South Africa – The Gift of Welcome
From early on here in South Africa, I have been blessed with beautiful friendships and generosity of spirit, feeling welcomed by many, across our racial divide.
I came by invitation, by Luke and his colleague Glynnis who were both passionately committed to transformation, social justice, and equity. It was in 2002, eight years after liberation. “Come and work with our sisters,” Luke said. “Bring your entrepreneurial acumen, business knowledge, and mentoring skills. We have been excluded from the possibilities of business start-ups for so long”.
Luke joined as a trustee of Nala – Partners, a social entrepreneurship organization I initiated in Cape Town to support women with business start-ups and career development. In my mid-fifties, a long-lasting cycle as a business executive, including building a successful international management consulting firm in the ICT sector came to an end. My mind and heart shifted towards wishing to share my knowledge, skills, and resources with women in newly liberated societies, such as Afghanistan in 2001 and South Africa.
Since my youth, I have stored in my soul images of women maintaining dignity during the harshest of times. I remember photos of Jewish women being torn out of cattle wagons after atrocious inhuman shipping to Nazi concentration camps. Disheveled, starving, pale, and hollow-eyed their poise and facial expression remained deeply dignified. Today I still carry photos of Afghan women who, in 2001 were able to lift their veils. After years of brutal oppression and death threats by the Taliban, some smiled serenely, others fearlessly looked into the camera conveying – ‘our spirit cannot be destroyed’, so dignified and courageous.
Here in South Africa, I have met black women and men, people of color, and Muslim activists who convey powerful messages: ‘I will not be dragged down to the level of hate and bitterness; my soul is grounded in the nobility of faith and our tradition of honoring collectivity’; showing dignity in the face of adversity. This has been a very special gift of welcome to South Africa, such levels of human decency unknown to me before.
I was immediately drawn to black people and people of color when I arrived. Not long after that, I was very fortunate to be introduced to formidable black and colored leaders in their field. Stalwarts of moral rectitude, passionately committed to dialogue, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
I met and engaged with accomplished black leaders and sophisticated personalities as well as courageous young people in various townships pursuing their vision for life, despite many of us whites still deliberately blind spotting black struggle.
This opened my eyes to the injustice and brutality of Apartheid and the preceding colonial oppression of black society. Reading a friend’s book about trauma and forgiveness together with many other historical accounts of black suffering and fierce resistance has been most jolting.
I became aware of racism within and all around me. That post-apartheid white society showed many of the same patterns as post-Nazi German society – both remain that way today: resistance about facing and owning up to past destructive choices, defense mechanisms such as denial, blaming, self-victimizing, and fragmentation that divide rather than unite.
My journey of facing the truth began, with much support (even though often challenging) from black people and a wide variety of people of color showing grace, love, and mercy. During this process of reflection, I began to deal with guilt and shame that re-surfaced from my youth when I learned about the Holocaust and my parent’s role in it.
The process of facing history started with my grieving deep-seated shame. In upcoming essays, I will write in greater detail about the process of examining my values, and beliefs and working through identity fragmentation toward acceptance and integration. Life may have been challenging at times, but the color of my skin wasn’t one of the things that made it harder.
An excerpt from a keynote speech by Dr. Beverly Tatum at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, 2013: The True Meaning of Reconciliation captures the challenges of owning our history and choices:
… Engaging in a meaningful way with those we have been socialized to mistrust requires some courage. Why? Because we have to be brave enough to have our assumptions challenged and redefine our values and identity.
If we want a better society, one characterized by strength, trust, and unity, we must interrupt the cycle that perpetuates and reinforces the stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes that are so instrumental in the maintenance of oppression and inequality….. Dr. Beverly Tatum, President Spellman College, USA.
I have witnessed grand and magnanimous examples of forgiveness coupled with fearless and passionate engagement by black survivors of Apartheid atrocities; equally, there are inspiring stories of white people, despite having lost family members to apartheid killers, nevertheless offered forgiveness and worked actively towards reconciliation. These examples of grace encourage all of us to rise beyond hate, victimhood, or apathy.
It was a precious gift being invited and welcomed into black family kinship as a caring human being beyond whiteness and colonial settler history. And it was through talking with and listening to new friends and wise guides and teachers. This dialogue process has reinforced for me the importance of facing history in ourselves.
Today, 30 years after liberation from Apartheid, many of us whites are still insulating and distancing. The process of building bridges and engaging in an active reversal of racist transgressions is so slow and seems cumbersome.
Why can’t we show up? I feel disheartened at times. Have we whites passed our ‘sell-by date’ in terms of goodwill extended to us by black society? Nice gestures and passing on used clothes aren’t good enough. Many of the younger black generation are angry, say it, and show it too. And, many young white ones are hardened with resentment, withdrawing further into ideologically incestuous, closed groups of the same kind.
Reading Professor Archille Mbembe’s work, these observations stand out: ….shaping white subjectivity – insulation – segregation has led to willful ignorance not knowing of the reality of back people. This deliberate ignorance is the basis for being unable to be in touch with the world of others. I am ignorant of the suffering of the people I oppressed; I am innocent. Innocence-based ‘social contract’ whites have with each other …
This resonates with my observations of daily life around me. Here too I will post on my website stories of everyday encounters of those bringing hope as well as those more challenging encounters. Through years of restorative dialog, I have learned that there is a way to open the door through the walls of denial in the younger white generations, either in groups or individually.
It is the space of their and my pain and suffering, manifesting often as challenging life management dysfunctions.
The cost of being socialized into an ideology of superiority is dire. Do we white people have to go through deep, possibly life-threatening suffering (on all levels) to become ‘reachable’? Maybe.
In conversations, I say to a member: “The resentment you just thrust at this black woman (your neighbor, housekeeper, teacher, doctor, store clerk) comes from somewhere inside you. How many times a day do you feel belittling and hateful thoughts and speak angrily and aggressively towards her – ten times, a hundred times? Inside you, there is a hate muscle that pumps up every day and gets bigger and more dominant like a body-building six-pack.
What about your heart muscle? Feeling and speaking words of value and appreciation towards a black person; how many times a day – zero? Maybe three, or five times? So, that muscle is shriveling into a frozen heart.
“This happens to me when I judge harshly and criticize without even knowing the other person. With every angry, resentful feeling and word, I cut off a piece of my humanness until I am so dehumanized; that I become blocked off from within. Like so many people I meet during healing dialog, to create a sense of value within, substitutes like social status, money power, drugs, alcohol, food, sex, and any other compulsion become their fix.
This is a tragic illusion and leads to a vicious cycle that does not alleviate but rather feeds pain, shame, and psychological instability; it increases resentment, especially toward oneself. Statistics of domestic violence in white society are growing massively. So, as we continue hating black people we destroy ourselves in that process.
How can we heal from our dehumanizing beliefs and actions, and together relate, create, listen, and value each other in our diversity? It is a long and complex journey, and it starts with me being willing, honest, and open to engage.
I want to share this process in further writing and be able to offer solutions towards peace-making dialog, both within and beyond our white community.
It is an immense gift today, to witness South African leaders having the courage, to summon Israel to the International Court of Justice – ICJ for committing gross human rights violations and genocidal extermination of Palestine and Palestinians.
The moral legitimacy of black leadership in South Africa as the purveyor of human decency, and respect for the humanness of the other is so poignantly captured in a book that appeared at the same time.; an act of provenance perhaps?
…..’In his televised address to the nation on 13 April 1993, after the assassination of the highly revered liberation fighter Chris Hani, Nelson Mandela sought to build a new patriotism of the good, peace-loving South African and create a bulwark against those who sought to derail the democracy project.
This was a moment where Mandela illustrated that justice, democracy, and peace are all important – and none can be pursued at the expense of the other.
….. Mandela’s strength was that he appreciated the “authentic fears” of his opponents, that for many white South Africans to imagine freedom of the people they had humiliated for centuries – and that such freedom would come without vengeance – was impossible… Justice Malala*.
The invitation by Nelson Mandela and the many people with him who fought for a peaceful transition to democracy was a powerful welcome to us all, belonging as decent human beings – in unity!!
It obliges me, I believe, to honor our shared humanness, human interconnectedness with peacebuilding engagements – within and between us.
Several years ago, while confronting racism and its impact on life all around me, I decided to shift from entrepreneurship support into psychological work again, seeking to support the healing of relational attachment wounds and trauma response behavior through restorative dialog and counselling.
I believe that it is my calling to facilitate ‘inter-connectedness’ across the many culturally manufactured divisions that freeze our hearts; and to do so with respect, empathy, and caring. It is my goal to inspire open conversation about discrimination and stereotyping, racism, perpetrator–victim dynamics, and the resulting inter-generational impact of a traumatic or shameful history.
The work of Pumla Gobodo–Madikizela has been a generous gift of mindful guidance and moral inspiration for me. “…In a cultural milieu where connectedness to others is an essential feature of human relationships, an individual identity extends beyond self-focused individualism. A person’s identity is shaped by relationships with others and is inextricably intertwined with their identities. This shared humanity with others is captured in the African concept of ubuntu. …. The guiding principles of ubuntu are based on a morality that is Other-directed, concerned with promoting the ethical vision of compassion and care for others”….*
My heart and soul see the beauty and dignity in others, whom many have labeled unworthy deviants. All my life I have sought contact with ‘outcasts’ and have admired and been inspired by the souls of people who have risen above destructive fury imposed upon them with their dignity and grace shining through.
Seeing the beauty of the other can be an extraordinarily inspiring experience.
The End
*Appendix:
Photo with Mom Nobanthu Gobodo.
The Plot to Save South Africa – The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation, by Justice Malala. Simon & Schuster, April 2023.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. University of Chicago Press – Chicago Journal 2011 Vol 36 # 3 Intersubjectivity and Embodiment: Exploring the role of the maternal in the language of Forgiveness and Reconciliation.