South Africa: not as easy as black & white
THE WHITE & THE BLACK
While I’m gone, white mother, kill the fattened oxen
And feed your dear ones well, prime meat and curds
Overspilling so the dogs too lap the juice,
And still enough is left to throw a surplus
To your close kin across the seas.
And you, black mother, hold on firm—
There is a mystery in things to come
And a fierce look lights behind your eyes.
As the world-ball turns around and round
The fleeing partridge finds the forbidden grain.
— N.M. Khaketla[1]
Despair. Anger. A tight pit in my stomach from the injustice of “the system.” Justification of evil. And finally, remnants of hope. So many emotions—mostly negative—fill the reading of Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy. Watching the young Johannes develop an awareness of his family’s fourth-class life, I was filled with pity and deep anger. Walking with him as he developed an awareness of the systemic separation of races, the tiers of class based on color, was painful. Listening to the justifications for separateness—based on religion, based on supposed physical traits (“they have smaller brains”[2]) – I felt like we were back in the Jim Crow era of America. [Side note: This crown on the left is patterned after British crowns. The elephant standing on the lion represents the idea of African independence from Europe. I saw this crown at the Indianapolis Museum of Art this weekend; though Ghanian, I thought it fitting for the subject at hand.]
While obviously simplistic due to word limits, there are three points that stood out to me in this text.
Stereotypes and prejudice exist in all of us. As a young boy, Mathabane grew to hate white people because of the apartheid system which kept him and all black South Africans living in poor conditions, receiving little or poor education and few opportunities, and imprisoned by bureaucracy. (Likewise, the young Smith boy, Clyde, grew up being taught in school to think of blacks as “retarded” and sub-human.[3]) Yet exceptions to the stereotype—names, faces, stories and actions—transformed Mathabane’s perspective of white people. The majority of white South Africans condoned apartheid, but as Mathabane met and befriended whites such as the Smiths, Wilfrid Horn, and Agnes and Bremer Hofmeyer, he discovered that not all white people accepted apartheid. Mathabane described his meeting with the Hofmeyers, their story of murder and forgiveness
reinforced my belief that among white South Africans there was that small minority that really believed in love, freedom and human dignity for all. So why should they be lumped into the same foul den as the racists, and made the object of hate and vengeance? Why couldn’t the struggle in South Africa be not one of black against white, but one that pitted those who believed in freedom, justice and equality against those who didn’t? [4]
Getting to know someone different from ourselves begins to crumble those barriers we place between us and others.
Mathabane was a survivor because others believed in him, and he made good choices about the
voices he listened to. Not everyone can do that. Throughout his childhood, Mathabane heard the loving, hopeful voice of his mother, pushing him out of the nest, sacrificing deeply for him, disciplining and encouraging him. He heard the voice of his father, who suffered loss of identity, tradition, and respect; his father who responded angrily to Mathabane’s independence. He heard the voices of his grandmother, the tsotsis gangs, and his teachers. All pulling him in different directions. Yet early on he makes the conscious decision to listen to his mother, and gravitates toward voices that affirm support of the direction she sends him (ahhhh, if only our kids would listen to us mothers!). During the process of applying for tennis scholarships, Mathabane was told by a mentor, Geoffrey Montsisi, “You’re an unusual type… you believe in yourself. That’s what we blacks as a nation need. Faith in ourselves. We believe too much of what the white man tells us about ourselves and the results of that have been disastrous: whites are running our country.”[5]
Institutionalized and culturally embedded fear of others, when used by those in power, become paralyzingly difficult to overcome. Through interaction with white tennis players, Mathabane was able to allay some of their fears about black people. When asked about how whites can live with blacks, “when you hate us so much,” Mathabane replied that “as long as meaningful contact between the races was forbidden by law, the stereotypes each race had of the other would persist…. Apartheid thrived on the enmity and fear between black and white.”[6] Apartheid laws structured parallel universes among different colors of people, so that “more than 90 percent of white South Africans go through a lifetime without seeing firsthand the inhuman conditions under which blacks have to survive.”[7] Apartheid was abolished in the early 1990s, and yet its “hideous legacy” continues. In his 2001 preface to the book, Mathabane writes, “They majority of blacks [in South Africa] are still poor. They still lead lives of quiet desperation. Many still live in overcrowded and squalid ghettos.”[8] The reality, which we have seen here in America as well, is that civil rights laws can be passed, apartheid abolished, and yet the dreadful consequences of institutionalized sin linger on for generations. Laws are much easier to change than minds. And systems much harder to deconstruct than legislation.
[1] The Penguin Book of South African Verse, ed. Jack Cope and Uys Krige (London: Penguin, 1968), 261. Caroline Khaketla was a Sotho poet and teacher, wife of a Lesotho stateman and mother to Lesotho finance minster, ‘Mamphono Khaketla.
[2] Mark Mathabane, Kaffir Boy (New York: New Millennium, 1986), 192.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid, 310.
[5] Ibid., 342-343.
[6] Ibid., 327.
[7] Ibid., 3.
[8] Ibid., x.
About the Author
Katy Drage Lines
In God’s good Kingdom, some minister like trees, long-standing, rooted in a community. They embody words of Wendell Berry, “stay years if you would know the genius of the place.” Others, however, are called to go. Katy is one of those pilgrims. A global nomad, Katy grew up as a fifth generation Colorado native, attended college & seminary and was ordained in Tennessee, married a guy from Pennsylvania, ministered for ten years in Kenya, worked as a children’s pastor in a small church in Kentucky, and served college students in a university library in Orange County, California. She recently moved to the heart of America, Indianapolis, and has joined the Englewood Christian Church community, serving with them as Pastor of Spiritual Formation. She & her husband Kip, have two delightful boys, a college junior and high school junior.6 responses to “South Africa: not as easy as black & white”
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Great post, Katy. I really liked the 3 themes you identified. Powerful line: “Laws are much easier to change than minds.” So true. Although laws are created to regulate discrimination, if people are bent on ruling and oppressing, they find ways around the laws. I too was struck in the book how both races were taught to hate the other. If people can be taught to hate that lasts for generations, then my hope is that people can be taught to love that will outlast the hatred. Especially when we consider love is the greatest force of all.
Katy, I like your emphasis on Johannes’ mother. And I really like the poem.
Did you know that the wrote a book called “African Women: Three Generations”?
One other thing that Johannes/Mark had going for him although he didn’t exactly get up on a roof top and shout about it was the fact that he was often top in his class. Surely that must have helped him believe in himself?
Katy great insights from the book! I, too, had a difficult time reading through the book. It is hard to face the horrific truths about the experiences in this book, in South Africa, and in comparison to America. However, I believe in order for change to come we must “face the music”. We cannot condone and continue to accept racism, discrimination and prejudice as a societal norm or way of life. Your closing statement was very powerful “The reality, which we have seen here in America as well, is that civil rights laws can be passed, apartheid abolished, and yet the dreadful consequences of institutionalized sin linger on for generations. Laws are much easier to change than minds. And systems much harder to deconstruct than legislation.”
“The reality, which we have seen here in America as well, is that civil rights laws can be passed, apartheid abolished, and yet the dreadful consequences of institutionalized sin linger on for generations. Laws are much easier to change than minds. And systems much harder to deconstruct than legislation.”
This is very true Katy. It can take such a long time to change cultures and hearts and minds. There has surely been much progress in South Africa (and America!) but there remains much to be done it seems.
Katy, reading your post made me reflect on something. Racial/Ethnic/Cultural/Tribal prejudice and bigotry is not just a BLACK/WHITE thing.
When my children were younger, they went to a charter school that was put together by a Turkish Non-Profit Agency in Texas. A lot of immigrants flocked to the school. She had two good Nepali friends. One day, one of the girls talked to my daughter about the other Nepali girl. She said “if we were in Nepal, I could not be her friend. In fact, I could not ever speak to her or look her in the eyes.”
I have encountered this worldwide. I had a Korean friend who was brutally made fun of by the other girls because she was not slender and pale like them. We all know of the horrors that Australians put the Aboriginal people through. And of course there is tribalism in Eastern Africa which accounts for so many murders every year. To this day, China sees themselves as the “Middle Kingdom” and believe that they are ethnically and culturally superior to all other people groups.
When our scripture talks about equal footing for “male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free” and when it speaks in Revelation of “every tribe” before the throne, we know that the way of Jesus is something that is counter cultural.
“You’re an unusual type… you believe in yourself.” What a heart-breaking quote, Katy. How many young people do we know in America and around the world who do not believe in themselves? And how can we hope for change if our young people can’t believe in themselves?
You are so right that laws can change, but without change in hearts and minds, hatred continues and people struggle to believe in themselves. Laws become the refuge for the latent bigot, misogynist, classist, and racist to hide behind. “Well they have laws against that sort of thing now, what more do they want?”