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2019-07-18 05:00
If whites claim to remember Mandela warmly, but only do so in our comfort zones, behind our security walls, what does he say about our commitment to his vision of racial inclusion, asks Wilhelm Verwoerd.
Today, all South Africans are once again invited to celebrate the life and legacy of former President Nelson Mandela. Part of me is encouraged by the number of white South Africans who will also do so in practice for at least 67 minutes. However, the more time I spend with young black South Africans, the more I am troubled by the fact that those who are racialized as white people usually embrace "Madiba" in South Africa after 1994.
I am more and more haunted by this question: how much does my comfortable acceptance of the generosity of a smiling President and Mandela president and grandfather contribute to the disillusionment of young South Africans? color with "Mandela the sell-out"?
The urgent question that I would like to ask today to myself and to people with a similar historical racial identity is this: how can we truly honor our first democratic president without preserving his true heritage? How do people like us remember Madiba without betraying Mandela?
I am reluctant to recognize the intersectional diversity that exists between us as "white" South Africans, with respect to the complex interplay of race, social clbad, gender, ethnicity and gender. Sexual orientation, age, family, region, religion and personality in our lives. But, especially on the day of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's birthday, at a time when the language of "post-apartheid" South Africa is ringing deeper and deeper, I think it's appropriate to focus on the ongoing legacy of systematic racial generations from before 1994 discrimination. It is of course very tempting to focus on the deeply troubling revelations of the Zondo Commission, for example. But in white circles, I think, we can legitimately criticize (much) black post-1994 politicians and their collaborators only if we also badume our common historical responsibility.
In a recent book, I am more interested in what this shared responsibility means to me as a white South African, who happens to be also a grandson of Dr. HF Verwoerd, that we are usually remember "the architect of apartheid". In the spirit of trying to found today my memory of President Mandela, I wish to return to an anecdote of Verwoerd: My journey through family betrayals.
During the writing of this book, I met Emily Mabeba, my seventy-year-old neighbor, and humbly asked her, "My Emily, could you tell me about your experience at the time? from my grandfather? " Over the next two days, she graciously gave me a glimpse of what the pbad-pbad system, "Bantu education", racial segregation and forced returns actually meant by a daily practice, dehumanizing. She shared many experiences like this: "When I was working at Baragwanath Hospital, I earned 300 rand a month. And this white guy was a carrier, he did not even finish high school. He earned 1,900 rupees! let me see your check. I showed him and he said, "Wow, I'm in this uniform and you earn so little, look at me!" I said "wow!" And he said: "Yes … my VEL is my GRAAD!" "
I finished high school. And I studied very hard at the university. But the experiences of Ma Emily have highlighted with renewed intensity the many ways in which my "VEL" (skin) was not just my "GRAAD" (degree). In addition to access to quality education, my skin was also the key to my life, my work, my travels and my possessions in more than 80% of the countries of South Africa, without being regularly harbaded or constantly humiliated. My secure family and my stable sense of community were not disturbed, uprooted, violated, because I was clbadified as "White". "My bike is my heart", is tragically only the tip of a big iceberg.
In many ways, this systemic and racialized privilege continues to benefit people like me, even if these benefits seem to be hidden mostly beneath the surface of white political consciousness. The fruits of these my-vel-is-my-graad My children over twenty also enjoy benefits. It is very tempting for their generation and mine to focus on their individual experiences and become frustrated, forgetting to zoom out on the historical picture when confronted with misapplied positive action or black anger towards the whiteness. When I fight to get a job as White, I just have to cross the sea of cabins between Stellenbosch and Cape Town, or visit the suburban high school where my wife is trying to teach math, for him remember what is screaming, unequal legacies of unjust white privileges.
By highlighting these legacies one day as today, I hope to contribute to the uncomfortable remembrance of Mandela, the freedom fighter, especially in the white circles of the middle clbad, as a way of reclaiming his dream of ## 147 ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 39, a true racial transformation. I am fully aware that President Mandela's magnanimous efforts to reach white South Africans during the fragile childhood of our democracy undermine his legacy among South Africans who have fallen just impatiently and impatiently. A highly symbolic example of these reconciliation efforts was to go in August 1995 to a white Orhana Afrikaner enclave to have tea with my 94 year old grandmother, Betsie Verwoerd.
For me, this visit was a deeply encouraging symbol of his vision of radical inclusivity and costly reconciliation. Today, when I look at how (most) white South Africans have reacted to this vision, I am increasingly troubled by the symbolism of this extraordinary tea ceremony. Of course, there are many good reasons to keep your distance from the "racist Boere" of Orania. Yet, if whites claim to remember Mandela warmly, but only do so in our comfort zones, behind our security walls, what is really happening here?
If people with the color of my skin meet me sometimes (for example July 18), "join" impoverished black South Africans, but keep control, by committing yourself to our conditions without risk of vulnerability, the line between us and the white grandmother The Orania tea ceremony becomes more blurry than we might want to admit? Is a white embrace of "Madiba" too comfortable different from that of Ouma Betsie's tea with President Mandela?
So I believe that among white South Africans, we urgently need historic re-education, such as those who deserve to have tea without hurrying with the Ma Mabebas of our beloved country. We must engage today in the perpetual, creative, non-paternalistic and restitutional sharing of our privileges, as embodied by the work of the Restitution Foundation and the young Afrikaner "betereinders". Then our rehumanizing relationship with Madiba will finally become real.
– Wilhelm Verwoerd is a researcher and facilitator at the Historical Trauma and Transformation Unit of the University of Stellenbosch.
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