures were doing community service  for more than 67 minutes as a tribute to Madiba.

How a people that has been so oppressed and so humiliated, keeps believing in a better world but even more so how a man after being plagued by so much misery and was excluded by the government based on his skin color, forgave these people, is almost unreal .

The day before, I visited the District Six Museum with my family.  District Six is an ugly wound in downtown Cape Town and is a symbol of the apartheid policy that ruled the country for years. It was a working-class area, but very lively and multicultural, so the stories tell. Many nationalities were living together and it was a vibrant neighborhood with lots of restaurants and bars. The colorful picture of this district did not fit into a clean and Calvinist lifestyle that the apartheid government had in mind. Spatial planning in all its extremity was executed and what does not belong, should better be removed to another area. In the 60's it was decided to evacuate the area completely and change the area into a new white neighborhood. In the end, the white neighborhood was never realized. Visiting it today, you will see a partly built area but most of it is empty land. The inhabitants were exiled to the ‘Cape Town flats’, on the other side of Table Mountain. To date, these are the townships that are still embracing Cape Town.

We were lucky Noor, a former resident and banished from the neighborhood, was witnessing about the good days in District Six. That day, he accompanied a group of Muslim schoolkids, neatly in their uniforms, some girls with vails, some guys with fez,  but mostly a cheerful bunch of teenagers, now living in the surroundings of District Six.

Noor was born in District Six. He was second generation in the area. He started his family in the District, had a job until one day in 1975, everything came to an end. His family had one month to empty the house and move out of the area. Every day, for six years long, Noor revisited his former house and on one day it was gone. Noor witnesses about  the colorful life in the district and about the many cultures living together in harmony. Perhaps the memories are more romantic than real life was, but how can a government decide that a neighborhood that was created by its inhabitants was inferior to that of its own people? How can a government be so obsessed with protecting its own species that it compares the lives of the inhabitants with stones and hope that everything will disappear with a bulldozer? These are questions that are crossing my mind and my conversations with the Afrikaner people that were part of the apartheid regime, confuse me even more. Maybe because they are humans as well and a lof of them victims of a dogmatic policy.

Not only families were torn apart in District Six, but an entire community was destroyed. The consequences are dramatic, especially for cultures where community life is so important and family is the foundation of their existence. To blame apartheid as the only culprit for the huge misery in these townships, would not be correct. Twenty years have passed since apartheid, and a lot of the poverty and despair is also the result of a constantly changing world where globalization, neoliberal policies and as a lot of people are telling me, a failing policy of the current government. Poverty is becoming more poignant and the values that ​​were once so important to different communities are disappearing and leave people adrift.

Yesterday, my daughters and me visited an education project in one of the poorest townships of Cape Town, Lavender Hill.  Gangs are controlling Lavender Hill and there is a lot of violence. We were told that this was one of the areas where people of District Six were removed to. We participated in a program that assists parents in raising their children. Coming from Belgium, the sight of the houses with corrugated iron roofs and old billboards that are used as a wall but also houses with small gardens to make it a bit cosy, remains hard to getting used to. It remains incomprehensible that so many people can live on such a small area. And yet people try to make the best of it, they bike, women are gossiping, you see men chatting ... But my ignorance of life in a township became clear when I talked to Natasha, one of the parents. She is a single mother of a boy of seven and lives with her mother not far from the school. Quality time with the children was the theme of the meeting. We had to tell each other how we spend quality time with children. I said I had it with my kids in the kitchen during cooking. She replied that this was not possible for her because they only had one room which served as bedroom and kitchen and it was too small. When I replied that they could do this at the table, she replied that they did not even have a table. At this moment, I realized that I can not even begin to imagine how life in the townships is. Both of us are a mum, and we both want the best for our children but the odds are not the same and when I saw these mothers, teenage mothers, aunt, grandma and dad sitting in the room, I knew that these opportunities are so important. They themselves never enjoyed a good education. They are being teached how to talk to their children. How important it is to read stories to their children in order for the kids to learn new words. For us, this seems so normal for these people, it is not.  The moms, aunt, grandmother proudly tell us how they spend quality time with the kids and how they teach them new concepts by doing things together. One of the moms was so proud to tell us  ‘my child would love this whale book because he loves boats and whales’, is moving but also hard. They want so badly to provide their children a good future, but to realize that these children may never get the opportunities to enjoy a decent education is a harsh reality. The environment in which they live is one of gangster violence and drugs and quick money and this is the future of many innocent, happy children we met that day. Desmund Tutu put it nicely, the day after Madiba's birthday: "Madiba’s heart would bleed, luckily he does not know everything."

And yet I do not want to end on a negative note and despite those harsh realities, there are people out there who are active in order to help these communities. The teachers at the school that accompany the children every day, the many volunteers such as Brigid and many others that try to give the people the tools to create a better life for themselves. There is a lot of misery in this country but also a lot of good-will of its citizens to give everyone equal opportunities. Such as the anti-apartheid movement at the time changed the course of the country, different communities, black and white, rich and poor,  will make it possible,  little by little, to overcome the poverty and misery and make  Madiba's dream come true. As Desmund Tutu  ended his interview: "there is a lot of wonderful people of all races that love South Africa with a lot of passion." These are similar findings I encounter in my search of the evolution of the postapartheid society.