1 Ramblings I was hugely gratified to hear just how Aside, that is, from our Housemaid, many people have said they missed Kessiah. She was from the Ndlovo clan receiving their regular parish newsletter. and Zulu royalty. A large statuesque With the general lack of response to any woman, she was not taking any nonsense of the many appeals sent out through from a little boy irrespective of his various articles it is easy to imagine one pretentions. With my mother and father’s wasting time providing this magazine. So, complete authority she dispensed in that light if you do value your magazine discipline, firmly and frequently on my please review your stance on passive bare posterior, without any particular involvement and participate with a letter indignity from me, as she had been a part or an article which lets your community of our family from when we were little. know your out there and you want to be heard and counted!!!! I did not see this relationship as out of kilter with my society as many of my It is my opinion that “Black Lives friends had similar relationships with their Matter”. I appreciate this rambling may Housemaids. To this day Kessiah will not be to everyone’s taste but recent calls me “Tommy Trouble” from a song events have started me thinking and as a she used to listen to on the radio. On catharsis I would like to share my views. reflection, I am not ashamed of my As a White South African I might have an childhood as in the same way I wouldn’t inside line on some experience of racism judge some other child in the same and its effects. circumstance but we have to grow up and with that came change. I was born and grew up near Johannesburg and as a child I had no On becoming a teenager and naturally sense of the symbolism of “Separate anti-establishment, did I review my stance Development” as we White South on my society, including racism and like Africans understood Apartheid to mean. many of my friends started protesting Separate facilities seemed sensible to a against whatever injustice was the theme child, as if we didn’t have white benches of the day. We wore black armbands for in the park all the benches would be the murder of Steve Biko, Rick Turner and full…. Blind to the inequality of this Ruth First and many black leaders whose development I enjoyed the privileged life names are lost to me. I became part of a my parents and environment provided. group of likeminded pseudo-liberals who Why should I look over at the other side of would equally have no hesitation in this separation as I was very happy thank sharing a racist joke, as protest against you and I had adult black servants at my an injustice. This pervasive hypocrisy beck and call? and the views of the more sincere members of the group turned my head. My parents were English, my mother with strong sense of right and wrong taught us When our phones were tapped, I to always to be polite and respectful to discovered the extent of my mother’s our employees as we had a contract for involvement Domestic Workers Union their labour in exchange for wages and who strove for pay, holiday and pension not a right to their servitude. rights for black domestic workers. My father was enraged at finding out my mother had been briefly detained during a 2 protest in Johannesburg Cathedral, and Mozambique, Zambia and Angola where demanded she get her priorities right!! if reports were to be believed (and we did) She completely ignored him. we ran amok with impunity. We, as English liberal whites were very So at 18 when I was called up to do my anti the Afrikaans Nationalist Party. The national service, my motivation became “Nats” held all the power and dispensed it clouded as communism didn’t seem according to their want, serving their attractive to me as a privileged white and constituencies with infrastructure while if the press was to be believed the enemy leaving English Liberal constituents out of were at the gates, infiltrating and blowing the light. My mother told us about things up and I was needed. government off shore slush funds for black-ops where the enemy were either I enrolled with uncertain motivation. bribed, blackmailed or bombed into During my basic training I was told that “I silence and to purchase arms and should be proud to shed my blood on the equipment in sanction busting deals with soil of the land that bore me” This left me European countries. pondering feelings that the land didn’t belong to me either because it belonged The South African Nationalist government to Afrikaans or the Blacks but certainly not having measured international opinion me. We had a very pragmatic English decided to focus their media efforts not on Staff Sargent Dalton who was happy the enforcing separate development but during smoke breaks to expound his as a Christian nation “Fighting views on the purpose of war and its Communism”. This ensured a number of context in the South African Theatre. He western nations would overlook the undid all the indoctrination we had been enforcement of Apartheid in the name of given by agreeing with my hypothesis that fighting the Red Scourge and justified we would never win the war, but he went many South African churches preaching on to say we would never lose a battle. politic from the pulpit. … to be continued So for the average South African white teen, his family, government, community, St John The Baptist media and his Church convinced him that the white man was superior and best placed to serve and enlighten the large With COVID-19 number of black people in his world and restrictions that his national service as patriotic duty loosening, I hope and an opportunity to use our our renewed sense overwhelming moral and military of neighbourliness and superiority to send the communist helping whoever we can, however we terrorists packing. can, will continue. As things hopefully get easier or more Our media was full of continuous ‘normal’ from now, our attentions have dramatic footage of our successes on the also been battlefield. The media’s treatment of the turned further outward - with the George sabotage of oil refineries and other Floyd tragedy and the Black Lives Matter strategic targets, further fuelled our hatred campaign, Pride month, and the Grenfell of this insidious enemy who was best Tower anniversary. You may have seen in grappled with in their bases in the 3 media that the Bishops of Leicester and actively challenge all kinds of injustice other senior staff “took the knee” in and prejudice. sorrow for the What are our blind spots? What do we injustices in society, and also in simply not know about the struggles some acknowledgement that our own record is people far from perfect face? What do we choose to ignore? and must change. What assumptions do we make? An in It is no secret (and dare I say, no considering surprise) that research has shown that these things, working out what CAN we COVID has worst do, and what do we need to challenge – affected the most physically or socially at a vulnerable people, the most personal, local or wider level? disadvantaged and the St Francis of Assisi is a great inspiration. most discriminated-against. Ask me about his mission of peace to the Jesus taught that the “Kingdom of God” Sultan of Egypt during the Fifth was all about raising up people to equal Crusade...in 1219 levels, this was perhaps one of the first recorded which we also read in the prophet Isaiah instances of ‘modern’ Interfaith Dialogue! about justice, healing, bring nations (or Let us pray with St Francis: different Lord, make me an instrument of your types of people) together. St Paul wrote peace; that through Jesus Christ, all divisions of where there is hatred, let me sow love; race or where there is injury, pardon; gender or class would be broken down where there is doubt, faith; into a new unity. Going right back to the where there is despair, hope; beginning, where there is darkness, light; one of the creation narratives in Genesis and where there is sadness, joy. illustrates humankind being created in O Divine Master, God’s grant that I may not so much seek to be image, and not only that, but “male and consoled as to console; female” ... an example of equality in to be understood, as to understand; difference. So, I wonder what kind of “new normal” to be loved, as to love; might now emerge in the coming months. for it is in giving that we receive, I hope it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and pray that it means we increasingly and it is in dying that we are born to value the life of every human being, and Eternal Life. Amen. we may The Chapel Keeping in touch What we are doing at the moment We are keeping in contact During these difficult times of physical by WhatsApp, Facebook, phone, distancing and isolation it email, text, post or any other is more important than way. We want to ensure that ever to keep in contact, everyone is cared for and and so we are doing the encouraged through these anxious following things. times. 4 All our meetings are currently online: Sunday Worship His love of sport of every kind was We are meeting together on Sunday legendary - rugby, golf, horse racing, mornings at 10.30am for Sunday swimming, tennis - taking part if at all Worship possible, or at least watching avidly.