FEBRUARY 26,1993 PAGE 7 FEATURES this week Apartheid; Will it Really End?

by Sisonke Msimang Steve Biko said something will not create a new South- cruelty, dehumanizarion, some Mac students will be as to the effect that if you are Africa. Not, at least, without armed baboon bandits, and guilty of perpetuation as Boer I was reminded this week, black in South-Africa, "smart a veritable revolution in think- the stigma of brutal violence. liberals are responsible for the of a poem by Mongane Serote or dumb you are born into ing in both countries. The Afrikaner establishment perpetuation of apartheid. called A Pry White Season: apartheid, and smart or That is one of the most rewarded this tirade with Living in this country has dumb, you die in it" We die made me more cynical and it is a dry white season important issues at stake here. ...standing ovation." dark leaves don't last, their brief lives' a t the hands of apartheid The way people think. You Instead of being ashamed bitter about South-Africa; I'm dry out every single day. can abolish and create all the and bowing their heads in beginning to doubt the poem. and with a broken heart they dive down Some would argue that I'm beginning to wonder if gently headed laws you want but the way silence, they dapped, over- for the earth we are beating and maiming people think is going to deter- joyed at this attack on the this season will truly pass, or not even bleeding; and killing each other, that we mine how much really chang- system. They completely if racism and hatred are inher- it is a dry white season brother, are doing this to ourselves. ently Tuiman. only the trees know the pain as they still es. And the people to worry denied their complicity in the stand They would point to the sup- about are not necessarily the system. They didn't even see I am slowly learning to erect posed "tribal warfare" that has rampant racists. it lose faith in what I have been dry like steel, their branches dry Like wire pitted "black against black." The people to watch out In my opinion, the equiv- raised to believe and ifs a sad Indeed it Is a dry white season At a first glance I might be and painful experience. I'm but seasons come to pass. for are the "liberals," because alent of these Afrikaner liber- tempted to agree with them. they will condemn and de- als in America is the PC col- afraid I will become mean and I have always loved this But South-Africa deserves nounce others as frequently as lege crowd. These students hateful and that's the last poem, and it once expressed more than a wandering, apa- possible, but only in the shel- readily pounce upon anything thing I want but if the truth is the way I felt about South- thetic glance. For a while it ter of their own homes. They that is white-male-middle-class- ugly enough I suppose that is Africa. Since I arrived in seemed that international will disagree morally but keep American with a zeal that is what you become. America and started going to opinion was in our favor. their mouths shut. And if, almost violent. They are the So I'm reading and think- Mac, however, I have had People were chatting over perchance, they happen to first to pipe up in class and ing and trying to find places, some serious doubts about dinner about atrocities of utter a few words, they will list the crimes of this particu- stories people who symbolize apartheid and concerts were whether the dry white season- be very faint. lar segment of America. And hope, both here and at home. -apartheid--vn\\ truly ever pass. being held for political prison- often they are extremely cor- On this campus I think we ers. Then something else In South-Africa white I have grown up knowing rect. It seems however that really need to think about came into vogue. Some new liberals supposedly hated the' I will one day go home to system, but they didn't hate they have forsaken political change. How responsible we help in "the struggle." Apart- cause to lament over for a are and how meaningful we while; something else to ease themselves. Perhaps they consciousness for correctness. heid has always been the didn't make a connection In other words, they simply want it to be. enemy, but I never saw it as guilt from, while South-Africa Apartheid is not over, and was forgotten. between themselves and the do not think about the real unconquerable. In every system. This is particularly implications of what they are will take a long time to die. discussion, argument, denun- So we turned on our- ironic. saying. Likewise the racism that was ciation; in every conversation selves. You see we are dying A white South-African Quite a few studen ts seem written into the laws of this I. ever heard amongst the because too many of us have poet received a literary award to be content to condemn and country is not over and will proud Africans I was sur- begun to believe that our lives at a ceremony attended by I.J ' • • - rounded by, there was always not really digest what they not be over for a long time are worthless. Too many of five hundred Boers. In ac- UNLESS people start examin- hope. There was always a us have internalized the ha- are saying. Ifs often done in cepting the award the poet a manner that is far too flip- ing their own attitudes in- sense that; "things may be tred. Too many of us see the "said he could not breathe in tough now, and we may have pant. A little introspection is stead of condemning those of futility of fighting a system South-Africa for the stench of others. to fight to get independence, deliberately designed to keep definitely needed to question hypertrophy. The word "Afri- how much a part of the sys- but eventually things will be us down. kaner," he added, had become alright." And I believed it. tem they really are. Without All quotations from Rian They killed us in 1838, synonymous 'with spiritual Malan's book My Traitor's Parallels between South- a serious look at themselves they sacrificed us for the backwardness, ethical decay. in relation to the system, Heart, 1990, Longman Press Africa and America have been World Wars, shot us in 1976, made before, but in reference and gunned us down in front to the US, the past tense is al- of cameras in 1985. They . ways employed. Before the jailed and Lindiwe Mabuza the US Walter Sisulu and killed Steve was like South-Africa. Was? Biko. The number of bruised The sad truth is that it still is black bodies in mortuaries all Washington D.C. Representative of the very much like South-Africa. over the country is ample If you think segregation is evidence of our impotence African National Congress over, drive through St. Paul or and their omnipotence. Minneapolis and look at who And in America we are will speak on lives where. Or, a little closer dying too. As steadily and as to home, look in Kagin at brutally as in South-Africa. lunch one day. Most of the African-Americans are as "Apartheid in the 1990s" African and African-American addicted *nd as "dangerous" students sit at various tables as black South-Africans. The in one corner of the room. community is imploding. After thirty years people are Crime, drug addiction, mur- still not communicating with der. Ifs the same story and it each other enough to truly is made all the more difficult 7:30 p.m. feel comfortable sitting togeth- to deal with because America er to have lunch. promised equality. It prom- For the past few years ised African-Americans basic at black South-Africa has been human rights, and it lied. dying. We have been shot, If the of Weyerhaeuser Chapel beaten, and maimed, we have America, claimant to all that become drug addicts and is Just and Good in this world Sponsored by alcoholics, thieves and mur- can lie, and get away with it, BLAC, AFRIKA derers. We have become what is to stop South-Africa Committee In Solidarity with Southern Africa what we have been told we from doing the same thing? are for the last three hundred The sixties did not create a and new America and the nineties the Political Science Department

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