Women Surviving Lavender Hill

Kimdendhri Pillay-Constant (facilitator) with
authors Veronica Kroukamp and Naema Moses

Aunty Veronica is one of the many women living behind the headlines of:

LAVENDER HILL COMMUNITY 'LIVING IN FEAR' AMID GANG VIOLENCE

LAVENDER HILL TEACHERS CRY FOR HELP

WHERE DO THE CHILDREN PLAY? LAVENDER HILL’S DERELICT FACILITIES

LAVENDER HILL SCHOOLS REOPEN AFTER GANG GUN BATTLE CLAMPDOWN

Aunty Veronica remembers crying when she moved into Constitution Court No. 48 in 1981, because she had “always heard and seen what happens in this place”. Her children were afraid to play outside, they witnessed a gang killing, when she came home from work at night, neighbours would have eaten the food she had left out for her children. Through it all she was determined to make sure that her children would not be brought up “like the neighbours”. She speaks proudly about her children overcoming challenges to find a way to earn a living. 

In spite of this, her story is punctuated with headings like, Facing Danger and Change in the Community, The Life and Death of My Son, Tough Times with My Daughter Sonia, and My Daughter Roundel Who We Almost Lost a Few Times. The story is a rollercoaster of suicide attempts, battles with drugs, abuse and violence but a determination to overcome shines through and she ends her story with the words:

I will come out on top. I will achieve the things I want in life even if I must do the subjects over, I will do it because I still believe that I will get my grade 12 certificate before I am going to be 60 years old.

Aunty Veronica was one of the speakers at a meeting of the Non-Violence Vocal I attended recently.  She is one of the authors of a book, Women Surviving Lavender Hill, which emerged from a two-year writing project facilitated by New World Foundation. The project was started a healing process for women to address the trauma and abuse they have endured through living in a community such as Lavender Hill, a community of gang violence, drug and alcohol addiction and domestic violence. 

Places like Lavender Hill are the scars we bear from the apartheid legacy of forced removals when culturally diverse communities from District Six in the city centre to Claremont, Harfield and Bishopscourt, in the southern suburbs, to Simon’s town along the False Bay coast, were disrupted and the lives of ordinary people destroyed in the classificatory madness of the National Party. 

These depressing headlines immediately pop up on a cursory search on the internet, but I feel that I owe it to Aunty Veronica to share some of the good news stories that defy any ideas that we may have of the real people who live in communities like Lavender Hill. Like the Waves for Change surfing project, the Lavender in Lavender Hill job creation project, and the story of  Lavender Hill resident, Riaan Cedras ,who went from cutting grass to graduating with a PhD in Marine Science this year. 

The book is self-published and reflects the stories of the women in their authentic voices, is available from New World Foundation: admin@newworldfoundation.org.za.

Mind Your Language

It is doubtful whether there are many people out there who will take advice from gangsters or drunks, even less so if the person advocating caution was a drunk gangster. So I am not sure what the Western Cape Transport and Public Works department was thinking with this advert for their #BoozeFreeRoads campaign. See article by Robin-Lee Francke here:

http://www.dailyvoice.co.za/news/watch-anti-booze-is-an-insult-to-coloureds/

It seems that they don't see anything wrong with their "100% authentic" portrayal of drunk gangsters selected off the streets of Hanover Park on the Cape Flats. 

The stereotypes of drunkenness and violence associated with 'coloured' people is ingrained in the narratives which go way back to the 17th century, when those who were referred to as 'Hottentots' were described thus:  

... they are lazy, they love to drink, they swear and fight at the slightest provocation and are generally immoral... 

In his examination of the portrayal of ‘Hottentot’ characters in early 19th century theatre, Vernon February finds the same basic elements: their love of liquor, their irascibility, their moral looseness, and linguistic incomprehension. He remarks that by the early 20^th century, ‘coloureds’ were limited to certain roles in Afrikaner mythology – the labour syndrome, comic syndrome, Bacchus syndrome, incarceration syndrome, loud-mouthed syndrome, and bellicose syndrome.  The theme of alcohol is a recurring one throughout Afrikaans literature, enshrining the tot system and justifying alcohol as the ‘coloured’s’ greatest cultural heritage, he concludes. 

Questions of race continue to surface in South Africa more than twenty years after democracy, Albie Sachs, anti-apartheid activist and constitutional court judge, comments in his autobiography that we have to acknowledge the catastrophic effects of apartheid in human terms in order to move on. Not only do we need to acknowledge apartheid and repression, but we need to realize the social and emotional impact that it had. 

Unless we destroy the stereotypes which were used to oppress us and define us racially, we cannot move towards a post-apartheid society where 'black' and 'white' believe they are equal to each other. We need to create the optimum conditions on the ground in order for people to feel neither superior nor inferior to each other, but to view each other as human. 

Further reading:

February, V. 2014. Mind Your Colour: The 'Coloured' Stereotype in South African Literature

Che Guevara of Bonteheuwel

http://actionkommandant.co.za/tag/nadine-cloete/

Nadine Cloete is a young South African film-maker on a mission to balance the stories about gangsters, drugs and crime, emanating from the Cape Flats. Judging by the sold out premiere at the V& A’s Cinema Nouveau theatre last night, with people begging to be let in to sit on the steps for the showing of her latest documentary, people want to hear what she has to say.

Her latest movie tells the story of anti-apartheid activist Ashley Kriel who was murdered by the South African security police in 1987, after he returned from Angola. His murderer, Jefrey Benzien, admitted to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he had shot the 20 year old who was handcuffed, in the back. Despite pleas to the opposite, Benzien was granted amnesty in 1999.

Kriel was from a working class neighbourhood, raised by a single mother, his father had been stabbed to death. He was conscientised from a young age to fight for what he believed was right. Nicknamed the "Che Guevara of Bonteheuwel", he influenced a generation of youth activists in his short life.

The film which debuted at the Seattle Film Festival earlier this year, tells a multi-faceted story of the young leader and is powerfully framed by discussions among contemporary students at the school Kriel attended.

The audible sobbing of Kriel’s sisters sitting a few seats from where I was, brought back with full force the trauma and wounds we have suffered and which have not been allowed to heal.

The Encounters International Documentary Film Festival is currently on in Cape Town at The Labia and Cinema Nouveau.

 http://www.encounters.co.za/ 

District Six - We will Remember

Family and Friends Woodstock/District Six circa 1940s
My grandmother holding my mother on the right

Thursday 11 February 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the declaration of District Six as an area for Whites only. District Six is now unrecognisable from what it was before its destruction but I have fond memories of the area where my grandparents lived and my father was born.

My father in his rugby-playing days circa 1950

One hundred years ago there was a vibrant community there of Indians, coloureds, Portuguese, Greeks and Jews. Freed slaves, merchants, immigrants, artisans and labourers all worked and lived peacefully side by side. They were an eclectic mix of cultures, religions and ethnicities in a melting pot typical of a port city like Cape Town … apparently a threat to the apartheid government. It would take about 15 years to move the 60 000 people out, to the Cape Flats, to areas like Manenberg, Hanover Park and Mitchell’s Plain.

My life revolved around Hanover Street, the main artery which ran all the way up from the city centre, into Walmer Estate where I grew up.  My grandfather’s tailor shop, later to be taken over by my uncle, was a hive of activity there; the doctor who delivered me in my grandparents’ home, had his surgery there where we would queue for hours to be seen, and Majiet’s barbershop was filled with people not necessarily having their hair cut, but playing dominoes and catching up on the news. A trip into town would inevitably involve a stop for roti and curry from the Crescent Café. My father says that you could buy anything in Hanover Street except petrol.

Central to the area was the spirit of kanala – a Malay word for “if you please”. Before it became District Six , the area was called Kanaladorp, a mixture of Malay and Dutch, referring to the way people assisted each other, or did favours for each other – a version of Ubuntu.

Malay choir
photo courtesy Ismail Lagardien

Tied up with my memories is the music which was played in the streets by minstrels, Malay choirs and Christmas bands, and the food with names like bredie, bobotie, denningvleis, frikkadels and oumens onder die kombers. One dish that, for me, represents the Cape with Malay, Dutch and Christian influences blended together with fragrant spices was pickled fish. I remember my maternal grandmother making it in the last week of Lent, to eat on Good Friday. She would make it well in advance to give the spices a chance to penetrate the fish, and also to free up her Friday when she would spend many hours in church. The best fish to use was geelbek, kabeljou or yellow tail which would have been bought either from the fish market on the corner of Hanover and Clifton Street, opposite the Star bioscope, or from the fish cart which did the rounds in the neighbourhood. The hawker would sound his horn to alert housewives that he had arrived with the catch of the day and they would come out to the street to haggle.

Weddings were communal affairs

Weddings and funerals were community affairs. When I was about six or seven I was a flower girl twice in the same year, once for my aunt, a Christian wedding and then for a Muslim neighbour, a dressmaker who sewed all the dresses for the wedding herself. The whole street turned out to see the bride when the wedding cars hooted to announce her arrival, and the neighbours followed behind to the reception in the Princess Street Hall. Funerals were another occasion when everyone would just turn up to pay their respects and support the family in any way they could. Christian men would borrow fezzes and take their turns carrying the bier of their Muslim neighbours. 

As the bulldozers moved in and the walls came tumbling around her, my paternal grandmother was banished to Mitchells Plain, far from the city centre where she had lived her whole life. She had been a fiercely independent woman, who had to earn a living after her husband died and left her to raise four children on her own. She made koeksisters and konfyt to sell door-to-door on Sunday mornings in District Six, and sewed and crocheted. She used public transport or walked wherever she had to go. What I remember most was her loss of independence. Suddenly she found herself in a foreign area without any infrastructure and no public transport to fetch her pension from the General Post Office in Cape Town. For the first time she had to ask for help.

My grandaunt and friend snapped by street
photographer while walking past the GPO

Central to my motivation for going back to university, was to equip myself with skills to tell the stories of growing up, not only my stories but the stories of those who cannot tell their own. We’re a deeply divided society, still trying to recover from a brutal past. We cannot sweep it under the carpet, sooner or later the bump will trip us up. When you strip away a people’s history you take away their pride. Telling these stories helps to restore dignity and help us to move forward. We need to know that someone sees our pain and understands.

Wall in District 6 Museum bearing names of former residents

I urge you to visit the District Six Museum. However painful the memories of apartheid may be, the exhibition there humanises the experiences while celebrating the rich diversity of people who once lived here. For me, it’s like settling into an old armchair and turning the pages of a well-worn family photo album. When I see the barber’s corner, the display case with the games we once played in the road, the photographs of the Peninsula Maternity Home where my sister was born or the wall-hanging with the name of the rugby club my father played for, I feel that our lives mattered. And when I walk up the stairs to the wall that bears the names of families who lived here, and I scroll down to find mine, I feel that our experiences have been validated and dignified. 

Memorial Plaque at the District Six Museum

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/District-Six-Memory-Plaque.jpg

Discovering Stories of Slavery

I finished reading Andre Brink’s Philida a while ago and it’s taken a long time to process the violence of the relationship between slave and master in the Cape during the 19^th century. I remember hearing that the slaves in South Africa never had it has bad as their counterparts in America.  Of course, I knew that this was propaganda along with other things we were told about the benign nature of our history. However reading the details of rape, whipping, impaling on top of the humiliation of being sold/auctioned, objectification, and the cruelty the slaves were subjected to, was nothing short of distressing.

Brink was inspired by the story of a relative who had owned the farm, Zandvliet, which is now Solms-Delta*.  Francois Brink had fathered four children with his father’s slave, Philida. He had promised that he would marry Philida but the farm is in trouble and his father orders him to marry a white woman from an important family in Cape Town. It wouldn’t do to have reminders of his former transgressions. So Philida is sold and separated from Ouma Nella, the only mother she has known.

The story unfolds in 1830s just before emancipation. Brink, the writer, skilfully juggles with religion, the tensions between the English and Dutch, and relationship between the landowners and the slaves. There were places in the book, though, where I wasn’t sure that a woman would say something quite in the voice that he uses.

There’s a poignant scene in the book which has stuck with me. Slaves were not allowed to wear shoes and one of the slaves on Philida’s new farm secretly makes a pair for each of them so that they can celebrate the emancipation with shoes. And celebrate they do, “…running up and down the street…singing and dancing and kicking up the dust...from now on everything will be different.” Of course they weren’t really free as they were forced to spend a further four years serving an “apprenticeship” on the farm.

Andre Brink was the first Afrikaans writer to have a book banned by the South African government during the apartheid era. He challenged the policies of the Nationalist Party through his writing in books such as A Dry White Season and A Chain of Voices. He died almost a year ago today, aged 79. Philida was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

Philida reflects near the end of the book that “Ouma Nella’s stories… are all that remain now. Perhaps, when the end comes, they are all that can go on living.”

*When Mark Solms bought the farm in 2002, he set about uncovering its history, revealing not only the foundations of the first house built there, but also the remnants of a Stone Age site dating back about 5 000 years ago, and the story of Philida. A museum has been established to preserve the history of the farm as well as the musical heritage of the Cape. 

Lest We Forget

Photo taken at District Six Museum 2015

I am reading William Pick’s The Slave has Overcome, and the humiliation of being a student in the medical faculty of the University of Cape Town during the 1980s, has coming sweeping back in waves over me. Professor Pick is the former head of the School of Public Health at Wits University and President of the Medical Research Council and holds a string of other awards and accolades including a fellowship from Harvard University. He tells his story as a descendant of the historically-repressed indigenous Khoisan people who overcame the barriers of apartheid to become an internationally recognised leader in the field of Public Health. 

Prof Pick studied medicine at UCT in the 1960s. It was painful to read of the discrimination he faced and to be reminded of the same issues which I experienced 20 years later – the difficulties of travelling from the Cape Flats to campus, the awkwardness of being able to sit next to whites in lecture theatres when we couldn’t sit next to them in restaurants, not being able to treat white patients, not being able to dissect a white cadaver…

In the hospital you were able to work out the race and sex of your patient without even seeing them – the folders were green for blacks and pink for whites, a number in the corner of the name labels classified patients according to race and sex with number 1 being equal to "white male", 2 for "white female", 3 for "coloured male" and so on until the classification at the bottom of the hierarchy was "black female". 

I remember having great difficulty as a third year student on my first psychiatry placement at Valkenberg Hospital in the coloured ward where a mix of neurotic and psychotic patients had been dumped together because of a lack of facilities. My supervisor sympathised with me but said her hands were tied because I couldn’t be placed in the white ward at Groote Schuur Hospital. 

In the last while I have been disturbed to hear opinions that this government is worse than the apartheid government. I, too, am angry at the slow rate of transformation, but sympathetic at the overwhelming burden of the apartheid legacy of gutter education, inferior health care and segregation at every level and I am insulted when I am told that apartheid wasn’t that bad, that it’s over now and we must move on. 

To say that apartheid was better than what we have today is to dismiss the suffering and humiliation of millions of people, the death and torture of thousands more and the brainwashing of generations of people who believed that they were inferior or superior and had a right to treat fellow human beings in a certain way because of the colour of their skins. To say that apartheid was better than what we have now is to minimise the suffering of all those forcibly removed from their homes, those denied entry to university. To say that apartheid was better than what we have today is to give the perpetrators permission to pat themselves on the back and smile smugly because they were justified in treating black people the way they did. 

I salute Prof Pick and the countless others who, like him, have overcome the legacy of apartheid to excel in spite of the barriers. 

Stories that will never be demolished

Rows of street names in front of wall-hangings recording
memoriesof the vibrant community which once was District Six

I'm not sure how museums will survive the digital age but I can't imagine that viewing images on a screen will evoke the same emotions that I experience whenever I step into the District Six Museum. For me, it's like settling into an old, comfortable chair and turning the pages of the family photo album and setting off a chain of memories. Perhaps it's the familiarity of the area - situated opposite the Sacks Futeran Building where I remember going with my parents to buy clothes and fabric, around the corner from the Grand Parade and the Castle. Of course, it's also across the road from the Caledon Police Station where many of us got arrested in the "old days". 

The Caledon Police Station

Maybe it's the energy which has seeped into the walls of the former Methodist Church which reminds me of the chapel on the hill in the old Zonnebloem complex, where my brothers and I went to school, me in my green dress with white collar and Panama hat, them in their grey shorts and white shirts. Whatever it is, I love going back and this morning an overseas visitor provided an excuse to for another visit. However painful the memories of living during apartheid may be, the exhibition at the museum humanises the experiences while celebrating the rich diversity of people who once lived in the area. 

When I see the barber's corner, the display case with the games we played in the road, the photographs of the Peninsula Maternity Home where my sister was born, the familiar recipes on the wall, or the wall-hanging with the name of the rugby team my father played for, I feel that our lives mattered. Most of all though, when I walk up the stairs to the wall that bears the names of families who lived there and I scroll down to find mine, I feel that our experiences have been validated and dignified.

                            

As the byline on the museum brochure says: 60 000 stories that will never be demolished.

You may also like: 

Healing Memories of District Six

Education to Change the World

A very recognisable quote as we rounded a corner in Boston

While in the USA, I visited a few of the 1 200+ schools* (see below). I was struck by two characteristics which I believe are common to the education system in America. One was the accessibility of the education and the other was the balance of the curriculum. 

For Americans who want to study, there are federal grants and bursaries and many of the universities, even those like Harvard, offer needs-based scholarships.  This means that if you have the academic ability, by and large, lack of funds need not be a stumbling block. This results in a diversity of students which I found exciting.

I was also very taken with the liberal arts core of the curriculum. Subjects like art, history, music and science, form the basis of an all-round foundation. In other words, graduates who are able to hold forth on a variety of topics, are being produced. Majors are only declared in third year. 

Education was the tool that the South African government used to oppress us…education was meant to keep us in our place. You were able to learn just enough for the jobs that you were expected to do; depending on the colour of your skin, you had enough education to become a factory worker, a maid or a gardener, or if you were lucky, a teacher or a nurse. 

My grandfather taught me that education was the one thing that the apartheid government couldn't take away from us; that they had taken away our rights, property and opportunities but they couldn’t take away what was in our brains, they couldn’t stop us from learning. I believe that it’s the same tool that was used to oppress us that must be used to uplift us. So many generations of people in our country haven’t had access to education. We’ve come a long way from where we were but we have to keep fighting so that our children, and our country, can have a better future. 

I know that the American school system is far from perfect, but I think that this kind of accessibility and well-rounded curriculum is something to strive for. 

*A four-year college or university offers a bachelor's degree. Programs that offer these degrees are called "undergraduate" schools. A "university" is a group of schools for studies after secondary school. At least one of these schools is a college where students receive a bachelor's degree

Cold Case: Revisiting our History

The stage is set to tell the story of  Dulcie September 

One of the motivations for me going back to university was to equip myself with the skills to tell the stories of growing up in District Six and on the Cape Flats. Not only my stories, but the stories of many who cannot tell their own. We’re a deeply divided society, a country still trying to recover from an oppressive past. We cannot sweep it all under the carpet and expect to move on. There will always be a bump there to trip us up, to nag at us to pull it straight.

People need to be acknowledged. Maybe nothing will undo the hurt but at least it’s not being ignored, we’re not being told to get over it and move on. We need to listen to each other with respect, be slow to judge. We need to know that someone saw our pain and understands; only then can we move forward.

I am encouraged by the two shows I saw recently at the Baxter Theatre – Cold Case: Revisiting Dulcie September, which premiered at the National Arts Festival in 2014 and My Word! Redesigning Buckingham Palace.

Buckingham Palace: District Six is, of course, the name of the novel by teacher and author Richard Rive, published in 1986. The tragedy of forced removals in District Six has been well-recorded. Less well-known is the story of anti-apartheid activist and ANC representative, Dulcie September who was assassinated in Paris in 1988.

The Baxter Theatre’s intimate Golden Arrow Studio provided the perfect backdrop to the personal stories of a childhood with an abusive father, a budding activist and a committed freedom fighter. Denise Newman is an accomplished story-teller who moved many members of the audience to tears, made us laugh at reminiscences of growing up in places like Athlone (where September was from). She held our attention for more than an hour, all eyes riveted on her one-person show … surrounded by the cardboard boxes which represent the cold case of what remains of the woman. 27 years later her killer has not been found. Theories abound, the mystery remains unsolved…

The biased history which we were forced to learn during apartheid needs to be balanced by stories such as these, giving value to our own experiences. The tens of thousands of people who attended her funeral, the street, square and boulevard named after her in Paris, make us proud of our struggle.

When I met Newman afterwards I couldn’t help enveloping her in a hug, I felt that I knew her, or at least the woman she had brought to life on the small stage. The run at the Baxter ended last night but look out for a couple of shows in August at the Artscape Theatre, to celebrate Woman’s Day.

Cold Case has won the Standard Bank Ovation Award and the Adelaide Tambo Award for Celebrating Human Rights through the Arts.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/richard-rive

http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dulcie-evonne-september

The Slave Route Challenge

The Slave Lodge built in 1679 to house slaves owned by
the Dutch East India Company

With all the walking I did in the last year, I could have been in Johannesburg. However, I do think that beating the pavements around the neighborhood is what kept me sane and doing longer distances did come with a small sense of achievement. When Penny, my walking mate, posted the advert below on our WhatsApp group, it was the words 'Slave Route' which were most appealing though. And there was a 10km route.

"But it's Mothers' Day," was one response from the group. What better way to spend the morning, doing something we enjoyed and the proceeds were going to Red Cross Hospital? So we signed up, not put off by comments like, "That's a tough one!" I did wonder what we were letting ourselves in for when I heard about "Koeksister Hill". And no snide comments from those of you who have run the WHOLE Two Oceans nine times! The race was fun, the weather perfect, the marshalls the friendliest I have encountered and the koeksisters on top of  the hill the best I have ever eaten (perhaps all the more so for the steepness of the hill!). 

       

            Waiting for the start in
          Darling Street

The hill 

 

Spectators along the way

The route took in familiar landmarks like The Company Gardens, District Six and The Castle of Good Hope to finish on the Grand Parade. Perhaps less well-known was the Slave Monument on Church Square, outside Die Groote Kerk and across the road from the Slave Lodge. 

Granite blocks on Church Square
bear names of slaves 

The Slave Tree once stood here

The race is an innovative way to introduce participants to the legacy of slavery in our city. Participants also received free entry to the District Six Museum and the Castle. Millions of South Africans are descended from slaves brought here by the Dutch from the east coast of Africa, India, Indonesia and other Indian Ocean islands in the 17th Century. These slaves and their descendants built our city and played a major role in shaping the identity of Cape Town. Because of apartheid, we were  taught to view this history through a lens of shame. It's time to reclaim our heritage with pride. 

Some further reading: 

Eyes of the Sky and The Slave Book both by Rayda Jacobs

Khalil's Journey by Ashraf Kagee

Echoes of Slavery by Jackie Loos

You may also enjoy: Walking through History: Celebrating our Heritage 

In Remembrance

This morning I had to abandon my plan to read my book for African Literature while I was having a coffee at my local cafe. Not for the first time during the last two months I have simply wanted to weep because of what I was reading. 

This week we are looking at Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull,  her account of the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It's such a dark place that we get to when we look back at our horrendous past - oppression, violence, torture and death. I have not gotten beyond the first few chapters and already I am horrified by the stories that are being revealed. This is why I have been subconsciously been putting off reading this book.

A community should not wipe out a part of its past, because it leaves a vacuum that will be filled by lies and contradictory and confusing accounts of what happened. Krog writes bravely and sensitively about a horrendous past. 

For my Public Culture course I am looking at culture in Africa through music during the apartheid era. What could possibly make me want to weep when I am looking at music, you may wonder. I came across the story of Vuyisile Mini who composed the protest song, "Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd" or "Watch out, Verwoerd!". Mini was one of the organisers of the resistance and was arrested in 1963. When he refused to testify against his comrades he was sentenced to death. His booming voice singing that song could be heard by fellow prisoners just as he was about to be executed. 

Birth by Peter Harris, Tomorrow is Another Country by Allister Sparks and Midlands by Jonny Steinberg, have all had me wondering anew at the miracle which got us this far.  We are a deeply damaged society and we need to work hard at building that "rainbow nation" that Archbishop Tutu, who headed the TRC, talked about. As painful as it is, it is important to know our history, so that we may endeavour not to repeat it. 

Orientation

If the walls could talk...Jameson Hall on Jammie Steps

The flashes of panic I was having about my impending academic journey had evolved into a more pervasive sense of bewilderment by the weekend.

Part of the bewilderment is that nothing is actually as it was – the library is not where I remember it, for example, and you can't drive down University Ave. And places are called by different names: The Steve Biko Lecture Theatre, The Molly Blackburn Hall...who would have thought? I feel like I have entered a parallel universe and someone has messed with my memory.

I was unprepared for the emotion I felt climbing up Jammie steps on Thursday on the way to the postgraduate orientation session. Thankfully, at 830 in the morning there were not many students around to see the middle-aged woman with wet cheeks pausing to soak up the moment. It seems like a lifetime since I first ventured up there.

It’s a long way from handwritten assignments in the Occupational Therapy department on the other side of the cemetery below Groote Schuur Hospital. At the orientation, someone from the library was talking about consultations by appointment, the writing centre person about developing writing and the IT manager about computer labs with uncapped bandwidth and free on-campus access to wireless.

Later I noticed that the change in student diversity has been as dramatic. Now it is only age that may make me stand out from the crowd but I am willing to believe that at UCT I will be treated with suitable irreverence. At least no one here will call me “Tannie”!

I haven’t met my whole group but probably the majority are half my age...and have been studying English and language and literature in the time that I have been raising children. I am envious of the ease with which they engage with lecturers and the certainty with which they are making choices.

After two tries, I have survived the registration process and am now in proud possession of a student card. I look forward to the week ahead when “all will be revealed”. Now I just need to remind my family that the toilet-paper fairy has left the building...!

Sharing History

I first heard Elif Shafak speak on one of the TED talks. Her gentle, accented voice drew me in to her story. She spoke about growing up with her traditional Turkish grandmother who was a healer in the community. People would come to her with warts which they wanted to get rid of. Her grandmother would draw circles around the warts and, in time, they would shrivel up and fall off. She made the analogy that when we draw circles around ourselves, or build walls to isolate ourselves from others, we are at risk of shrivelling up and dying.

It struck a chord with me, having grown up in apartheid SA and experiencing the walls that the government built around our communities in order to cut us off from each other. If we don’t interact and learn from each other we run the risk of shrivelling up and dying – if not physically, then at least in our attitudes, beliefs and compassion for each other.

I was delighted to be able to hear her speak on more than one occasion last week in Davos. As a child she straddled two worlds – the modern, western world of her educated mother, and the traditional, superstitious world of her uneducated grandmother. In her books she allows space for both voices.

Many societies have a rich oral culture which is deemed to be “lesser” because it is women who are telling the stories.  History is remembered differently by different people and who is to say what is important enough to provide a window of understanding on what went before? 

Listening to her speak I realised that in SA there are many stories which need to be told so that we can get on with the process of healing and move forward. Sometimes all that is needed is for our experiences to be acknowledged, to feel that our voices have been heard. We all need a voice.

Blue and Yellow Moneybox

Me with Pa circa 1965

Today is the anniversary of my grandfather's birth. I am thinking of him particularly this year as I embark on a new course of study. Pa changed the course of my life with his little blue and yellow UBS moneybox. Every evening, from the pockets of his khaki coat, he would take out the coins he had gathered during the day. He would allow me to put them into the money box. “For your education,” he would remind me. I had grown up with the mantra, “They can take everything away from you, but not your education”. 

He believed fervently that I would have to study further so that I could be independent. By the time I had finished school he had saved enough to pay for my first year at university. With a brave smile pasted on my face and the weight of generations of expectation, I embarked on a very different voyage. 

In 1980 it was no easy feat for "someone of colour" to be accepted by the University of Cape Town. 

Entering university was such a cultural onslaught that I might as well have been in a different country. The campus was overwhelming. I think my entire school could have fitted into the Jagger Hall. There were lecture halls and sports centres,  buses shuttling back and forth, and more "white" people than I had ever seen in my life. And I was able to sit next to them in class, on the bus and in the library. Although, when it came to doing clinical practice in the hospitals, we were not allowed to treat "white" patients.

My grandfather died before I completed my degree and did not get to see me graduate, but as he had envisioned, I am independent. And I did not stop studying. The learning path he set me on more than thirty years ago has evolved to take me to the far corners of the world. Along the way I have earned a few more diplomas and certificates. And here I am embarking on another journey which is taking me back to my alma mater in a new South Africa, without a special permit, simply because I want to and I have the ability. 

There is a quote by Joseph Goldstein a  Buddhist teacher, that goes something like this: “If you are already facing in the right direction, all you have to do is keep on moving”. Pa made sure that I was facing the right way. Happy Birthday, Pa. I hope you can see me moving forward. 

Happy New Year!

“You have been formed into tribes and nations so that you may know one another.” Quran

“In order to change things for the better, we need not just smart brains, but warm-heartedness and the values of love, compassion and forgiveness.” 
Dalai Lama

Over the last ten days we have been celebrating Christmas and the New Year with a variety of friends, both old and new. At times the revelling may have been too much, and I felt like I was not getting anything constructive done, but I remind myself that this is necessary time off to follow the rituals which draw the old year to  a close and ring in the new.

We have shared meals with people of all faiths and nationalities.  We have sat around a table where meals have lasted for hours while we discovered how similar we are to American, Nigerian, Italian, Kenyan, Russian, Dutch, Mauritian, Canadian, British and Iranian people, as well as fellow South Africans.

Despite the distances which separate us, the same issues touch us, concern us, mobilise us. I lap it all up; I feel like I am giving the finger to apartheid, racism and many other –isms. I firmly believe that we should be building bridges by getting to know each other. When we step outside of the familiar, outside our comfort zones, we make connections which enrich our lives and shrink the world. We cannot help connecting on a deeper level than we are accustomed to.

One of our passions as a family is travel - precisely because we are forced to step out of the familiar and over the artificial barriers which serve to keep us separate. I like to think that the energy with which we start the New Year is the one that we carry through and so, for 2013 I wish for more understanding, compassion, friendship and connections. Happy New Year.

Healing Memories of District Six

“The first time I took your mother out on a date we went to the Avalon bioscope, to the 4.00pm show to see “Trapeze” with Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollabrigida. Your mother was only allowed to go to the afternoon show. It was 1958. Chut Frieslaar was the manager of the bioscope.” The words poured out of my father’s mouth as we sat down to tea. We had just been to the District Six Museum and clearly many memories had been stirred.

My dad is a man of few words but as we walked around, he became more and more animated as he recognised people and places – the barber shop where he had his hair cut, his old school and his standard five teacher, and the public wash house. “You could find anything you wanted in Hanover Street, except petrol,” he said. “There was no garage, but everything else was there.”

On one of the walls was a recipe for “oumens onder die kombers” (which literally means old person under the blanket), which my grandmother used to make.  It is a traditional cabbage and meatball recipe – the cabbage is wrapped around the meatball, like a blanket. Alongside were recipes for other dishes from my childhood - tomato bredie (a lamb and tomato stew), bobotie (a spicy meatloaf) and skaapkop (sheep’s head).

I walked around with my book and pen on hand. I had wanted to capture these memories for a while now.  My dad had grown up in District Six and my grandmother had lived there well into the 70s. So we spent much time in Hanover Street – the house doctor, the barber, my uncle’s tailor shop, and the restaurant which sold the best samoosas and curry and roti, were all there.

It was almost as much of a journey for me as it was for him and I feel so blessed to have had the benefit of some of the stories. Before we left, my dad proudly signed the ex-residents’ book. 

Who even lives there?

Changing the names of streets, airports and places always stirs up controversy. But it is more than opinion or personal preference that should make us rid our country of reminders of the oppression or honouring of the heroes of the old regime. Sometimes it is more than necessary and we need to just get on with it and get used to it.

It may just be a nod in the right direction, like calling the food court at UCT The Cissie Gool Plaza – the students just call it "the food court", but it is nice to think that a great champion for equal rights has been honoured.

Over the last 18 years we have had more than one change in local government in the Western Cape. There have been many discussions about name changes, and we now proudly show off a Nelson Mandela and a Helen Suzman Boulevard and have honoured people like Dr Chris Barnard. All great – we should remember our heroes.

I was disturbed to find, on a recent visit behind the Boerewors curtain though, that there still exists a Hendrik Verwoerd Drive. Hendrik Verwoerd was undoubtedly the architect of the evil system of apartheid, responsible for the legalisation of the misery and suffering that was part of our country for so many years, and from which we are still recovering. I am intrigued by who lives there: by who would have no qualms about giving their address and saying that name. It’s as bad as having Adolf Hitler Boulevard in Germany. I am sure that if all the residents who live in that road had vociferously objected, they could have changed it years ago, since local government seems to be occupied with more important things. Clearly they don’t mind.

Anyone keen on a midnight raid...?

The Gaza Doctor

Hate is an easy option. It takes courage to not hate. That is the message that has come through strongly for me from Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish’s book, I Shall Not Hate.  Dr Abuelaish is also known as “the Gaza doctor”. In 2009 he suffered unspeakable tragedy when three of his daughters were killed by Israeli Defence Force shells, three months after he lost his wife to acute leukemia.

A month ago I attended one of his lectures at the UCT medical school as part of the alumni program. I was blown away by this man who spoke of the tragedy with tears quietly streaming down his cheeks. But it is his response to this tragedy that is remarkable. He refuses to sink into hatred, although he acknowledges the anger he feels. Anger is important, he says, if it is accompanied by change and propels you toward necessary action to change the situation and make it better for everyone.

He spoke for close on an hour with a passion and quiet strength that points to how he has managed to survive with dignity and compassion. He says that as a medical doctor he has been trained to save lives, to treat people irrespective of who they are and that it is this belief that has helped him to search for the humanity in everyone that he has come into contact with.  

I had to buy the book to learn more about what makes this man tick. It is hard to imagine the daily life in Gaza that he describes in the book, the immense difficulties that he has overcome to achieve what he has. In spite of the immense loss that he has suffered, he believes that peace is possible. He hopes that the deaths of his daughters will be the last sacrifice on the road to peace in the Middle East.

He urges us to act now – that it is up to all of us to speak up and take an active role in promoting peace. During his talk he quoted a passage from the German Pastor Niemoller whose words I remember having up on my notice board during the apartheid years:

In Germany they first came for the Communists, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. 

Then they came for the Jews, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. 

Then they came for the trade unionists, 

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. 

Then they came for the Catholics, 

and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. 

Then they came for me — 

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish is published by Bloomsbury