Interesting Titles About South Africa!

Having now been to South Africa, I must admit that my desire to know even more has been fueled. As such, I have been searching online book sites for books to add to my ever-growing list of "must reads". I haven't read any of the titles that I am suggesting here but I look forward to checking them off as I read them. If anyone has read any of these titles, and could give a good review, I'd be happy to receive it. Thanks.

Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa - Alister Sparks

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa - Antjie Krog

Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country - Gillian Slovo

If This Be Treason - Helen Joseph

Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela

M.K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa (Reprint, 1909) - Joseph J. Doke

No Future Without Forgiveness - Desmond Tutu

Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the Price of Freedom in South Africa (The Slovos/Bernsteins) - Glenn Frankel

The Mind of South Africa: Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid - Alister Sparks

Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change - Alister Sparks

So, How was South Africa?

First, let me say that I regret some of the typos in these posts and fully acknowledge that additional editing work is necessary. Students, don't do as I did. Double check your spelling. Also, while this will be the last official post on this blog, I will maintain the site for some time and respond to any questions as they might be posed.

With that said, how was South Africa? Is it truly a new country? This is a hard question to answer. South Africa, a physical paradise on earth, is certainly much more varied and unique on the continent of Africa than I had originally thought and certainly provides one with a different sense of what Africa is. It is not a black country nor is it white, Indian or colored. It is not Christian, Hindu, Jewish and/or Muslim, etc. It is all of these things as most South Africans have had family living there for over six and/or seven generations. As like the United States, it is a country of both indigenous and immigrant groups and is a product of the entreprenurial spirit brought by the polyglot peoples that developed it. While the hope and sincere interest in a better, more democratic tomorrow is there, and, indeed, people of color are moving into the upper middle class socioeconomic brackets and the country as a whole is celebrating unprecedented economic growth fueled by its mineral wealth, technology, and tourism, crime and HIV infection rates must be abated. Gender equality is also necessary as a large percentage of those raising the next generation of South African leaders are single parent, lower-income females. Modern immigration into South Africa, from other parts of Africa, and the fear this brings, is also fostering challenges.

Although I personally did not experience any violence in-country and South Africans, whom I met, were unabashedly friendly, relaxed and genuine, one senses a palpable tension over growing insecurity. As someone told me, South Africa is both a first world and third world country wrapped into one. Until South Africa can reduce its unemployment rate, ensure equal educational opportunity for all and develop confidence/self-esteem in all of its people, so long denied to a vast of number of its citizens during Apartheid, break-ins, carjackings, kidnappings, and muggings will continue. How much government intervention and social engineering versus the individual initiative in taking advantage of existing opportunities that will be necessary to improve South Africa's lot will, necessarily, be a discussion for some time to come. This is a tall order - it has been over 40 years since the American Civil Rights Movement, and, yet, the United States still has many of these same issues with which to deal albeit perhaps on a slightly different scale. The United States has made progress.

However, given the amazing strides towards true democratization made in South Africa, in just 14 years, South Africans are certainly up to solving these challenges. The positive pressure placed on South Africa, due to its upcoming hosting of the 2010 World Soccer Cup, can only help motivate its people to continue to look at solving these issues. Indeed, South Africans are very much aware of this. Given what has already been accomplished in 14 years, since the end of Apartheid, perhaps, soon, the United States will be looking at South Africa to guide it through its socioeconomic dilemmas.

Some Thoughts on School Visitations

In South Africa, I was fortunate to visit with two principals and schools at some length. While both schools were in formerly designated townships, one school was Indian in the Phoenix settlement outside of Durban and the other was a formerly colored school outside of Cape Town in Mitchell’s Plain. One was elementary and the other secondary. Both are now in the process of integration.

While neither is attracting a white minority, as both schools are still comprised of those individuals of lower socio-economic status and whites tend to be situated in middle class suburbs as opposed to former townships, both are attracting students from the former black townships. This is, of course, challenging to the administration in both schools as the school leaders must engender to incorporate all parents into the school decision-making process and to help establish a safe and culturally unbiased community for all learners. Indeed, in the Mitchell’s Plain School, outside Cape Town, much effort has been exerted in explaining Xhosa machismo culture to its Muslim constituency and visa versa. In Phoenix as well, the principal has developed one school community by focusing on the commonalities between the majority Hindu student population and the minority Zulu student body by citing examples of commonality such as rights of passage – birth, marriage, death, etc. Both schools have also invested time and energy in teacher training, exposing their educators to their own internal biases. The school in Mitchell’s Plain, in particular, was integrated, largely at the bequest of the principal, prior to the end of Apartheid, and has been a leader in integration for some time. As a result, Nelson Mandela has visited the school on several occasions. The school outside Durban has also been held up as a model of reform. The township schools I visited were also led, in general, by school leaders who had been university student activists during the struggle to end Apartheid and come from the communities they now lead. Organizations such as CSVR, Love Life, and the Institute of Justice also sometimes provide training to school educators through diversity circles and other forms of discussion.

While the elementary school does not, directly, deal with gang activity, such activity is a major problem in the former townships and for the secondary school outside of Cape Town. This is not very different, in reality, from the challenges faced by inner-city educators in the United States. Alcoholism, drug-addiction (“Tik”), and broken families are fueling gang activity in South Africa as is a 40% unemployment rate. While the gang names in South Africa might be different, be they “The Americans” or “The JFKs” in South Africa or the Bloods and/or Cripps in the United States, a growing number of males of color, in particular, are in prison. In Mitchell’s Plain, the principal estimates that approximately 30% of the student body is involved in petty gang activity often graduating to more violent crime after graduation. This is not an extraordinary figure if one considers that approximately 80% of school graduates are either unemployed and/or outside of tertiary education immediately after graduation. Only 1% of students attend college immediately after high school but a larger number of students do eventually attend college as more mature adults. The exact number of students who eventually matriculate at university is unknown. HIV infection rates also remain high as young females often trade unprotected sex for money. HIV is also viewed as a “black disease” and, as such, is not viewed with the same urgency by all South Africans.

Schools in the townships are overcrowded. It is not unusual to find classes of 40 to 45 students. The national government has established a 35 students per one teacher policy. This is partially accounting for these large class sizes. When the ratio becomes smaller, as the national government pays teacher salaries, schools must forfeit a teacher thereby actually increasing class size. More affluent schools, such as former Model C schools (i.e. white schools), however, often have large professional networks, PTOs, and personal endowments that allows them more flexibility in paying for extra teaching staff out of their discretionary funding. This reduces class size.

Former Model C schools do fund tuitions for students in financial need from the former townships but the need is so very great. Principals in South Africa, especially in township areas, are therefore expected to complete both administrative duties as well as teaching duties to make up for the shortage in teaching staff. This stretches principals thin in South Africa. Further complicating the problem is teacher migration out of South Africa. Each year, many South African educators leave for other British Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and/or New Zealand where credentials are recognized, salaries and benefits greater. Crime surges are also causing a general exodus of all South Africans of means to other parts of the world. Indeed, the recent national public servant strike, including teachers, in South Africa goes some way in showing the frustration that teachers and others are feeling over working conditions.

I also believe there to be a general malaise in the discovery that a multiethnic participatory government/ANC dominated government may have as many issues with corruption and personal aggrandizement as did the Apartheid era government. Indeed, I heard several individuals mention the family connections between President Mbeki of South Africa and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe as, I believe, Mugabe is married to Mbeki’s cousin.

It is, however, worth noting though, at the same time, that the actual transition to democracy 14 years ago was, largely, bloodless and devoid of racial retribution. Whie some say that the Truth and Reconciliation Trials only scratched the surface of simmering racial tensions and were mostly one sided in that they were interested in the prosecution of whites responsible for black/colored oppression as opposed to an equal investigation of black/colored on white crime, in the least, it did help South Africa onwards and away from the more violent political revolutions so common in African history. As a former student leader, one of the principals of the two schools visited still wrestles with their own demons and struggles to forgive especially as they continue to see inequities in educational opportunities for children.

Infrastructure is also in need of improvement. Schools only receive a yearly budget of 20,000 U.S. dollars equivalent. This means that routine maintenance neglected can quickly become much more problematic. Crime and vandalism further fuels this problem and it is not uncommon for there to be several security gates around schools and additional steel frames around technology labs. The SA government is aware of 14 areas of critical need which does include Mitchell’s Plain and has been assisting in the building of new auditorium and building space. This is needed as there is a definite differential between sporting facilities at former Model C schools and those in former townships. From my observations, it appears that schools in townships were last updated in the early 1980s. Former Model C schools, again, rely on private endowments to maintain facilities and, as such, such schools still have an advantage in this area even though national funding for all schools has been equalized and some former township schools are actually receiving additional hardship stipends. Former Model C schools also can charge more for books/uniforms than can former township schools. The principal in Mitchell’s Plain has also maintained a 24 hour live-in property custodian and has dogs patrolling the school property after hours. There has not been a break-in at the school for several years.

Both principals are open to local school-based management schemes. Indeed, both cited that they enjoyed this aspect of their job but that it was also one of their most consuming and frustrating challenges. Principals in former townships must engender leadership capabilities in their parent communities but parents, raised during Apartheid and not given a voice, are now expected to lead collaboratively without having first the confidence or the money to fund projects. The Western Cape Board of Education is also attempting to assist in this endeavor by providing copies of Michael Fullan’s book Leading in a Time of Change to it’s principals as a means by which principals can begin to discuss/dialogue on leadership issues in a time of local school control and a growing outcomes based assessment protocol in South Africa. Indeed, both principals acted as unofficial mentors to more junior principals. The national Department of Education is also attempting to foster both a national as well as continental identity in its student population.

While outcomes based assessment is growing in popularity within South African educational circles, its reach has not extended to the level that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has in the United States. Principals therefore have at least some flexibility in reassigning even secondary school teachers to other discipline areas, as needed and as changes in national curriculum are mandated. Teachers seem to have accepted these changes with aplomb and turnover in both schools is low according to principals. I believe this to be the result of the open and natural leadership style of both principals who encourage community participation in decision making and priority setting. Teachers in both schools are encouraged to voice opinions on educational matters and there is general interest in making education less lecture-based and more exploratory in nature.

Historical Documents Related to Apartheid Available to All

Since I had a late departure flight from South Africa home on Monday, I decided to try to take advantage of the extra time by visiting the Historical Documents Collection of the William Cullen Library of the University of Witswatersrand outside of Johannesburg. While the collection is scant on documents related to the state position on Apartheid, as these are housed at the National Archives of South Africa, the collection is a goldmine in terms of primary source materials from the anti-Apartheid perspective. While I remain an avid supporter of using the Holocaust as a platform by which to teach global human rights issues, in part due to the widespread availability of documentation left by the perpetrators of evil themselves, it is important to note that almost an equal amount of primary source material is available on Apartheid-era South Africa.

Indeed, Ms. Pickover, the Director/Head Librarian at the Collection often finds herself assisting international researchers as they pick their way through the collections. Yet, at the same time, foreign K-12 educators do not seem to avail themselves of these materials with equal interest. While not completely analogous, would it not be wise to offer American high school students a course in comparative human/civil rights issues by looking at the American Civil Rights Movement, the movement to end Apartheid in South Africa, the Holocaust, Darfur, etc.? In this way, the focus would be on what unites humankind rather than what makes various subgroups different and/or subject to ridicule.

Although I had thought that I had ample time to review the collections, my five hours at the center went rather quickly. Therefore, I needed the assistance of Ms. Pickover and her staff to help me to concentrate my efforts on key documents/aspects of the struggle to end Apartheid. As such, it is these documents that I have brought back to the United States and hope to use with my students in developing global human rights awareness.

I found some extremely interesting gems in terms of primary source documentation. The Center, for instance, has an original published copy of the 1955 Freedom Charter. You may recall that this was one of the first unified attempts, on the part of democratic alliances, to get the National Party led government to fall back on segregationist policies. You may also recall that most signatories to the Freedom Charter, the likes of Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo (believed to have written the Charter), Ruth First, Helen Joseph, Walter Sisulu, etc, were brought up on treason charges during the treason trials of the 50s/60s. The Center maintains the court records from some of these trials as well as the court decisions that all found that there was not a definitive link to the passages within the Freedom Charter and an overt call for the overthrow of the Apartheid government. Again, however, this did not end the government's attempts to rearrest anti-Apartheid supporters on other charges and, as such, many supporters of democracy were forced into exile, yet others indeed were imprisoned on other charges, and or assassinated domestically and/or overseas (Ruth First) by the South African secret police.

The Center also maintains priceless documents related to Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress (ANC), and the court records from the trial that ultimately led to what would have been Mandela's lifelong sentence in prison had it not been for the outcry against Apartheid that could not, ultimately, be silenced. After the treason trials, Mandela continued to support and co-lead the ANC, but clandestinely, on a farm in rural Rivonia. Mandela was acting as the farm gardener. Ultimately discovered and raided by the South African police in the early 1960s, most of the defendents arrested on the farm, including Mandela, were indeed convicted on treason charges and sentenced to decades in prison. The Center maintains Mandela's personal notes for his lawyers, his notes on why he did not accept the court's right to charge him on charges of treason, as well as his final statement if, indeed, the courts had sentenced him to death. Although, under Apartheid, treason could result in a death sentence in South Africa, currently, there is no death penalty.

The Center also maintains the personal edits of human/womens rights advocates such as Helen Joseph, whom I believe is only one of a few white people - along with Joe Slovo - to have been buried in Soweto, as well as the correspondence of human rights advocate Ms. Susman while she served in the South African parliament. As such, one can truly get a sense of the personal impact of Apartheid on the lives of ordinary South Africans as they read the original letters to Ms. Susman, from the 1970s - 1990, and her responses, on issues ranging from forced removals and/or detentions. Included in the Susman collection, one can also find reports filed by the Congresswoman as she visited townships and/or informal settlements. Recently, the South African Jewish Museum had an exhibit on this fascinating freedom fighter.

The last documents which I had time to review included those related to the 1980s Delmas trial. In this trial, the Apartheid era government tried to assert that certain members of the United Democratic Front (UDF) - a coalition of Anti-Apartheid organizations - had not only ties to Communism but that it actively was attempting to incite revolution in townships, across the nation, like that of Soweto. In these research boxes, one can see stacks of witness testimony supporting the defendents, as well as "evidence" provided by the state witness on matters related to Communism, and individual factfinding reports on UDF activity in various cities across the country. Ultimately, the accused were found guilty. However, this trial, as well as events such as the 1976 Soweto Uprising against Afrikaans instruction in schools and the government reaction to this uprising, would continue to place increasing international pressure on the South African government to relax its discriminatory policies.

As for the criteria which determined to which " race" one belonged - i.e. white, other white, honorary white (Japanese), Asian, colored, black, Indian etc. etc., I am still confused but know that, at times, the classification was influenced by economics as in the case of the Japanese, noted as white, as opposed to Chinese, noted as Asian. Religion also played a part if Hindu and/or Muslim. As an aside, today, South Africa has a healthy trade arrangement with China. It was also not uncommon for certain family members to be classified as white and others as colored, etc. and, with the group areas resettlement act, this resulted in the breakup of families. Several individuals also told me about the "pencil/pen test" where one was considered white if the pen fell out of the hair but of color if the pen remained.

All Roads Lead to Rhodes

THE CAPE PENINSULA: ALL ROADS LEAD TO RHODES

On Saturday, July 28^th, despite continued dreary weather, I decided to drive down the Cape Peninsula as this was the last full day I had in this extremely interesting country. Although the weather could have been better, I had a very knowledgeable guide and driver in the form of John Bydell. A life-long resident of nearby Athlone, an area that, under Apartheid, was designated as a community only for coloreds, Mr. Bydell continues to raise his daughters in the community in which he grew up. As such, John knew the many ins/outs of the Cape Peninsula and I enjoyed myself immensely driving down this beautiful stretch of oceanfront land. Indeed, while, unfortunately, some beaches had been off-limits to John growing up, in a way, this provided him and his friends with an opportunity to discover other lesser-known spots of beauty. Today, John uses this knowledge and his love for local history well by taking tourists around the cape in a way most unfamiliar to those visitors opting instead to take prescribed tour buses.

At the base of the Eastern side of Table Mountain, and commanding superb views of the Cape Flats, the area to which coloreds, Indians, and others were moved during Apartheid, lies the Rhodes Memorial; a homage to Cecil John Rhodes who had been a one-time prime minister of the Cape Colony, founder of De Beers Diamond Mines, perhaps the instigator of the second Anglo-Boer War, benefactor of Kirstenbosch Gardens and the Rhodes Scholarship (Oxford), cotton, fruit/wine farmer, nation builder, and transportation/telegraph industrialist. It is a classically styled memorial consisting of eight bronze lions and is quite imposing amidst some superb fur/pine trees.

Cecil Rhodes came to South Africa in the 1870s, from England, because of Tuberculosis and general poor health. He initially joined his brother who had come to South Africa a few years earlier to start a cotton farm. It was not long, however, that Cecil was also managing some small diamond mine claims held by his brother in Kimberley. Having made some shrewd investments, Cecil Rhodes was soon able to acquire his own diamond interests and incorporated his various holdings under the name of De Beers who was the original owner of the claims acquired by Rhodes. In time, Rhodes would work with other diamond magnets, such as Barney Barnato, in regulating the prices of diamond sales. From these earnings, Rhodes would have commissioned the building of his Cape residence – Groote Schuur – which he later bequeathed to South Africa as the home for a succession of prime ministers and would become interested in invigorating the wine/fruit preserve industry on farms, like Boschendal, which reside in the now famous wine producing region outside of Cape Town.

Rhodes supported trade with the Mtebele (sp?) in the area of today’s Zimbabwe. In time, Rhodes was able to gain large land concessions from the Mtebele chief in exchange for a nominal amount of trinkets and provisions in kind. As land concessions grew and white pioneers settled in this rich mining and agricultural area, Mtebele land was renamed Rhodesia in Rhode’s honor. Today, this is the nation of Zimbabwe.

As prime minister, Rhodes would take South Africa into the then modern world by finishing the train line from Cape Town to Johannesburg as well as having telegraph lines to the outside world put in place. Unfortunately, Rhodes would have to step down after he was implicated in the Jameson’s Raid fiasco in the Transvaal when Jameson, Rhodes doctor/friend, attempted and failed to overthrow Paul Kruger, the Afrikaner Prime Minister of the Free State, in an attempt to have the Free State fall into line over diamonds/gold policy with the British controlled Cape Province. This would happen, of course, after the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899/1901.

After resigning and in a bid to arrest his now inflamed Tuberculosis, Rhodes retreated to a small cottage in Saint James, which lies just outside of Kalk Bay and Simon’s Town, today, the home of the South African Navy. Weakened from the stress related to a criminal case involving the forging of his name on checks issued by Princess Radziwill of Poland, Rhodes died at the cottage after suffering from a heart attack. While Princess Radziwill claimed to have been Rhodes’ mistress, this nor theories that Rhodes was homosexual have been substantiated. Rhodes died, unmarried, in 1902 uttering “So much to do…so little time.” Although President Mugabe of Zimbabwe continues to threaten that Rhode’s grave will be removed from Zimbabwe, Rhodes remains buried in that country alongside his friend, Dr. Jameson.

Today, the cottage and bed in which Rhodes passed are open for viewing by the public. The current caretakers/curators, Mr. Gibbs, and his wife were far more than gracious in answering my questions on all matters Rhodes. Mrs. Gibbs, in fact, is descended from some of the first white settlers to Rhodesia who had first tried their luck on the Pampas of Argentina. Being a history fanatic, such as myself, Mr. Gibbs and I also had a very nice conversation on the similarities of immigration in both the United States and South Africa. One interesting side note to history offered by Mr. Gibbs was that, during the siege of Kimberley, during the second Anglo-Boer War, Rhodes too had been trapped by the Afrikaners. However, due to the ingenuity of an American engineer at De Beers, Mr. Lampen (sp?), a canon was developed that allowed Kimberley and the diamond mines to withstand the siege.

Following this foray into South African history, the rest of my tour of the Cape Point was rather leisurely as I browsed antique shops and ate seafood in Kalk Bay, took photographs of the penguin colony on Boulders Beach, saw the actual Cape point where the cold ocean current of the Atlantic Ocean meets the warm ocean current of the Indian Ocean, and almost ran over a family of wild baboons in Kommetjie.

My next to last post will involve my reflections on having visited with administrators of a high school in a former township. In preview, there are actually a lot of similar challenges for public educators in both the United States and South Africa.

The Jewish Diaspora in South Africa

THE STORY OF THE JEWISH DIASPORA IN SOUTH AFRICA

As Shea Albert, Director of the South African Museum stated to me yesterday, the South African Jewish Museum is, at its heart, a museum of migration to which anyone who has ever thought of seeking a better life elsewhere can relate. Indeed, this superb museum of immigration very much reminds me of institutions of historical memory, in New York City, such as the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and/or Ellis Island as all of these centers highlight the precedents and patterns of global migration. Just as Greeks, Italians, Poles, Irish, Chinese, Germans, and many others, have been drawn to live their lives in economically prosperous nations such as Canada, the United States, Australia, and/or New Zealand, Jews, largely from a Central and Eastern European Ashkenazi background, were drawn to South Africa for the opportunities for a better life that it presented during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

While there were a few Jews on record as being present in the Cape Colony during the period of Dutch rule, given the Dutch government’s ban on any religion other than Dutch Reformist, these Jewish immigrants soon became religious converts to Christianity. Other European Jews were therefore not enticed to journey to the colony. This changed after the takeover of the colony by the British, during the 1700s, which saw an increase in the number of British and German Jews entering what would one day become the Republic of South Africa.

The South African Jewish Museum is, in fact, housed around the oldest Synagogue in the country which was built in 1863. The synagogue was constructed around the Company Gardens, which acts very much like the village green in Cape Town, and this suggests that the Jewish community was accepted culturally from the start of its growth. According to Ms. Albert, in South Africa, intolerance has been largely centered on race rather than religion and, indeed, Cape Town would see its first Jewish mayor, Lieberman, as early as 1904, and South Africa, by the late 1890s, would witness a growing number of Jewish prospectors selling provisions in-country to those panning for diamonds and gold in places such as Kimberley and the area around what would become Johannesburg. Soon, some of these prospectors would invest in mines themselves. Barney Barnato and Sammy Marks, for instance, both Jewish immigrants, would sit alongside that of Cecil John Rhodes as the country’s first “randlords”.

As the 1800s progressed, South Africa saw the largest number of Jews coming from Lithuania and/or Latvia as religious pogroms against Jews in this part of the former Russian Empire were both bloody and widespread. The parents of famed South African Novelist Nadine Gordimer, for instance, came from Lithuania. Usually, would-be Lithuanian immigrants would travel to England and stay at the Jewish Temporary Shelter in London. As passage from England to South Africa was cheaper than that to the United States, some Jewish people took this option. Others, only knowing Yiddish, came by mistake thinking that they had reached America. There is an exhibit in the museum honoring both Sammy Marks, for financially sponsoring the emigration of Lithuanian Jews willing to do manual labor, as well as those individuals who returned to Lithuania/Russia to escort Jewish children, orphaned by the pogroms, to South Africa. Also of interest is the recreation of the Lithuanian village lived in by the Israeli architect’s grandfather.

The vast majority of the Jewish community, like that of other whites, is solidly lower to upper middle class. At its height, the community only numbered around 120,000 and, today, numbers even less at around 80,000. As like other South Africans of means, the rest have migrated during/after Apartheid for career opportunities abroad. There is also a rather small Holocaust survivors group; the members of which started arriving in South Africa largely from the 1950s to 1970s. Most Jewish South Africans, however, have no direct connection to the Holocaust as Jewish immigration to South Africa was an earlier phenomena and halted during the Second World War. In most cases, not being cognizant of South Africa’s racial tensions, Holocaust survivors, like those elsewhere, often came to South Africa because of family connections.

The museum honors those that stood up to the oppression of Apartheid. While, as a group, South African Jews were not unified against Apartheid, of those whites who signed the Freedom Charter, in the 1950s, and who were later tried on charges of treason, ironically in the main synagogue of Pretoria, half in the first trial and most during the second trial were Jewish. (Both the prosecuting and defending lawyers were also Jewish.) Among this group of those tried include activists Joe Slovo and his first wife Ruth First who was later be assassinated by the secret police force of Apartheid era South Africa. There is also a movie frequently shown called “Mandela and the Jews of South Africa” which profiles Mandela’s connections with prominent Jews both in/out of the African National Congress during the time of Apartheid. The movie looks at the role, for instance, played by Helen Susman, who is the longest serving member in South Africa’s parliament, in the struggle to end Apartheid, and her friendship with Mandela. Mandela officially opened the South African Jewish Museum in 2000.

THE HOLOCAUST CENTRE OF CAPE TOWN

Before visiting the South African Jewish Museum, I was fortunate to have met with Education Director Marlene Silbert. Herself a former vice-principal and anti-Apartheid activist, having even going as far as to hide people from the South African police, Ms. Silbert has made a conscious effort to integrate the history of the Holocaust with that of Apartheid as a means by which to look at the Holocaust and Apartheid as human rights travesties that have relevance and meaning for all people regardless of their ethnic, national, and/or religious backgrounds. If, as the human race, we are ever to live peacefully with one another, our students must learn to look at these evil transgressions of human rights in a global sense.

While the Holocaust and Apartheid are not completely analogous, the Nationalist Party in South Africa, which was largely of conservative Afrikaner base, did support Germany in many matters. This group had not forgotten its prior difficulties with the British, and the two Anglo-Boer Wars (1700s/1899), and, as such, looked at Germany with sympathy as tensions between it and Great Britain intensified during the 1930s.

Indeed, it was this ultra-right wing group of South African Nazi sympathizers, the Grey Shirts, who pressured the South African government to limit Jewish immigration to South Africa as the 30s progressed. For example, as with the refugee ship the St. Louis, and the refusal of the US government to let it dock, so too was “The Stuttgart” denied entry into South Africa. Curiously, however, the South African government, in agreement with the Free Polish government in exile in London, the Soviet Union (occupying one part of Poland -as was Germany), and Great Britain, allowed 500 Polish children from Soviet-occupied Poland to come to South Africa as part of a small “kinder (Children’s) transport” like the much larger one implemented in Britain. These children, a mixture of both Christians and Jews, were housed in the Polish Orphans Home in Oudtshoorn, South Africa which was known as “Little Jerusalem” and/or “Jerusalem in Africa” for its large Jewish community prior to the war. Many of these children later settled in South Africa.

Nonetheless, in 1948, the Nationalists came to power in South Africa, under President Verwoerd, and Apartheid legislation was enacted that was similar to the discriminative Nuremberg laws that had been instituted against European Jews, by the Nazis, during the Holocaust. Race (and the false belief that race denoted intelligence) theory, a pseudo-science also called Eugenics and developed in the United States and Germany at the turn of the 20^th century, was also embraced by the Nationalist Party in its bid to separate white, colored, and black South Africans into a definitive pecking order.

The museum contains photographs and letters sent from desperate relatives to loved ones lucky to have immigrated to South Africa before Nazi domination of Europe. It also contains the I.D. photographs of Jews from the town of Bedzin, Poland, who had been deported to the death camps. On a touching but sad note, a visiting survivor, now living in Johannesburg, saw the identification photographs of his family in this collection, for the first time in 60 years, as these were the only photos having ever been taken of his family. As stated in a previous post, survivors ended up in South Africa because, after the war, often having no immediate family left alive in Europe, they were sponsored by relatives in Africa. Ms. Silbert’s parents, for example, sponsored a few distant cousins, lucky enough to survive, through the South African citizenship process. Others, having been taken in as children by Britain, during the war, came to South Africa as working adults and through the country’s ties with Britain as a British colony. Still other survivors came simply because someone with whom they had talked had said that South Africa was a land of opportunity. Having a Greek population in place prior to the war, there are also a number of Holocaust survivors, in South Africa, originally from Rhodes Island. Some survivors temporarily relocated to the Belgian Congo (Zaire), Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), etc. only to move again to South Africa during the independence struggles in these other countries.

The museum does not just focus on the past as a form of memorial only. By using artifacts of both concentration camps as well as mine worker hostels in South Africa during Apartheid, and through diversity instruction, the Centre instructs the new South African Police Forces. There have been some positive changes in juvenile facilities because of this program. The Centre also works with soon to be released prison inmates by focusing on both the feelings of victims as well as stories of survival and rebirth. Children also remain a focus of the Centre.

Bo-Kaap: Trendy Neighborhood of Diversity

Today, Shileen Naikedien, lifelong Bo Kaap resident and tour guide with Bo-Kaap Tours, led me on a very complete and interesting tour of the Cape Town up and coming neighborhood of Bo-Kaap as evidenced by the exponentially increasing property values. I can not begin to remember all of the knowledge that Ms. Naikedien imparted to me on the tour so I will try to hit the highlights that are relevant to the theme of this blog.

The tour started at the Bo-Kaap House, now a museum within the Iziko museum group as like the Slave Lodge and Groot Constancia. While the Slave Lodge, as discussed, is the last remaing slave lodge of the East India Trading Company, the Bo-Kaap House 91763) is the only remaining private slave lodge left in Bo-Kaap eventhough the area, under the Dutch and English, had been dominated by such premises in colonial times. Unlike in American slavery, when often slaves lived on their master's estate if not loaned out to others, in Cape Town, owners chose to lock up their slaves in rented houses, away from the owner's home, for further protection from slave uprisings. Today, the Bo-Kaap Museum is used to explore the history of Bo-Kaap and, in particular, it's colored and Malay past, both Christian and Muslim.

During Apartheid, as the area was designated only for coloreds in the 1930s, the population was 80% Muslim. Today, many of the local schools are still predominantly Muslim eventhough the Muslim population, now able to relocate throughout South Africa, has decreased slightly to 70% Muslim. The area was able to maintain it's religious connection to Islam as many of the first religious leaders and Imams, sent as prisoners to Robben Island from other parts of the Dutch Empire, notably Indonesia and India, still practiced their religion after release and still under threat of re-arrest. Today, there are some fifty shrines honoring these individuals throughout Bo-Kaap which currently has a population of 9 to 12,000 people and contains ten mosques. The mosques can be ascertained from the sighting of minerets and the direction from which the call to afternoon prayer can be heard.

It is interesting to note that, in large part, the area has become economically desireable due to the ingenuity of its residents over twenty years ago. Although civic organizations were technically banned, residents, at that time, pooled their resources to buy Bo-Kaap homes in disrepair and to upgrade them. This prevented slumlords from acquiring the property and/or the government from knocking down the building as it was believed locally that this was being done to force colored families to live further out from the center of the city in the colored townships of the Cape Flats. Today, the brightly painted homes are often used for fashion photography shoots as South Africa is a season ahead (i.e. winter in the Northern Hemisphere means summer in South Africa, etc) from that of the Northern nations. The area has also become popular as a backdrop on film sets.

The area has been largely declared historical and, therefore, building renovations need city approval. Homes, even modern ones, need to represent the Dutch Cape and/or English Georgian style. English style is appropriate since the British gained control of the Cape from the Dutch after Great Britain went to war with the Netherlands in the 1700s. In 1899, the British would again go to war with Dutch descendants in South Africa - the Afrikaaners to determine with finality whether South Africa would be part of the British Empire or a series of independent or "free" Afrikaaner states. The British were able to maintain control of the area, eventhough outnumbered by Dutch residents, by co-opting the local colored population with promises of land and family security.