I had begun this blog last week, but after this weekend I had a new perspective and decided to restart this entry. This past weekend I went to Washington DC, and it unexpectedly helped my incorporation of some of the themes of the class into the United States context. The trip brought back waves of memories and emotions of South Africa. A large part of the association was all the museums I went to, similar to what we did in South Africa. One in particular, the Native American Smithsonian, reminded me of our many discussions of history. It was a memorialization of the experience of people who are often left out of history. In an exhibit about the history of 8 different tribes in which the description specifically pointed out that it was a history that was not often told. I also saw displays on languages, of which half are at risk of being lost if they do not receive some sort of support. This museum was refreshing amongst the many, many statues of white men and their horses that I saw throughout the city.

Another interesting part of my trip was the fact that I realized I was still tracking groups to see if they were mixed. I realized this because in DC I saw the most groups of mixed racial composition than I have seen anywhere else. There were mixed couples, families, and friends from all different backgrounds. It was contact hypothesis at work.

It was July 4th, so the patriotism in the city was overflowing. I couldn't help but be slightly troubled at the reminder of how much such a strong national identity, both in our case as well as South Africa inherently contains negative attitudes towards other nations, often leading to violence. Yet there was such a beauty in the diversity of all the people celebrating together in the spirit of Independence day that it cannot be denied there is importance in sharing an identity and culture. So once again I am considering the question of what kind of patriotism is helpful and when does it turn us against others?

One thing I realized that in these thoughts, I do have much more background knowledge on the American context. With this comes a comfort in being critical of our own patriotism, while still strongly holding on to my American identity. For me this makes it much easier to think about these ideas without feeling guilty, allowing me to be more flexible with my ideas. It really drives home the importance of doing work around reconciliation in the places I have the most knowledge.

Back in the States

It has been about a week since I returned from South Africa, and yet even one day in it felt like the trip was ages ago. Home is so familiar it took just one day of being at work to fall right back into my typical activities. I was worried that would happen, and on the flight back I had spend some time talking about how I would deal with this, and how to keep the experiences and knowledge of those three weeks with me into the US.

As comfortable as it is to be home, as much as it seems to be falling back into habit, I am noticing content from our course in various places. Just yesterday while riding the bus I saw a sign outside a church about reconciling our lives with God’s wishes and spend the rest of the ride considering if this was the same nature of reconciliation that we discussed in our course.

Just one month ago I had no concept of what reconciliation was. It was a word that clearly sounded like a good thing, involved moving past conflict, but that was pretty much all I understood of it. Because of the positive connotations of the word, I thought it would be so simple to apply to any sort of disturbance. Now thinking about the framework from which we are speaking, dealing with intractable conflicts and changes in attitudes in beliefs, engaging in a process of change and working towards lasting peace, I actually have more trouble seeing how to apply these concepts in situations here.

I am trying to stay open to what I learned and how it can apply to situations I witness. I read the news and think first of if reconciliation could be applied in that particular situation. Often the answer is no. And after all our jokes, I am actually noticing and naming pretty regularly. Hopefully by continuing this, I will start to get a feel for possibilities of applying the concept of reconciliation here at home.

History

I never really had a sense of the value of history. Studying history always frustrated me because there was such a sense of powerlessness. There were so many injustices in history, and as students we had to sit there and learn about it, not being able to do a damn thing to change what happened.

I have never enjoyed a single history class. While I do realize that American history is relevant to shaping the culture today, there are many aspects of it that I don’t feel a connection to or any particular pride about. There is so much hypocrisy in America’s ideals of “freedom” and how they relate to America’s rise in power in the world. How do we celebrate Andrew Jackson when he was responsible for the Trial of Tears? I keep on getting told that I need to take pride in these events because these were people, though they may have had flaws, were only products of their time and did great things for our nation. I imagine what role a woman of color would play in the times of the founding fathers that we adore oh so much, and wonder how I am supposed to identify these white men on horses as heroes in my history?
As a first generation American, I’ve had a special awareness of my unique American identity. I often get identified as an American when I travel, and am certainly proud of many aspects of the culture which I grew up in. I do have pride in certain figures that fought for freedom, truly, not through military means or the oppression of others. Not those who fought for America by stealing from Mexico, enslaving Black people, and the genocide of Native Americans. I admire those like King and Milk, who fought for inclusion and humanity.

Being in South Africa, I cannot deny the importance of history, on all fronts. Every person we have met has told us the history of the country, each having a different angle piece of the story, depending on who we are hearing from. There is a sense of pride in knowing what the nation was able to come out of, the freedom they fought for. There is an appreciation for engagement that is still visible in the many community organizations that formed from civil society. The sense history, knowledge of past struggles, informs the action that the people take in current times.

I don’t know if I really identify with “our nation.” I acknowledge that identity is important, but there are also so many problems that arise from strong alignment with one identity OVER another identity. The idea of nation, both in the US and here in South Africa, seem to create this sense of pride, but that pride easily translates into arrogance or violence towards those that are seen as other. In South Africa it was the Xenophobic, or rather Afrophobic events that occurred last May, and in the US the examples of our imperialism are countless.

So when is memorialization of figures, peoples, or ideas in history valuable, and when is it damaging? How do we take pride in the struggles for freedom without the othering of identities that weren’t part of that particular struggle?

Transitional Justice

At UCT we heard from Zwelethu Jolobe about Transitional Justice. Transitional justice is about dealing with something in the past, something specific. In South Africa it was to deal with the excesses of the Apartheid government, and to promote a human rights environment. Its particularly important when “regular” forms of justice are not available for a variety of reasons. The TRC is applauded and criticized for many things, but one thing to keep in mind was that its purpose was not to facilitate the entire transition, but to deal with the human rights violations that had occurred.

Unfortunately, these human rights violations were limited to violence committed by the government and resistance organizations. It didn’t include things like the Bantu Education that disempowered generations of people, forced removals that completely disorganized society, and other structural violence, those policy makers were never brought in front of the commission to face the damage they had done.

Jolobe asked us whether reconciliation was really the role of the government. Or is the role of the government to provide for equity, health, water, education? And can that be considered a part of reconciliation since that is what is to be expected of any government. In 2004-2006 there was the highest amount of public protest in South Africa about the delivery of basic resources such as water and housing. And to keep things in perspective, the South African Government is working through bureaucracy and a change of power every 5 years because of the democracy. He also spoke about the many NGOs, CBOs, and other organizations had come up in order to promote reconciliation. Even during the TRC the lawyers were doing pro bono work since Mbeki didn’t support the TRC.

This idea was inspiring that the community could come together for the goal of reconciliation. However, I wonder how this can then translate to the US. There seem to be some key differences that may impact how it looks. First of all, the fact that the Apartheid government is so recent has kept the civic spirit high. Even still, people talk about how the younger generation in South Africa is less aware of the history, and surveys show they are more pessimistic towards issues of reconciliation. How does that then look in the US where the Civil Rights Movement was longer ago? Overall there seems to be less engagement, just one example being the number of people that actually show up to vote. Another key difference is the fact that the oppressed group is the majority in South Africa, and is the minority in the US. There is such a larger sense of community around identities, as well as around the South African identity in the US. So how would reconciliation adapt to these differences in the States?

Sleeping with the enemy

Today we had a lecture from Don Foster, a psychologist who spoke to us about the Contact Hypothesis. South Africa under apartheid was a “non-contact” society, one that believed that contact between different races would cause friction, and was best avoided. The Contact Hypothesis on the other hand, is the idea that if people meet across racial lines, then race relations improve. This contact needs to be within a certain set of conditions, ones where there is a possibility for intimate relationships and cooperative activity. So things like a work environment where there may be a difference in power and no personal connection have been shown to be less correlated with how reconciled a person feels. It increases as the settings get more personal, such as having their children go to the same schools, or having close friends of another race, and mixed marriages.

This conversation, as well as a recently engaged friend, got some of us in the house talking about how we have also dated people who are ideologically/culturally very different than us, and have had many positive experiences. One of the more meaningful relationships I've had was with someone of a different race and religion, with whom I disagreed with on pretty much every issue related to politics and culture. And we cared deeply about each other anyways. That was powerful to me in seeing my capacity to care for people, not just this larger vague idea of humanity.

But once again, that was in a very specific setting. In a culture that is now no longer legally separated, South Africa still is almost completely informally segregated, much like the US. So although it has been shown that those who have more intimate contact with other races feel more reconciled, that contact isn’t occurring.

I keep thinking about romantic relationships because those seem to be something we are most guarded about. Often people can be seemingly liberal about other groups until a family member wants to marry someone from that group. There are also so many other barriers to making intimate relationships with people we see as different from us. I have many friends who would never even consider dating someone outside their culture, language, or religion, because it can be so much more possible to connect with people who can relate to the things that are important to us. Or also the fact that social influences so much shape who we are attracted to in the first place, such as music, fashion, or what is even considered beautiful. These are not separate from the very inequities we are trying to reconcile, that blue eyes and lighter skin tones are considered more beautiful, that expensive clothes are more fashionable. These are issues embedded in our culture but can pass as benign, even though they help reinforce separateness. So what does it really take to allow ourselves to form intimate relationships with those who are different than us?

Pictures

Shopping in the township of Langa. Their homes were the rooms right behind the store inside the shack.

Andile our tour guide drinking beer in the Shabeen at the township of Langa.

David teaching me to salsa

Dancing with some charming street performers in a beach town along the cape.

At the most southwestern part of the continent.

Mindfulness and reconciliation

Though it is still new to me, I’m my basic understanding of mindfulness is the idea of focusing on the internal, what our thoughts and reactions are to what we experience. This idea has been applied in some of the most inspiring situations, such as Mandela’s time in prison, where he emphasized what freedom he had in his mind despite being physically imprisoned. On a smaller scale it has helped me to track my thoughts and feelings about everything we have been experiencing here in South Africa. But where does this concept of mindfulness play a role in approaching reconciliation?

Reconciliation is inherently in the context of moving beyond past conflict. In the case of oppression, the component that is one of the most heartbreaking to me is the psychological component. I think of the Black doll/White doll experiment conducted in the States, where they asked black children if they preferred a black or white doll, and the majority picked the white doll. This was an experiment originally done in the 50’s after Brown v. Board of Education, but redone recently, and it has consistently created similar results. These children are young, around 5 years old. And they already see that in the world, Whites are treated as “better.” Or I think of what our tour guide Andile told us about black children under Apartheid dreaming to be white children so then they could dream of possibilities for the future. In these situations, how much of it is internal, and how much of it is it the reality of the external situation? For children then, as much as internally they may have felt free and dreamed of the future, the government made it impossible.

Mindfulness cannot change larger society, only the way in which we perceive our own interactions with society. There is no doubt that this is also extremely valuable on the individual level of changing beliefs and attitudes, but to me seems to be secondary to pursuing more tangible change. Andile also told us that if he hadn’t had to go through Bantu Education, he would not be a tour guide but rather in the department of tourism in the government. This wasn’t because of his internal processing of the world around him, it was because of the outside forces acting on his life. Changes in access to basic needs, such as the always critical issue of education that can empower people, seem to be a more practical focus to me.

I got to hear Dorcas’s Auntie Renita over skype, and she spoke wonderfully about how important it is that oppressed people are uplifted. In that way, mindfulness seems absolutely relevant to reconciliation when considering what kinds of changes it can produce in beliefs and attitudes of an individual. But it is such a personal process, so how does one promote that for others, especially for an oppressed society? Religion has also played a large role in the reconciliation process here in South Africa, but does that mean religion is something we can advocate specifically for reconciliation? When people, especially children are told that they are worth less than the privileged, and then treated in a way that reinforces that idea, people internalize it. So then how do we as outsiders go in and advocate for a change in oppressed people’s internal processes as a means of reconciliation?

More pictures

Here are some more pictures from our trip.



These were the drinks we got at bo-kaap, the Muslim part of town that was the Group Area for the Cape Malay, largely composed of the Indians that were brought over as slaves. But this population, like all others in South Africa, are incredibly diverse. People were brought over from India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and other Dutch countries which the Dutch had colonized. They were playing Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum songs in the restaurant. Later we got to go into the oldest Mosque in Cape Town.



We visited the Township of Langa, one of the poorest regions of the city, along the lines of a slum. Its on the outskirts of the city and is underdeveloped, without running water or electricity. It was formed to house men only for 11 months of the year in hostels because the White Group Areas needed some form of labor. This picture is of the kids who learned to Step as the miners who were housed there did, using their hands, feet, and boots as rhythm because they were not allowed to participate in any other form of entertainment. The youngest one in front is 5 years old, and Nicolas in the red shirt is the oldest at eh age of 13. It is an after school program at the community center in Langa meant to keep the kids out of danger.



This is a view of the floor of District 6 museum. The museum was in honor of District 6, a township in which Black, Coloureds, Indians, and Whites lived. Certain places, such as venues of jazz or dance drew people together, and became a target of the Apartheid government which wanted to divide and conquer. The government declared it a White Area, and forcibly removed all the other residents.



Me on Table Mountain. This is a place that most locals cannot afford to visit.



The view from Table Mountain. Our tour guide at Robben Island later in the week said that for every 6 tourists, it creates 1 job.


These pictures are courtesy of Matthew McAllister (my camera is currently out of commission). There will be more pictures to come!

Living life is a process of reconcilation

While we were driving to the Green Market Square, Ryan and I were debating whether or not forgiveness is required for reconciliation. I was saying that I believed that forgiveness was not necessary of certain people who may have committed offenses affecting someone personally, but rather just the willingness to move forward with the formerly rival group. Ryan spoke to the fact that we were talking about psychological changes that occur about the other group, and how that is a very individual process, in which forgiveness is important in coming to peace with events that may have happened. During our discussion we asked Shafik, our driver, his opinion as a South African on the idea of reconciliation. He said something along the lines of it being different than all the visitors who come to study this concept, and that he is just trying to live his life. That was the end of our discussion.

I think about how academic the concept of reconciliation feels sometimes. What’s also interesting to remember is how few people were actually actively participating in the struggle against apartheid, or even in the US how few students actually participated in a protest in the 1960’s. For the most part, it’s usually the minority. Most people are just trying to live their lives. I don’t think we can blame anyone for that.

If we think about how many people are actually oppressing others or creating violence, that too is a minority. Of course, even being a minority of the population, both those creating violence as well as those involved in struggles against oppression still have a huge impact on the common person. Still, for the most part, people are just trying to live their lives. The way in which the South African people we have met choose to live their lives is in the spirit of progress. Reconciliation is a word that interested me but I only had vague conception of when I enrolled for this course, but every person here seems to be familiar enough with the concept to speak to the issues of reconciliation. And though perspectives on what reconciliation looks like vary depending on the person, most people we talk to have internalized the goal of creating a common South African identity inclusive of the many complex identities within it in order to create what many call a rainbow nation. By carrying this with them in day to day life, whether it be as a driver or a tour guide at Robben Island, they are actively participating in the process of reconciliation.

Just a few pictures

We went to Nelson Mandela's home in Soweto.



There, like every other site of truth telling and/or memorialization we have been, there are school children everywhere.



This was just a picture on the sign of the restaurant we ate at in Soweto that turned the flag into a person with open arms that I thought was cool.


This is the view from the street where we're staying in Cape Town.



This was a view from near a mall that was more upscale than even Cherry Creek Mall.

Hector Pieterson

Before leaving Johannesburg, we went to the Hector Pieterson memorial. It is a memorial in honor of Hector Pieterson, a 13 year old boy who was killed in an uprising in Soweto by school children on June 16, 1976. They were protesting because in addition to all the existing educational laws that were meant to keep Africans down, they added Afrikaans as a subject. This was the language of the oppressor, something that wasn't used anywhere but South Africa, not the language used in Universities, and just yet another means by which to fail students in schools. Hector Pieterson was crossing the street when he got shot, as the police had already started shooting. This picture is the famous picture taken by an international photographer right after he was shot. The woman in the picture is Hector's sister, Antoinette.

Another part of the story is that the man, Mbuyisa Makhubu, who picked up Hector after he was shot was then targeted as an ANC supporter by the government, and fled the country. He has never been found since, and his family is still looking for him.

We had the incredible opportunity of speaking with Antoinette at the museum. We asked her about the reconciliation process. She spoke about how, with the TRC, they had the opportunity of trying to find out who had killed her brother, and how she didn't want to because it would only make it harder to move on. At one point they had to start coping with It as if he died an ordinary death in order to deal with their grief. She was still alive, so she had to find some way to be positive and keep living her life.

She spoke about how though this memorial was in his name, Hector was no different than many of the other victims of the struggle. Many people died, many people suffered. In the memorial there were stories of others that were killed during the Soweto Uprisings, including an 8 year old girl, Lilith Mitni, and a white man Dr. L M. Edelstein who had done much social work in Soweto who was pulled out of his car and killed.

She said that this was a site of reconciliation, though some people may struggle in seeing how memorializing such a tragic event was something that was in the spirit of reconciliation. Ouma made an interesting point of reconciliation, as challenging as it could be normally, would only be that much more difficult in the case of people like Mbuyisa Makhubu, when they just disappeared without closure. That was one of the goals of the TRC, to track down missing persons and have burials for closure, but of course, as Antoinette spoke to, the TRC was able to serve some people's needs but definitely not everyone's.

It was amazing to see Antoinette's attitude towards reconciliation, her incredible hope. She many times spoke of how one HAD to have a positive outlook to even be able to keep living life, to move forward. She also mentioned many times that she was not the only one, the whole country had been through this. It would not do to teach their children to then hate even more, they had to move forward. Its amazing what some people can handle when they have no other choice.

Leaving Johannesburg Tomorrow

I can't believe that we're already leaving for Cape Town tomorrow. This place is so diverse and so beautiful, and we didn't really get a chance to explore or meet people outside our class. But now I definitely want to come back and spend a significant amount of time here soon.

Apartheid Museum and Umoja Show

Just to start here is a picture of the view of the sunset from our house.


Today we went to the Apartheid Museum. I definitely didn’t get through all of the exhibits, and wish I had left more time for the end of the museum that displayed content of more recent political activity.

We had lunch at the museum’s café, and Katherine and I both ordered tea. In the spirit of the museum, our awesome waiter gave her the black cup, me the white one, and giggled about it.



A particularly powerful portion of the Museum was a series of images from Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage, a book that consisted of photos depicting life as a Black person during Apartheid. These images included miners being humiliated by being forced to strip naked and be searched in order to work, living conditions of one room consisting of fruit cases as furniture, neighborhoods being bulldozed to make room for white expansion, children sleeping head to toe on the floor at a clinic because they were not “serious” enough cases to warrant a bed, and pictures of people getting arrested for not having their pass cards with them. There was a photo of a line that would form starting at 5:30 am of people trying to get their pass cards, but if they didn’t get in the building in time they were then at risk of being arrested for not having their pass. At one point there were around 500,000 a year who went to jail for statutory crimes such as not having an identification pass.

These passes were based on the Population Registration Act of 1950 that required classifying every citizen by race into the categories of Black, Coloured, or White. Later it was expanded to include other categories such as Indian. At one point it became an option to appeal one’s categorization, or that of another person and have the racial categorization changed. These “chameleons” changed from Indian to Coloured, Coloured to White, Black to Indian, and almost every other combination imaginable. Sometimes family members would get classified differently, and be torn apart by the different laws for the different races.


There was also a Mandela exhibit, which was incredibly aesthetically appealing as well as meaningful, and what was most resonant for me was the part about his time in prison. Having just visited the prison at Constitution Hill, seeing the 131 nooses representing certain political activists killed by the government, and the rooms of solitary confinement in which prisoners were kept, I was astonished that it was in his time in prison in which Mandela moved away from any ideas of using militant mechanisms within the freedom fight. How did he suffer such horrors and still advocate for forgiveness?



One quote that was stated was from a fellow political prisoner, Mac Maharaj, who stated “Man can adapt to the worst of conditions if he feels he is not alone; if he feels like he has support in what he is doing.”

Tying back to our conversation earlier about forgiveness in the reconciliation process, I wonder about the role that justice plays not only in this setting, but also in any setting. Mandela was close to being sentenced to death during the Rivonia Trials, and thank goodness he was not because the world would have been different without him. Others such as Stephen Biko who weren’t as “lucky” in their interactions with the Apartheid era South African government. And yet capital punishment is something that is actively used in the States.

So some may say it is a different situation because we’re talking about political prisoners versus prisoners of another kind. As one of the exhibits said, Mandela is no ordinary prisoner. But what about the others? Who is a criminal? Slums in South Africa were seen as a place for disease, moral degeneration, racial mixing and therefore weakening of white supremacy. The poor are often considered dangerous and we therefore perceive them as dangerous and criminals.

Even in situations of criminals more “deserving” of punishment such as those who have committed violent crimes, where does forgiveness play a role? In the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa over 1000 participants of Apartheid, a system of physical and psychological violence, were granted amnesty. This is not even on the same scale as the petty drug crimes for which most of the prisons in the States are filled, it is genocide of entire communities. And yet forgiveness is advocated for progress in this situation while our own criminal justice system has hardly any decent rehabilitation system and concepts like restorative justice are not considered as legitimate options. So who gets forgiven, and who gets punished?

I didn’t leave myself enough time for the end of the museum, which I am disappointed about because those are the most recent occurrences, and those in which I am most interested including things like first gay rights parade in South Africa in October 1990.


To end our day, we went to a show called Umoja, meaning the spirit of togetherness. The show was AMAZING. The performers sang/danced/drummed their way through South African history, from tribal dances to gospel music. I couldn’t take pictures of the show, but here is some art that was on the walls.









And here is a link to see some of what they do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af8Ah3cQv94

“A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.” – Nelson Mandela

We arrived bright and early in Johannesburg this morning. After dropping our stuff off at the Ginnegaap Guesthouse and getting some food we headed off to Constitution Hill. Here we saw some of the old prison buildings in which they kept many political prisoners including the famous Mahatma Gandhi. Bob Gosani was also imprisoned for publishing the following pictures in Drum Magazine, which he took secretly from a building adjacent to the prison. They are pictures of Tausa, an embarrassing strip search they conducted on all of the prisoners which involved everything from making the prisoners jump to having them bend over in order to search their anus. These procedures were the same for women except for the additional search between their legs.



There was also an exhibit called “Xenophobia: Never Again.” This exhibit consisted of photographs by Alan Skuy of an incident that occurred about one year ago, on May 11 2008, when there was acts of violence committed against non-South African blacks such as refugees from Zimbabwe, Somalia, or Malawi. There were pictures of mobs lead by a man holding an axe, homes on fire, a man beaten bloody, and more. This “xenophobia” was part of the black on black violence, which although erupted May a year ago, had been simmering since the early 1990’s. Part of the goal of the exhibit was the intention to remember so that, in the words of Skuy, we can “create a society that NEVER, NEVER, AND NEVER AGAIN… will experience these attacks and discrimination.”


On Constitution Hill is also the current Constitutional Courthouse, which is written in the 11 official languages. It is designed, both with the legal structure of the many justices of diverse backgrounds, and the architecture built to resemble a tree, to include more indigenous approaches to justice where people sat under a tree and discussed a situation until reaching a decision. This is where cases are seen that are relevant to the new constitution.



After this we attended a lecture by Ayesha Kajee, the program director of the International Human Rights Exchange program through the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She gave us an introduction to the reconciliation/transitional justice process that South Africa has been going through since the ending of Apartheid. She spoke about the institutional framework that had been created by the constitution. There are restrictions around hate speech, protections of both individuals and communities, including based on sexual orientation, more progressive than many places even in the United States. There is a separation of powers that has allowed for AIDS activists to take the former president Thabo Mbeki to court over providing retroviral drugs to pregnant women. Also there has been the creation of Chapter 9 institutions such as the Human Rights Commission, the Gender Commission, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). South Africa modeled some of its reconciliation process after what was seen in Chile and Argentina, thinking about both what worked and what didn’t work. It involved condemnation of the atrocities that had been committed, and an inclusion of the public in this process. This allowed for the victim’s truths to be told, and with the aid of mass media many others, specifically including White South Africans, to witness these truths.

Kajee also spoke to the limitations of the TRC’s huge undertakings in the reconciliation process. Though there are certain indications of reconciliation, such invaluable fact that there is no civil war right now, people feel still that the government has cheated them. For example, amnesty was offered to those who fully disclosed their activities in initiating/participating in/implementing many of the atrocities of apartheid. However, often there was amnesty granted when there wasn’t full disclosure, or prosecutions weren’t pursued even when there wasn’t any disclosure whatsoever. Reparations, part of the justice component of reconciliation, were recommended by the TRC to the government, but Mbeki’s administration often didn’t follow through with these recommendations. Particularly, the business sector that profited largely from the cheap labor of apartheid has not been involved in compensating the victims of apartheid, largely because their economic power translates into political influence. Many of the most marginalized communities feel that the process has been a lot of discourse and not much action because they have not seen the fruits of the reconciliation process. Social services like education, housing, and healthcare have not been delivered. In a country where it is estimated that 1 in 5 people is HIV positive, there are many communities that still have no access to basic primary health care.

This is an image of the condom dispenser in the university bathroom that I thought was cool.



To me this brings up the importance of transitional justice in the reconciliation process. Our reading of Bar-Tal and Bennink’s article “The Nature of Reconciliation as an Outcome and as a Process,” discusses some of the important features of reconciliation. These involve apologies and reparations, and later on creating a common history and joint projects. However, if these acknowledgements of past injustices are not occurring, or even if they do but then no reparations are made, what motivates those who have been and continue to be victims of an unequal system, to humanize those oppressing them? Kajee also mentioned a survey done in 2005 in which 30% of previous benefactors of apartheid (meaning they legally benefited from apartheid by policies such as having certain jobs reserved from them), did not actually think they benefited from apartheid. So if these injustices are not only not compensated, but also denied legitimacy, how can there be forgiveness and progress?

Tomorrow we are visiting the Apartheid Museum, which I hear is quite intense. I am excited and nervous to learn about the horrific realities that existed and yet think about progress beyond those ideas to ones of peace, healing and, of course, reconciliation.

Packing

My flight leaves in 5 hours... And I still have a lot to pack.