Apartheid Museum

There is no more thankless task in the universe than ordering customized T-shirts for a large, disparate group of people with exacting standards. Whenever I asked myself why I undertook it, the answer eventually emerged...so that Diversity Committee would have the funds to sponsor a field trip to the Apartheid Museum for the groups doing their pre-service training, eager naifs expecting soon to swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers.

This time I actually got to go to the Apartheid Museum in the course of the training; last time, sadly, the organization of a braai (South African style barbeque) monopolized my attention. The Apartheid Museum, located in Johannesburg, is a rough equivalent to one of the larger Holocaust museums, though as far as I know it's the only one of its kind, excepting a few small, location-specific historical museums in Cape Town and Durban. It's an overwhelming experience that the few hours we're able to allocate can't possibly be sufficient for.

Apartheid, as a review/introduction, was a government regime in South Africa during the 20th century where the white minority oppressed and exploited the black minority. Its closest equivalent in the US was the pre-CIvil Rights Act South when Jim Crow laws and the like reigned, though sometime the German Jewish ghettoes during the Second World War seem like a more direct comparison. In fact, concentration camps predate both Apartheid and the Holocaust; there were used by English South African settlers to control and confine Dutch South African settlers, who are more often called Boers or Afrikaners.

The Anglo-Boer war, only the last in a series of encounters between those two sides, was fought between the two white ethnic groups in South Africa around the turn of the 20th century. The English won, and South Africa has since been a member of the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire. Oppression and exploitation of the natives, in this case a number of unrelated and often rivaling African groups whose histories are interesting in themselves, was par for the course, but not a particularly distinctive issue for the ruling English minority. The English secured their position as the economic elite of South Africa, while letting their interest in political control of the civil government languish relatively. As such, though they had comparatively little economic or cultural power, the Boer minority came into political power within several decades of their humiliating defeat and not too long after, enacted Apartheid. A psychological reading of this history would suggest that Apartheid was a method of giving the relatively disempowered Boers absolute control over a group even more disempowered than they.

Apartheid's restrictions were comparable to patterns borne through in the antebellum and postbellum American South, and Europe during the Nazi regime. A strict set of four racial groups was established: white, colored, Indian, and black. Even groups that did not fit into the eponymous descriptions were given equivalent designations--Japanese South Africans were white, Chinese South Africans were black. Certain areas were designated as residential areas for certain racial groups, and pass books were required to pass from one area to another. Whites, which included both the Anglo and Boer ethnic/linguistic groups, monopolized both political and economic power, and voting was restricted by race. Unimaginable violence and exploitation was carried out under the aegis of Apartheid.

Apartheid began to wane in popularity during the 1980's, and officially ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela, formerly a freedom fighter and long-term political prisoner, became president. International boycotts of South Africa and gradually evolving cultural and social ideologies, as well as internal pressure by resistance groups, all played their part in its downfall. Following Mandela's election, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission took testimony from many, thereby preserving records of both perpetrators and victims of acts of violence and exploitation.

The Apartheid Museum covers all of this history, beginning briefly with the long history of South Africa and jumping in in earnest with the ratification of Apartheid and telling narrative after narrative of those who lived under the regime. Though interspersed with the occasional sculptural memorial or historical video footage, most of the museum is experienced through reading. The narratives are diverse, though not exhaustive, and focus primarily on the black-white struggle, but they are incredibly powerful. I was glad to have went.

Afterwards we went to a nearby mall, because that is what Peace Corps Volunteers do, and the trainees were desperate for some exposure to fluorescent lighting and American food.

It should be noted that there are no citations on my history lesson for a reason, I am writing this from memory while eating dinner, not while paging through a history book.

Rivoningo NGO Forum

A side benefit of getting so many drop-in centres together at training has always been the opportunity for them to network, and as such a parallel project my NGO and I have been working on is forming a networking organization for all of the drop-in centres in the Greater Giyani area. They started meeting in January on a quarterly basis, elected a management committee, and have tried to have a number of events for the OVCs. Only one of them, a huge soccer tournament, ever actually came to fruition, but the soccer tournament was a big success. The others floundered when centres and the forum balked at continuing to spend so much money transporting orphans to the events, which might mean as many as four taxi rides for the round trip for anywhere between 12-150 orphans per centre.

In March or April, I formulated a constitution with them so that we could apply for NPO (non-profit organization) status and thus be eligible for government funding and independent grants. We spent about four hours with representatives from every drop-in centre putting together what they wanted in their constitution, and at the time I was really proud of them. Instead of copying and pasting fromthe two generic constitutions making the rounds which every centre changes the name at the top of to adopt as their own (one of which, by the way, has a large number of errors), we put together something that was unique to this forum and reflective of its needs. I typed up the document under the assumption that the management committee would approve it at their next meeting.

After the next meeting, which I wasn't able to attend, I got the draft
back with a number of cryptic changes in the margins. Some of them were cogent but didn't make sense; some were legible but not cogent; and some were simply illegible. I asked my supervisor if she could decipher any of them, but in the end we gave up. Fast forward to today. There was another management committee meeting, and one item on the agenda was the constitution. It seems in the intervening months everyone has forgotten what changes they wanted made, and the draft with those corrections has disappeared. Still, it was agreed that changes had to be made, though they were non-specific as to which areas they had problems with. The only concrete suggestion made was that they should add more aims and objectives, but they didn't know what they wanted to add and deferred it.

Personally, I think the constitution is just lovely the way it is. It fills all of the requirements listed on the form and my supervisor checked it over for obvious flaws, too. However, the odds on whether or not it will be completed before I finish my service in seven months are even money.

Speed Bumps

Jokingly, people often refer to cows as "South African speed bumps."
This is because in rural areas, free range cows will wander onto the
road in their herd and they have no fear of oncoming traffic. It can
slow things down when the taxi has to wait for all of the cows to
finish crossing the street before continuing.

Traffic slows for any number of reasons. In Mozambique, the potholes
keep cars from moving too swiftly. Swaziland actually has speed bumps
as we know them at remarkably (and sometimes frustratingly) frequent
intervals. Though of course they interfere with quick travel, it's
not a bad thing--if AIDS were cured tomorrow, young Africans would
still be dying in legions from preventable causes, thanks to the high
number of crashes. My NGO lists lobbying for speed bumps as an
important children's rights initiative, and I see their point.

In my village, we favor the Mozambiquan style speed bumps--our tar
road was not professionally made, and thus has not weathered the test
of time particularly well. Most taxi drivers have elaborate dances
they do on the road to go around the potholes, weaving in and out and
driving in areas on the side of the road in order to make the
smoothest possible ride for the passengers--as a side note, this
morning's taxi drive definitely did not do that. Some village boys
make a business (though not a very lucrative one) out of filling the
potholes with dirt and standing by the side of the road, hoping that
grateful drivers will give them a few rand for their trouble.

In Section A of town, which is primarily residential and through which
the taxi from my village has to drive to get into town, they recently
installed a series of very hardcore speedbumps, the kind that imitate
the shape of corrugated tin for a few feet. My drivers are no more
likely to put up with these speed bumps than the inadvertant ones on
the road to Mapayeni. There are two favored methods for avoiding
them. One is taking a different route through Section A on less
frequented roads. The other is to just get off the road and drive on
the side for the length of the speed bumps. I find the latter to be
excellently amusing.

Related driving safety head-banger: seatbelts. Drivers of taxis are
required to wear seatbelts, but they'll only be checked in town, so
often the drivers will start doing complicated calisthenics to get
their seatbelts on when we get close to town while still driving.
This happens in reverse as we leave. I really think we would all be
safer if they just opted not to wear them altogether--or heaven
forfend, actually wore them the whole time. Instead we seem to have
reached the worst possible compromise.

More Fire Details

Remember that fire at the grocery store? And our rampant water
problems? Not unconnected.

Evidently it was an electric fire that occurred while some minor
construction/maintenance was being done, putting to rest all of my
morbid imaginings of competitor sabotage. It should have been
relatively minor, but when the fire trucks came they had no water with
which to put it out. Oh, Giyani.

Of course, if it really were minor a fire extinguisher should have
been able to deal with it, and no story I have heard yet has accounted
for this mysterious absence. You would think that basic standards of
commercial safety would cover this, no?

Fortunately, they were well-insured, so word has it that all the
(many) people they employed will still get paid while the store is
closed, which may take until December, current estimates say.

We should also all be grateful that I haven't set fire to my house
yet. Or electrocuted myself in a fatal manner. The tangle of cords
and switches in my cooking corner are a blatant fire hazard, and there
have been some exciting close calls. I'm considering forsaking
electricity for safety's sake, or at least until I get tired of
reading by flashlight and eating raw carrots.

On another note, I am dealing with the excruciatingly lines at the
other grocery store by buying produce from vendors at the taxi rank.
Today I bought some potatoes from a nice kokwana, who was so impressed
with my Tsonga skillz that she kept quizzing me while I dug for the
change at the bottom of my bag. It feels less offensive to have
kokwanas (older women/grandmothers) marvel at my strangeness than the
teenagers, though then again, the last teenage girl who marveled at me
(while I purchased something) was also awesome and ran to get me an
awesome container for the thing I was buying.

I wonder if I can live off of things purchased in the taxi rank? I
bet I could, but eventually I would run out of garlic and then go
running to the nearest grocery store unrepentantly.