Kate & Dana walking across Walter Sisulu Freedom Square, Kliptown, Soweto
Where to start! Excursion was absolutely amazing!!!! If I were to talk about everything this blog would turn into an essay, so instead I’m just going to mention one big highlight of the trip; the Apartheid Museum.
Apartheid reined in South Africa for 49 years yet in only about two hours in a museum I was moved to tears by the horrible way humans treat each other in times of desperation. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Humans are set apart from other animals in their ability to think and love according to psychology, biology, sociology, and all the other -ologies. However, I don’t think we can be defined by our ability to love if the worst in us comes out at the first sign of trouble. We see it everywhere in the past but in the present as well. Immediately after 9/11, Sikhs in the United States were targeted as terrorists simply because they wear turbans as a part of their religion despite the fact that the perpetrators of 9/11 were not Sikh. Even today, people still have the lingering attitude of “turban = terror.” In desperation to find a reason why and find a culprit of who would bomb the twin towers, the US as a whole took the turban and turned it into a target, no matter who the person is under the turban. Innocent and patriotic American Sikhs were beaten, threatened, and even killed because of this frantic desperation for an answer.
With the situation in Japan, after the initial emotional devastation of the tsunami, looting of houses and businesses became the focus of many news articles instead of sympathy for those who have lost loved ones. When people became desperate, they relied on thieving from the houses and businesses of people in their own community. I remember reading a quote from a young Japanese man who mentioned that many people shoved elderly people aside during the tsunami in pure selfishness. In desperation to take whatever they could get, the Japanese people completely ignored morals, ethics, and the law.
Apartheid began as a way to keep black and white life separate in order to continue to push the white political agenda while barring blacks from participation in government. For years there was only peaceful protesting on the side of anti-apartheid groups. After continuous and extreme violence on the side of apartheid officials, desperation of no other way to fight back caused anti-apartheid groups like the ANC and PAC to turn violent. Out of desperation to remain human, anti-apartheid groups had to stoop to the level of their apartheid counterparts. Conversely, apartheid officials literally eliminated anyone who stood in the way of their goal of a white-run society. Out of desperation to remain in control, apartheid supporters dehumanized black people and desensitized their people to see black people as targets instead of humans.
My non-fiction book, A Human Being Died That Night, is about a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s prison interview with Eugene de Kock, an apartheid general nicknamed “Prime Evil.” The book goes through an explanation of the human condition in terms of apartheid and de Kock who murdered hundreds of anti-apartheid leaders as well as innocent civilians in efforts to preserve apartheid. De Kock, despite spending the rest of his life in prison, expresses true remorse with no explanations or excuses; he is truly sorry, and some people have forgiven him. So, although I previously thought that humans should not be defined by how well they can love, I’ve learned that this is precisely what allowed the hundreds of apartheid victims to forgive the very perpetrators that killed their husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and children. Therefore, I’ve decided that the humanity should be defined by how well we can love instead of how well we hate.
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