{"id":13458,"date":"2017-06-20T21:14:52","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T04:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=13458"},"modified":"2017-06-21T00:55:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T07:55:38","slug":"beauty-for-ashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/beauty-for-ashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty for Ashes . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Mathabane\u2014Kaffir Boy an Autobiography: The True Story of a Black Youth\u2019s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa<\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this raw and captivating autobiography, Mark Mathabane, utilizes the imaginative creativity of his journalistic skills to depict the poignancy and triumphs of his first eighteen years of life under South Africa\u2019s apartheid system.\u00a0 He writes, \u201cI have sought to paint a portrait of my childhood and youth in Alexandra, a black ghetto of Johannesburg, where I was born and lived for eighteen years, with the hope that the rest of the world will finally understand why apartheid cannot be reformed. It has to be abolished.\u201d [1] As author, lecturer, and professor, Mathabane inspires audiences all over the United States. He remarks, \u201cWhen I lecture to privileged students, I try to make them aware of the responsibility that attends privilege and to make them realize they have\u00a0a bigger purpose in life beyond material things, and also, that privilege gives them the responsibility to make a difference in our world as leaders.\u201d [2]<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

The author introduces the reader to the politics of apartheid that forced black communities to be removed from their ancestral homelands. Race was the dominant identifying factor for all South Africans under apartheid.\u00a0 It determined who one married, and the kind of education, job, and housing one could obtain. As the privileged class, whites had the best education, housing, and jobs. Most of the socio-political, educational, and religious machinery worked in consort with one another to sustain apartheid by systematically keeping blacks poor, ignorant, and oppressed. \u00a0Mathabane indicates that the government strategically exploited blacks by dividing them ethnically and linguistically which generated \u201chate, bitterness, hunger, pain, terror, violence, fear, dashed hopes and dreams. It means being trapped in the ghettos of South Africa, in a lingering nightmare of a racial system that in many respects resembles Nazism. In the ghettos black children fight for survival from the moment they are born. They take to hating the police, soldiers and authorities as a baby takes to its mother\u2019s breast.\u201d [3] He goes on to explain, \u201cin my childhood these enforcers of white prerogatives and whims represented a sinister force capable of crushing me at will; of making my parents flee in the dead of night to escape arrest under the Pass laws; of marching them naked out of bed because they did not have the permit allowing them to live as husband and wife under the same roof. They turned my father\u2014by repeatedly arresting him and denying him the right to earn a living in a way that gave him dignity\u2014into such a bitter man that, as he fiercely but in vain resisted the emasculation, he hurt those he loved the most.\u201d [4]<\/p>\n

Having endured a lifetime of relentless suffering, at age ten, Mathabane felt that he could bear no more.\u00a0 He was \u201cweary of being hungry all the time, weary of being beaten all the time at school, at home, and in the streets; he was frustrated, embittered, and disillusioned by a world that seemed to offer him nothing but hunger, pain, violence, and death.\u201d [5] He contemplated suicide with a knife, but his mother dissuaded him. Mathabane experienced violence and victimization through state-authorized violence, often administered by black policemen, superintendents, and educators; through domestic violence; violence perpetrated by his former gang when he severed ties; and through his participation in the Soweto riots of 1976. \u00a0He reports an improvement in life at age eleven, when a white family provided him with classics to read, \u201cwhich revealed a different reality and marked the beginning of my revolt against Bantu education\u2019s attempts to proscribe the limits of my aspirations and determine my place in South African life.\u201d [6] When he was introduced to tennis at age thirteen, he came to the realization that not all South African whites were racists and his hatred toward them increasingly abated.<\/p>\n

Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe that I will ever become immune to learning about the heinous atrocities and suffering experienced by children, families, and communities living in extreme, difficult circumstances i.e. vulnerable\/at risk conditions. The major common threads in this type of abuse are: exploitation, intimidation, manipulation, hatred, oppression, anxiety, and depression. In situations akin to these, global ministry leadership imperatives then, would not only need to include emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and spiritual intelligence, but must also be concerned with engagement at the level of one’s existential realities; that is what ultimately shapes the contours of one\u2019s worldview, cultural traditions, religious belief systems (implicit or explicit), and ideologies.<\/p>\n

Mathabane\u2019s biographical\u00a0narrative underscores my contention with Matthew Michael\u2019s thesis in Christian Theology and African Traditions. <\/em>The fallacy with Michael\u2019s thesis is that he encompasses the whole African continent in a singular worldview. He speaks of \u201cthe African,\u201d as if Africa consists of one homogeneous people group with one overarching worldview. Despite Africa\u2019s apparent diversity in nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, political systems, religious systems, worldviews, traditions, histories, economics, linguistics, tribal orientations and geographies.\u00a0 Neither do all Africans \u00a0spontaneously resonate with or adhere to \u00a0African cultural norms\/traditions without discretion, nor do they necessarily embrace the worldview\/traditions of the particular African context into which they are included.<\/p>\n

Mathabane intuitively realized, \u201cIn order to escape from the clutches of apartheid, I had to reject the tribal traditions of my ancestors . . . \u00a0apartheid had long adulterated my heritage and traditions, twisted them into tools of oppression and indoctrination. I saw at a young age that apartheid was using tribalism to deny me equal rights, to separate me from my black brothers and sisters, to justify segregation and perpetuate white power and privilege, to render me subservient, docile and, and therefore exploitable.\u00a0 I instinctively understood that in order to forge my own identity, to achieve according to my aspirations and dreams, to see myself the\u00a0equal of any man, black or white, I had to reject this brand of tribalism.\u201d [7] This was the catalyst that gave him the faith and fortitude to pursue a path that led to freedom from apartheid and to success as a scholar and professional in the United States.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mark Mathabane, Kaffir Boy an Autobiography: The True Story of a Black Youth\u2019s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa <\/em>(New York: Free Press, 1986), ix.<\/li>\n
  2. Mark Mathabane, \u201cDr. Mark Mathabane Author of Kaffir Boy <\/em>Speaks at Schools,\u201d April 3, 2008, accessed June 14, 2017, https:\/\/youtu.be\/gh6grpxYOqQ<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  3. Mathabane, Kaffir Boy, <\/em>x.<\/li>\n
  4. Ibid.<\/li>\n
  5. Ibid., 167.<\/li>\n
  6. Ibid., x-xi.<\/li>\n
  7. Ibid., xi.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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