“In South Africa there’s a saying that to be black is to be at the end of the line when anything of significance is to be had. So these people [living in Alexandra] were considered and treated as the dregs of society, aliens in a land of their birth.\u201d(1)<\/p>\n
As I read the painful accounts of Johannes, (Mark Mathabane) his family and all people of color under Apartheid, I tried to find some locus of context.<\/p>\n
As a foreigner living in a country outside of my own, I know what it is to be frightened, to be made fun of and mistreated just because I was a foreigner. I know what it’s like to be identified as a foreigner by the color of a license plate on the car and have the police stop me and intimidate me to get money or to detain me\u2014just because they can. I know what it’s like to give them money because of fear. I\u2019ve been yelled at, spit on and pushed around, cursed at and refused service; I’ve been separated out, poked, prodded, barked at and made to feel small all because I was a foreigner. However, none of that can even begin to compare to the pain and abuse Johannes faced in the story of the Kaffir Boy.<\/p>\n
First, the choice to live in another country was my own. Johannes, on the other hand, did not choose to live where he lived, he was born in a country that legally placed him in a \u201cshantytown.\u201d Second, because my skin color was no different than others, people didn\u2019t know I was a foreigner until they saw my license plate or I began to speak. However, even before Johannes had the opportunity to speak, people acted based on the color of his skin. In this case, he also had no choice.<\/p>\n
Third, I got to go home! What kept me sane though the comparatively slight tribulation was the thought that I had a home country to which I could return and in which I was no longer a foreigner. It was the place where when I showed my passport they said \u201cwelcome home\u201d instead of using their power to get money. On the other hand, Johannes was home! Escape was not apparent, and his documentation was a frequent point of contention and pain. There was no one saying to him \u201cwelcome home.\u201d On the contrary, it seemed as if everyone was saying, \u201cYou don\u2019t belong in your own country or this world!\u201d And so, any experiences I have had could not provide the slightest bit of context for the story I was reading.<\/p>\n
Though I have difficulty placing the story in the context of my life, the messages of the story are clear. For example, the moral bankruptcy of the whole Apartheid system shouts to the world that the abuse of power to separate and control is abhorrent. The use of \u201cdifference\u201d to separate people from others and control others is horrific. The length to which human beings will go to control others and rationalize it legally is astounding. I\u2019ve often heard people say; I would never do that or I would have never allowed that to happen. One needs to look no further than the Stanford Experiment to know that no almost no one in immune. (2)<\/p>\n
However, in the midst of this horrific story, there is also a message of hope. For me, the message is that individuals can and do make a difference. In the story of the Kaffir Boy, these people are in the persons of Mark Mathabane. If he did not tell his story, as painful as it is, it would have never been told. Also, the story would have an entirely different ending if the Smith family didn\u2019t introduce him to books and tennis; if Wilfred Horn did not sponsor Johannes; if Stan Smith didn\u2019t work to find a college and tennis scholarship for him, or if Granny was not the strong women that she was. In fact, if Arthur Ashe didn\u2019t play tennis in the first place the story would be different.<\/p>\n
Even though it ‘s hard to find context for the story in my life, the messages of the story can find resonance in any life. Any influence, power or resources we have should be used not to control and overpower but to heal and reconcile. It is not always the crowd that makes the difference, sometimes it’s the total combined effort of one person at a time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“In South Africa there’s a saying that to be black is to be at the end of the line when anything of significance is to be had. So these people [living in Alexandra] were considered and treated as the dregs of society, aliens in a land of their birth.\u201d(1) As I read the painful accounts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1001],"class_list":["post-13596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mathabane","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13596"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13617,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13596\/revisions\/13617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}