Heavy Reflections on the TRC

The longer that I’m in South Africa and the more that I process my experiences here, the less I know how to talk about it, or what to say. I’m guessing part of that is just a fact of everyday adjustment. The little things that used to be exotic now seem commonplace and comfortable; events that might have been newsworthy or blog-worthy in January are a fact of life now. I guess that’s just a part of slipping into another routine.

But I know that it’s bigger than that too. As much as life on the Cape Flats feels normal to me (and as much as I’m realizing going back to the States is going to be a colossal readjustment), there are moments when I’m shocked into the recognition that I know much less about this place than I think I do, and that even if I lived here fifteen years, I still wouldn’t know or understand it all.

And that’s the part that I think isn’t just a product of studying abroad; it’s because of what South Africa is, and what being a human being in South Africa means. If you weren’t here during apartheid, if you didn’t witness the transition to democracy, if you just want to step in twenty years later and make glowing remarks about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then how could you understand, really? Winnie Mandela came out a few weeks ago and (may or may not have) roundly criticized her ex-husband for betraying the cause, for rolling over and making concessions to the white government, and for doing practically nothing to actually make South Africa more livable for its black citizens. In January, I probably would have shook my head and had an ‘oh, that Winnie’ type attitude. But I’m coming to terms with the fact that I most definitely have no business throwing stones, and that while I as a white American can firmly disagree with her, for a lot of South Africans, she’s probably just about right.

So I guess all this is to say I’ve shed a lot of my naïveté about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Probably the most transformative assignment we’ve had here was going out into Landsdowne and asking around about the TRC—how much people know about it, what their opinions on it are, and how they think race relations stand now in 2010. Needless to say, your typical American scholar and your typical coloured family are going to have very, very different perspectives on whether or not it was successful, and since it’s the Landsdowne couple who are actually affected by it, I would give their opinion more weight.

It’s a heavy thing. You know from the beginning that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission could not accomplish everything it set out to do. (And you know that as a white American, you can’t hope to understand just how great the implications of that are.) It couldn’t do anything about the sneaky criminality of apartheid, for one; it could only address blatant human rights crimes. And it didn’t have the resources to even adequately deal with those. And even if you can get past its limited nature, you’ve still got to deal with the fact that it was imperfect—that you have to factor in political motivation, that no matter how many times Desmond Tutu reiterates the difference between retributive and restorative justice, something is going to fall through the cracks, and that you can’t equate a just war philosophy with disinterested reconciliation and political forgiveness. And then you go beyond that and realize that even if you could, even if every little detail was somehow perfected and everything went off exactly as you intended… you still can’t change people’s attitudes. If they’re set in their ways, no amount of truth telling or cathartic public action is going to sway them. At the end of the day, the TRC is limited, and it’s broken.

Funny, that it seems kind of like human nature in that way. Finiteness and fallenness: those are the things that have troubled me about the church these past two years, and the things that have troubled me about myself. And here they are again in the TRC. If you stare them in the face for too long then hopelessness happens. But the thing I’m beginning to understand, about the TRC at least, is that even though a thing can be inherently broken, it can still be the right thing to do. I’ve been markedly sobered by the inadequacies of the TRC to solve South Africa’s problems, but I would still say that it should be replicated and adapted and consulted in other situations—not out of any conviction that trial and error will eventually perfect it, or any sort of fatalistic dread of the alternatives. I couldn’t really tell you why, truthfully.

I remember reading something Paul Farmer said near the end of Mountains Beyond Mountains, about fighting a losing battle, but in a way that transcends defeatism or fatalism or even heroism. It’s not a perfect explanation, but it’s the closest way I can think to describe it. I’m guessing that grace has a lot to do with it, and faith in a God who can see a much, much larger picture than what our limited perspective will allow.

Anyways, those are my reflections for the day. I promise something a little lighter soon, because yes, I really am enjoying my stay here, and no, I don’t spend quite all my time caught up in such heavy thoughts.

"Can We All Go Around Saying 'Beer'?" - A Few Labored Lessons in Xhosa

So I know that for a lot of people, language is the most transformative part of their study abroad experience- and understandably so, for those who go abroad with the specific intent of studying one, or spend their time in a place where their host family and friends don’t actually speak English. South Africa, with its eleven official languages, hasn’t been like that. Almost everyone we’ve met has been AT LEAST bilingual, and can speak English. But for the past three Tuesday afternoons, one of the Xhosa students at Cornerstone has been gracious enough to try to pass her difficult, beautiful language on to us Americans.

So I know that with some languages you have to have to master an entire new alphabet, which seems an incredibly daunting task and which thankfully we don’t have to worry about. But Biggest Language Curveball Number Two has definitely got to be mastering new sounds- namely, clicks. And there’s at least four in Xhosa, before you throw in occasional H’s, which alter them subtly. I mean, you can’t even say ‘Xhosa’ without doing one of them (although the cop-out, which most non-native speakers due out of equal parts deference and embarrassment, is to pronounce it Kosa).

It’s also really difficult for a native speaker (who’s been making these sounds her entire life without thinking) to explain them to Americans (who can’t learn them without figuring just where, exactly, your jaw is supposed to be and what, exactly, your tongue is supposed to be doing). But after two lessons of extreme frustration, I am proud to say that, even if we can’t actually coherently make the rights sounds, we can at least recognize them and know what they’re theoretically supposed to sound like.

C, or the Irritated Mother Sound: this is kind of –tsk sound with your tongue at the back of your front teeth. It’s not too hard on its own, but try it in the middle of a word like ‘ndiyacela’ (please).

X, or the Horseback Command: it’s like the click you make to get a horse to go, which doesn’t sound too bad. But make sure you’ve got the ‘k’ sound going simultaneously, and that it doesn’t sound too round, like the Q, or too thin, like the C. It’s the one that’s been giving us the most trouble, by far.

Q, or the Tick-Tock Clock: this one is usually the easiest for westerners, since it’s the one we’ve been using from childhood for basically any and all sounds in make-believe (knocking on doors, hooves, etc.), and it’s also the one most people think of when they think of Xhosa clicks in general—which means it’s what they put with the letter ‘X,’ which probably drives native speakers crazy.

HL, or the Hissing Cat with a Cold: this is the one in my sister Lindo’s full name (Silindokuhle) so it’s the one I’ve been trying hardest to get right. It’s kind of like a hiss, but guttural and breathy at the same time (does that make any sense?), with a really, really, REALLY soft ‘s’ sound. And it’s everywhere, or so it seems.

So all this is to say: Xhosa is hard. But I am proud to say that my limited vocabulary now includes the Lord’s Prayer, a click-tongue-twister (Ndiqhel’uceb’ixheg’inqay, which translates—in all seriousness—‘I’m used to cutting an uncle bald’), umqombothi (African traditional beer), ‘andiyazi’ (I don’t know—very, very helpful), ‘ndiyakthanda’ (I love you), ‘umhle’ (you’re beautiful), ‘uxolo’ (sorry), and ‘ndicela undibonise ivenkile’ (Can you please show me the shop?), among other things. The only vital thing I’m really missing is ‘bathroom.’ I need to remember to learn that one.

Jo-Burg

Last week, I spent an hour on the Internet looking up quotes about Johannesburg in preparation for our trip there. The winner:

“No second Johannesburg is needed on the earth. One is enough.” –Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country

Needless to say, it set up certain expectations for our trip. I got on the plane expecting to land up in some metropolitan hole of despair, or at least be dogged by evidence of great hardship at every turn. And I can’t say that I was entirely wrong. Johannesburg is ringed by yellow hills that have been turned over and drained of gold, and now just stand there barren; and you’d also have to determinedly and purposefully set your mind against seeing the stark contrast between the rich, leafy green suburbs and the streets of Soweto. Johannesburg is a far cry from an ideal city. But while I was anticipating an opportunity to lament the fallen state of the world, what I actually got was a lesson in remembering and rebuilding.

So: we start out at the Voortrekker Monument, a stone colossus commemorating the Dutch Boers’ journey across the country away from the oppressive British settlers. At face value it’s just another memorial, but when you stop to look at the engravings on the wall, there are depictions of valiant colonists gunning down Zulu warriors while wielding Bibles. It also houses a tomb marking their struggle to win over the land they believed rightfully belonged to them. When the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948 and established apartheid, the Voortrekker Monument was where the Afrikaners celebrated their victory. In light of apartheid, the entire thing is repulsive and offensive, and there was actually a movement in the late 1990’s to tear it down. But they’ve kept it standing. Why?

But then we went to the Constitutional Court. And South Africa’s highest court, its ultimate seat of justice, is built right on top of the old prison complex that housed political prisoners like Winnie Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi. The Awaiting Trial Block (self-explanatory) has been torn down and its bricks have been used to make the walls of the courtroom (two of its stairwells form the corners). There’s one long walkway that separates the old prison cells of Number Four from the institution that upholds the most progressive constitution in the world.

And the more we saw of Johannesburg—the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, riddled with bullet holes from police attacks during the student uprising in 1976; the Hector Pieterson Museum, commemorating the children killed that summer; the executive seat, built by white supremacists and handed over to Nelson Mandela in 1994; the Apartheid Museum, a powerful place of memory which deserves an entire blog entry to itself—the more that this sort of pattern came up. Johannesburg has an awful history, but they’re not erasing the way it’s been told in the past or pretending it didn’t happen. They’re letting its witness stand and building up their future not despite it, but through it. It’s beyond bittersweet; it’s heartbreaking and heartening at the same time.

So Alan Paton is probably right: no second Johannesburg is needed on the earth. But the one that exists isn’t beyond repair. And maybe the way that it’s coming to terms with its history deserves to be emulated elsewhere.