Teddy's activist project

Here I’d like to provide a quick update on my activist project.

It’s a bit of a story and starts with when our group first met Lucy Campbell during our orientation program. She gave us a tour of Cape Town’s downtown, focusing on its slave history and the still present physical remnants of slavery.

She is an activist committed to starting conversations and discussions on the history of slavery and its ongoing legacy of racism and oppression; she believes firmly that open discussion and the sharing of memory is central to healing these wounds of the past. Here you can check out some of her writing: http://www.archivalplatform.org/blog/entry/whitewashed/

Cape Town has numerous physical reminders of slavery, including the VOC logo installed in the ground at St. George’s Mall, the Slave Lodge museum, Jan van Riebeeck’s almond hedge, the VOC hospital building, the slave auction block on Spin Street, and even the phonebooks (several of the months of the year were used as last names for arriving slaves and these surnames are still very common).

One of the critical issues that Lucy wants to change is the fact that so many people in Cape Town are generally unaware of the history of slavery in the region. Many are ignorant of the enormous influence slaves and slavery had on life and society in the Cape, as well as throughout South Africa. During the tours Lucy has even stopped passer-bys and asked what their last names are, and with that information she has been able to inform them of their own slave ancestry. Many people will stop and listen and contribute during her tours while they are just walking past; sometimes they are rare individuals who know a great deal about the topic or on the other hand they are generally uninformed and listen eagerly. Sometimes tour participants are extremely resistant and do not want to accept the influence that slaves had in the construction of the city and its culture.

Lucy explains this material with such passion that it was impossible to not be drawn in. For my activist project I’ve decided to help her with her marketing so that more people can hear about and learn about their city’s slavery history. I got this idea because we were once discussing the challenges of being a tour guide and working in the world of social history museums, and we agreed that it would be very useful for her to have a life history and a condensed version in pamphlet form. So, I’ve been working on this with her and hope it will be of great use to her once finished. The idea is that the life history and accompanying pamphlet can be used to show her story of growing more aware of her own heritage and becoming interested in healing the “wounds of the past” (as she would say). As mentioned above, getting conversations started is necessary in ending racism and if this material can help her reach out to more people, than I think it will be a worthwhile project.