A couple of weeks ago (I know, I know…I’m slow on getting these out), all of the 140 or so students in my program spent a weekend living with families at a coloured township called Oceanview. As you might remember, the term “coloured” in South Africa is not derogatory but, rather, a classification used during apartheid that has become entrenched in the everyday dialogue of the country. Typically, it is the term used for people of mixed race, though there is no definite rule for applying the term to people. Nowadays, “coloured” essentially means the cultural community that was thrown together during apartheid and that has remained bound together by a shared past.
The story goes something like this. Before apartheid, many coloured people had voting rights and in everyday interactions and the labor force, had an experience closer to white people than to the black masses. In fact, the first language of most coloured people is Afrikaans, a language with somewhat of a connotation as the oppressive, white-pride language of the apartheid overlords. (That’s what I thought before I came here.) So as apartheid laws became increasingly extreme, coloured people lost their voting rights and had to face a severely restricted lifestyle. This included forced resettlement.
Just outside Cape Town is a settlement called Simon’s Town with a beach that has to be one of the most beautiful beaches along the Atlantic seaboard. The town had a thriving white and coloured community, but in the 1970s, buses came and forced all coloured families to pack up their belongings and move up the road to a newly constructed township: Oceanview.
All townships were not created equal. The apartheid government sought to sow competitive divisions among the populace, especially between coloured and black people. This tactic becomes plainly obvious when comparing black townships (like Khayelitsha where I went to the ANC rally) to coloured communities like Oceanview. Black townships resemble the recognizable slums that span the outskirts of urban centers across the developing world. Oceanview, on the other hand, doesn’t make the jaw drop at the sign of horrific poverty. Rather, it is a lower middle-class neighborhood.
On Friday night, I met my family at a dinner for all of the students and families held at the town’s high school. (I won’t be using their names here out of respect.) My family was wonderful. My host-mother is a health worker; my host-dad is an officer in the South African navy. They had two children: a son, a freshman in high school; and a younger daughter.
The other student paired with my family and I walked through the town to the family’s house. Along the way, almost every neighbor shouted hello. The town is undestandably close-knit. Most of the same families have lived here since the relocation and have bonded through the shared trauma of the experience.
Then, the party began. My family invited their closest friends over for drinks to celebrate our arrival. I haven’t had so much fun (or so much to drink) in a long time. The conversations that night were incredible. I had gotten only four hours of sleep the night before, so I was just about dead. And the whiskey-after-whiskey didn’t help, but I couldn’t go to sleep when the stories kept coming.
I can’t relate everything I head that night, but I’ll never forget one conversation. A good family friend who was a little older than the family began telling me about his activities during apartheid. He was 17 at the time of the relocation, so his memories of the experience were vivid. Throughout his upper teens, he joined many of the other youths of the town in harassment of the police: breaking windshields, puncturing tires, and other relatively minor tactics designed to frustrate the apartheid enforcers as much as possible. One night, however, he went a step further.
On a night unusually cold for Cape Town, he set up a crude bomb meant to kill several police officers. He stood behind nearby bushes waiting for the explosion. But the fuse was too long, and the bomb exploded just as the officers left the spot. “Thank God for that,” he says today. “I am so glad that I do not have that on my conscience.” You might be thinking, “Yeah, and you’d be in jail.” But, no. After 1994, almost all crimes, including murder of whites, including innocents, during apartheid, were forgiven as part of the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission. The true murderer was the system of apartheid that instilled hopelessness and despair.
At one point, this man’s wife walked in and chastised him, “Are you talking to Sam about violence?”
Passionately with a raised fist he yelled, “I am speaking to Sam of the struggle!”
A moment passed, and he said to me quitely, “My wife was also very involved in the struggle.”
It was an amazing thing to observe: her face turned from frustration to a placid, distance look full of memory.
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
Another memorable moment of the night came when another great guy at the party turned to me and screamed, “We are not coloured. We were labeled as coloured.” He was pretty drunk but, nontheless, eloquent.
The same guy also brought me a special-edition coin issued for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. When he found out that I was a fellow coin collector (or used to be), he gave me some other coins he had collected over the years. I was blown away by such a nice gesture.
After drinking well into the early morning, I was awoken by my host-mom at 6 am to get ready to go work. Her sister– she is one of ten children– died of cancer last year, and we were going to volunteer at a cancer-foundation fundraiser. This sister was actually quite famous for her prominent role in the anti-apartheid struggle. All of her family members that I met spoke of their departed sister with so much pride. Her mother, who did not speak much English, showed me a picture of the sister (her daughter) with Nelson Mandela.
The fundraiser was a “shave-a-thon.” Passersby in a nearby shopping mall could opt, for a 50 rand (about $5) donation, to have their hair shaved or dyed with spray colors. I chose bright blue, as you can see in the pictures. We worked hard from 7 am to about 2 pm. It was a long day but a fascinating one. For the first time on the trip, I saw people of all races genuinely interacting. On campus, white students don’t really hang out or even sit next to black students. It’s not racism but a product of societal forces that kept these groups separate until just 15 years ago. You still see the same sort of episodes in the U.S.: I remember at my high school, there was typically the lunch table with black students. Sort of a voluntary segregation that wasn’t particularly wrong but can just rub you the wrong way. But I’m rambling…anyway, this was a great event. I guess cancer is horrible enough to transcend social barriers.
That afternoon, we climbed in my host-dad’s pickup to drive around the community and, then, to a nearby ostrich farm. I had literally just recovered from a nasty bout of food poisoning from eating my first (and last) ostrich burger, so I wasn’t exceedingly thrilled.
Returning to Oceanview, we stopped at the home of Gladys Thomas, a renowned South African author who resides in the township. She is a friend of my host family, and I mentioned how much I love literature. She has been writing beautiful novels, plays, and short stories throughout apartheid and continues writing today even into her old age. She was excited to have visiters and showed me pictures of her receiving awards from the president and a letter written to her by Athol Fugard, probably South Africa’s most renowned playwright. In a lot ways, she reminded me of my grandmother: sharp, active, and as warm as an old friend immediately after meeting new people.
I asked how to find her works, and sadly, she informed that most were out of print. The circulation of her work was severely limited because it was banned by the apartheid government immediately after publication. But I’ve managed to track down several anthologies that include selections from her work in the library at UCT.
Night came around…and another party! This time, though, my host-mom cooked one of the best meals I’ve had in my entire life. A small part of my excitement for this meal stemmed from the fact that I hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in two months. I had been relying on quick meals I made for myself or (mostly) resturants. But most of excitement came after I tasted the food. The other student I stayed with was a vegetarian, so my host-mom had to cook both meat and vegetable dishes. This was lucky for me because I got to try double the number of delicious dishes. We had at least four kinds of seafood caught that day just down the road. We had steamed vegetables and vegetable curry. We had grilled chicken and sausage. Typically, I save overeating/feasting for Christmas and Thanksgiving. 2009 will be a year of three feasts.
The final day coincided with one of Cape Town’s biggest events of the year: the Cape Argus Cycle Tour. The ride is one of the longest time trial races in the world: over 100 km around the Cape Peninsula– through the city, up over the mountains, and past the beach. The race attacts cyclists from around the world, both professional and amateur. Matt Damon rode this year– he’s in South Africa filming Clint Eastwood’s next film about the relationship between Nelson Mandela and the country’s most famous rugby player.
Anyway, the race passes right by Oceanview, so every year the whole town gathers on the road to braii (barbecue), drink, and enjoy catching up with everyone in town. We stayed for an hour or so, until it got boring. Cycling isn’t the best spectator sport, though I was so excited to see such enthusiasm for cycling. I told my family all about my dad being an amazing cyclist. They couldn’t believe I didn’t persuade him to come to Cape Town for the race. Next year, right Dad?
We then took one last walk around the town. I was surprised to see a beautiful green mosque in the town. Many coloured people are actually Muslim– something I didn’t realized.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get stuck with a Muslim family,” my host-mom joked, “Amazing food but no drinking.” (Right, I’m SO gonna miss those whiskey and sprites.)
By the late afternoon, it was time to head back to the buses to leave. As you can tell from the length of the post and the passion I hope I’ve expressed in this writing, I had an incredible weekend. I’m planning on returning to visit in April for the son’s confirmation party. They also offered to take me to a jazz club or even deliver me a meal sometime. I’m not sure I’ll take them up on that last offer, but I am eagerly awaiting the food when I return.
But most of all, I can’t wait for more stories. Because that’s where I’ve learned more about this country than any other place. It’s been just fifteen years since apartheid. I think I’ve said that before, but over that weekend, I really felt the proximity of such a realization. Just fifteen years.
