They Didn't Die to Have a Memorial...

As I am living in South Africa there is no possible way to step around the issue of apartheid. In a country that abolished it only a few years ago, the air is still sometimes thick with separation. In one of my classes Negotiating Transitions we are currently on the topic of apartheid, but I think we actually finished with most of the topic today and will be moving onto the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Before I continue with what I have to say regarding Negotiating Transitions I'd like to pass on some of the things I learned when I first got here - I should say some I learned and some were refreshers...

Here there is a difference between 'colored' and 'black'. If you tell a colored person they are black or vice versa, you have insulted someone. Plain and simple. Moving on with insults... if you have ever heard the word kaffer, you know not to use it - unless you are looking for serious trouble. Kaffer = non-believer (in a nutshell). When I got here, I already knew that term, but what I didn't know was that there is also a term to insult the white Afrikaaners: boer. That is a name you don't just throw around. Some people here use it as slang with their close friends, and there is a way to use it so that it is not an insult, but being a foreigner I WILL NOT be using that word. In my eyes, I don't have the right to use the word.

On to what my class discussed today...

When I quote my teacher "...they didn't die to have a memorial..." I am referring to some of the discussion our class had on the Gugulethu Seven. The Gugulethu Seven was one of many murders in the fight against apartheid. It is hard for me to explain about these murders because I am just learning about them myself.

The movie Long Night's Journey Into Day explores some of the TRC (Truth & Reconciliation Commissions) and the Gugulethu Seven are one of four murders featured, and like I said, I can't fully explain them, so I will let the following websites be your teachers.

Website to the movie:

http://www.irisfilms.org/longnight/ln_biehl.htm

Please try and read all four stories. I have given you the link to the description about Amy Biehl's murder to start with. If you then look at the left hand screen you will see Stories in red, please view the other three below: Cradock 4, Magoo's Bar Bombing, and Guguletu 7.


I wanted to post a blog about this because... well... I was moved. There is no other way I can put it; there are no words I can form to explain to you what I felt when watching the tears fall from the faces of the victims' family members who were left behind to deal with the aftermath of their loved one's demise. If you can, watch the movie.


More interesting websites:

http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/index.html

http://www.capetown.dj/Regions/CapeFlats/Gugulethu/GugulethuSeven.html

http://www.sa-venues.com/attractionswc/gugulethu-7-memorial.htm


In one of the articles I had to read for class, which was actually written by one of my teachers and a colleague of hers, they started their article with a poem that I would like to end my post with.

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When the first slave was brought to the cape
he looked at the awesome mountain
which roots us to an eternal beauty
hundreds of years later affirmed

I am as free and as tall as this mountain
this mountain is more chained that I am
I will climb to the top one day
and call the adhaan before dawn

My voice will carry across the seas
to my loved ones in a land
I may never see again
and they will know that I

and the treasures I carry with me
are safe and always will be
for as long as beauty
and this mountain survive

- Shabbir Banoobhai