“EUROPEANS Only. Net Blankes”, reads one of the remnants of apartheid notice boards now preserved at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.
I had heard and read so much about apartheid, but not prepared for what I saw, and how I felt, when I visited the Apartheid Museum recently.
I felt it.
I felt like living it.
The feeling was so real.
I was amazed by the scores of people, visitors like me who had come from all over the world, as well as locals.
I wondered who the Afrikaaners were among us, and what was going through their minds at seeing the evil of their parents.
Were they ashamed?
Were they secretly celebrating or were they regretting dismantling apartheid?
“I wonder what those (white) people are feeling!” I whispered to my brother, my host who had taken me down to the museum.
“Most are feeling the same as you; apartheid was disgusting, but you must also know that a lot of them are tourists too, just as you,” he replied.
Later that night, I saw a documentary on SABC TV called The Other Man: F W de Klerk and the End of Apartheid in South Africa.
It is trying to remind the world, the South Africans in particular, that de Klerk was indeed the ‘other man’ that people should also celebrate for his role in ending apartheid, not just Nelson Mandela.
The Other Man shows Mandela and de Klerk arm in arm as the two men whose history should be ‘woven’ together when telling the story of South African apartheid.
The Other Man educates us that without de Klerk’s effort, there would probably still be apartheid in South Africa.
Thus the ‘Other Man’, F W de Klerk, must also be remembered and celebrated.
Yuk!
But who am I to judge South Africans, who, after all, in October 2006 flew flags at half-mast at the death of Pieter Willem Botha, the unrepentant apartheid president, and even offered his remains a state funeral (although declined by his family)?
Amazing South Africans.
Botha delivered the infamous Rubicon Speech in Durban on August 15 1985 (five years after Zimbabwe attained her political independence which ended quasi-apartheid in Zimbabwe); a speech in which he celebrated apartheid.
The Other Man is part of the deliberate ploy to brainwash young people, maybe to promote tolerance and forgiveness, but it won’t change history.
I am not writing this article to set a debate about who did what to end apartheid. I am simply writing to express how I felt when I visited South Africa, the so-called ‘Rainbow Nation’, which is widely celebrated as the most successful African country in terms of racial harmony, a country trying to forget its past and trying to move in one direction, as we were told by our guide in the museum.
“Europeans Only. Net Blankes.”
To the architects of apartheid, it didn’t matter whether the white person was from America, Australia or New Zealand.
Every white person was identified as a European; maybe because many white people who now live in America, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia, indeed originated from Europe!
I was amused by the noticeboards that were used during apartheid in as much as I was shocked by how black people were seen as sub-humans and ill-treated in their own country, for nearly four centuries (1652-1994)!
On display you are greeted by the visual and audio history of South Africa; among other themes, the beautiful rock paintings that show a different and peaceful existence of the San people who celebrated their lives and nature through art; the occupation of South Africa, race classification, the discovery of gold in Johannesburg, introduction of apartheid, the Sharpeville Massacre, life in the 1960s under apartheid, the pass laws, the Soweto risings, black consciousness, political executions and detentions without trial, the life of Nelson Mandela, his detention and release including his famous speeches, meetings and above all, the transition to democracy!
It is true that every country, every nation, has its own history and dark years, but Africans suffered the most, everywhere.
Between 1904 and 1907, the Germans (who had colonised Namibia, known then as German South West Africa) committed one of their first holocaust or genocide when they killed between 10 000 to
100 000 Herero and Namaqua people by starving them in deserts.
Yet the genocide of Hereros and Nama people is hardly spoken of and many black children are never taught about it in history books.
For more than 400 years, millions of Africans were taken into slavery during the trans-atlantic slave trade.
Millions died on the way before they reached the American shores.
In Zimbabwe too, our people, our fathers and forefathers were subjected to many atrocities as a result of colonial rule; and now neo-colonialism.
On August 11 and 12, Zimbabweans celebrate the role played by freedom fighters in freeing the country from colonial rule.
Everywhere, black people have suffered.
The giant Apartheid Museum, built on a rock, and which is described as ‘a beacon of hope showing the world how South Africa is coming to terms with its oppressive past and working towards a future that all South Africans call their own’, may tell a story of hope, but outside in the suburbs and the streets, that beacon of hope may be encroaching South Africa at a very slow pace.
Apartheid may have been politically dismantled, but black people in South Africa are yet to enjoy the gains of both political and economic freedom.
Poverty, unemployment, low education for black people, diseases, prostitution and high incidents of crime, which are all ills of apartheid are still very visible on the streets and in suburbs.
This may take a century to correct.
To all our national heroes, I say rest in peace gallant sons and daughters of Zimbabwe.