South Africa V

This is going to be an interlude in my musings re: Lausanne, mainly because my current conference is taking up so much time, that I’m having little time to reflect on my last one!
Today they took us on a short tour of Port Elizabeth, which, honestly, is not a touristy town, and, except for FIFA this year, likely isn’t high on the ‘must go’ destinations in this country.
However, they did bring us to the Red Location museum, found in the middle of one of the townships around Port Elizabeth. In and of itself, it was a highly moving museum. Currently, a huge portion of the museum is dealing with Steve Biko and his life and death. It is quite an astounding piece of work, dealing with the history and life behind the Black Consciousness Movement. There were panels that dealt specifically with Biko’s last few days before his death, his autopsy, and the findings at his inquiries that left me incredibly ashamed and embarrassed at my profession. Physicians throughout history have participated in shameful and inhumane acts against other human beings, though they are supposedly some of the most educated and wise among us. (Great quote on this later).
What I found most striking, however, is how this museum is found in the middle of a township. People had to be displaced in order to make room for the construction of this museum. Around it, they are building archives to store artifacts and documents relating to the apartheid struggle. Yet, all around, this complex of buildings is surrounded by corrugated tin shacks with no running water and no electricity. I spent some time with one elderly gentleman who was displaced during this construction, who worries that he will die before the government will give him compensation. I am sure he cannot help but look at all of this construction and wonder ‘why?’. The irony is further heightened by the fact that there is a reconstructed shack within the museum that you can wander through, to get a ‘real feel’ as to what it is like to live in a township home, when, not even 100 ft away, there are hundreds of them outside.
To be sure, it is very easy to see the specks in other countries’ eyes and miss the logs in our own. However, I have been struck by how ‘apart’ this country still lives. Wherever I have been, I have either seen an overwhelming number of black people, or else an overwhelming number of white people. Nothing suggesting a nice mix/majority black. And this has also been segregated based on the economic status of the neighbourhood I happen to be walking in. I wonder, being called the “Rainbow Nation”, if this is more a reflection of the fact that we draw our rainbows with distinct colour bands, none melting in and melding with the others. Since I’ve arrived here, I have been astounded by the energy of the church here, but I have also felt that there is a profound desire for deep justice to occur. Deep, penetrating, profound justice and reconciliation. But I also feel like, in the context of the wounds that are still quite raw in the country, there is uncertainty where to start with the healing balm.
It has also emphasized to me, again, that despite all of our best intentions and our grandest dreams, we are unable, on our own, to fix the ills of this world. By no means does this excuse us from not struggling and not fighting for good, to say that this is a lost cause and this world is so fallen from sin that it is incapable of grace. But as long as selfishness, greed and pride persist, all the education and policy in the world cannot save us…