One
Apartheid Regime Down;
One More To Go
By Ramzy Baroud
27 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
I stand
at the southernmost corner of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The grand
mountains underneath and behind infuse a moment of spiritual reflection
unmatched in its depth and meaning. Before me is an awe-inspiring view:
here the Atlantic’s frigid waters gently meet the warm waters
of the Indian Ocean. They meet but don’t collide. The harmony
is seamless; the greatness of this view is humbling.
I was invited to South Africa
to deliver a keynote speech at the ‘Al-Nakba’ conference,
held in Cape Town. The journey led me to other cities. Many speeches,
presentations, media interviews later, I sat with a borrowed computer
and scattered thoughts: how can one reflect without the least sense
of certainty, assuredness? I ought to try.
“Where are the Black
Africans?” was the first question to come to mind as a friend’s
car escorted me a distance from the Cape Town International Airport.
I saw very few indications affirming that I was indeed in Africa as
I gazed at the exaggeratedly beautiful surroundings of the airport.
My friend needed not respond however, as the car soon hurriedly zoomed
by a “squatters’ camp”; no slum can be compared to
this, no refugee camp. Innumerable people are crammed in the tiniest
and crudest looking ‘houses’ made of whatever those poor
people could find laying around. It was not ‘temporary accommodations’,
but permanent dwellings: here they live, marry, raise children and die.
It takes no brilliant mind
to realize that Apartheid South Africa is still, in some ways, Apartheid
South Africa. A lot has been done on the road to equal rights since
the Africa National Congress (ANC) along with freedom fighters and civil
society activists combined forces to defeat a legacy of 350 years of
oppression, colonialism and – in 1948 – an officially sanctioned
system of Apartheid, a system instilled by the white minority government
to ethnically cleanse, confine and subdue the overwhelmingly black majority.
True, the hundreds of Bantustans or ‘homelands’ in which
the Blacks were locked, only to be allowed to leave or enter White areas
– as servants – with a special pass, are no longer an officially
recognized apparatus. The ‘presidents’ of those Bantustans
– puppet rulers hand picked by White authorities – are long
discredited. Now, South Africans, of all colors, ethnicities and religions
select their own leaders, in democratic elections that are, more or
less, reflective of the overall desires of the populace. But it takes
much more than 13 years, and uncountable promises to reconcile the calculated
inequality of centuries.
Despite a hectic schedule
of two weeks, I made it a goal to visit as many squatters’ camps
as I could. I followed the path of ethnic cleansing that took place
in District Six in Cape Town; it was a Trail of Tears of sorts, a Palestinian
Catastrophe. My grandparents, mother and father where dragged from their
homes under similar circumstances in 1948 in Palestine. They too were
not suitable to live within the same ‘geographic radius’
with those who had deemed themselves superior. Those who were forcibly
removed from District Six have finally won their land back. Palestinians
are still refugees. My grandparents are long dead, so is my mother.
My father, a very ill and old man, is waiting in our old home in the
refugee camp in Gaza. He refuses to yield, to capitulate.
I spoke at a technical college
that was erected for Whites only on the exact same spot where thousands
of Colored and Blacks were uprooted and thrown somewhere else, somewhere
more discreet, more acceptable to the taste of Apartheid administrators.
I paid a tribute to those resilient people who refused to embrace their
inferior status, fought and died to regain their freedom and dignity.
I saluted my people, who stood in solidarity with the fighters of South
Africa. In our Gaza camps, we mourned for South Africa and we celebrated
when Nelson Mandela was set free. My father handed out candy to the
neighborhood kids. When Bishop Desmond Tutu visited Palestine, Israeli
settlers greeted him with racist graffiti and chants across the West
Bank. For Palestinians, this was a personal insult. Tutu is ours, just
as Che Guevara, Martin Luther, Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmad Yassin
and Yasser Arafat were and still are.
On Robin Island, where Mandela
and hundreds of his comrades were held for many years, I touched the
decaying walls of the prison. Food in the prison was rationed on the
basis of skin color. Blacks always received the least. But prisoners
defied the prison system nonetheless; they created a collective in which
all the food received would be shared equally amongst them. I tore a
piece of my Palestinian scarf and left it in Mandela’s cell; its
chipped, albeit fortified walls, its thin floor mattress still stand
witness to the injustice perpetrated by some and the undying faith in
one’s principles embraced by others. I visited every cell in Section
A and B, touched every wall, read every name of every inmate: Christians,
Hindus, Muslims and Bantus were all kept here, fought, died and finally
won their freedom together. They referred to each other as comrades.
Injustice is colorblind. So is true camaraderie.
I have never felt the sense
of solidarity and acceptance that I felt in South Africa. There is an
unparalleled lesson to be learned in this amazing place. There is a
lot to be sorted out: a true equality to be realized, but a lot has
also been done. A veteran ANC fighter thanked me for the arms and money
supplied to his unit, and many other units, by the PLO in the 1970’s
and 80’s; he said he still has his PLO uniform, tucked in somewhere
in his little decrepit ‘house’ in one of the squatters’
camps dotting the city. It was a poignant reminder that the fight is
not yet over.
Amongst the many names scribbled
at the fenced wall at the helm of Cape of Good Hope, someone took the
time to write “Palestine”. In the Apartheid Wall erected
by Israel on Palestinian land in the West Bank, the South African parallel
is expressed in more ways than one. The relationship cannot be any more
obvious. The fight for justice is one, and shall always be.
Ramzy Baroud
is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second
Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto
Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com
and can be contacted at [email protected]
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