In the mid to late 60’s I attended Dokkies (Durban Onderwys
Kollege), Most of the instructions were done in English (for the English) and
Afrikaans (for the Afrikaans) whereas specialist
subjects were lectured in both languages seamlessly. My notebooks bounced from English
to Afrikaans and back again. It made for interesting studying!
I had been brought up in a sheltered white English speaking
home so meeting up with and dating an Afrikaans guy was a little bit frowned
upon but what the hell. I was at college and college is the time you explore
your horizons. It didn’t take me long to gravitate towards the more progressive
students. They were exciting, they were poking at the lions in their cages of parliament.
They were pushing the boundaries. They were fighting for injustice. We were
fighting for black people all over this fair country of ours. We had the power
to try to move mountains. I was never very deep into politics (Politics had
never intrigued me – it still doesn’t) But people – people intrigued me. I
needed to get to know people of different upbringing, of different colour, of
different cultures. I needed to try to understand why we were considered
different. I never understood it. Some people made me laugh, some made me cry
some made me sad but all had something to show me of their culture. And nothing
made me compare my skin to theirs.
We went to multicultural parties – my staid mother would
have been horrified. I have an idea that my father may have respected me as
most of the notions I have took seed from comments he made. This was very
dangerous in the 60’s there were nightly raids on mixed race parties. We went
on multiracial religious camps. Desmond Tutu (Merely a lowly vicar at the time)
was talking to our group and he put his arm around me and said “Who has the
right Vera, to tell us we can’t be friends?” A profound moment that I didn’t
appreciate until many years later when I saw his promotion and I started
scratching to find THAT photo. I still need to find it.
A lifetime ago I was fighting for YOUR freedom. A lifetime
ago I was your friend. A lifetime ago I laughed at your jokes, shared your food
slept in the same tents as you and now your children are chanting that they
want me dead. Your children want to destroy what we fought so hard, so
passively to put in place.
I am a pacifist – maybe that’s where I went wrong. I enjoyed
the peace that surrounded our camps and our parties. We were a group of young
people finding enjoyment in life, finding common ground. Oh that we could have
taken that idealism forward with us in our lives. I wish our children and
grandchildren could glimpse the high ideals we set ourselves. I wish they could
appreciate that for things to succeed we need to build up not tear down. You
and me – we laid some pretty firm foundations – I beseech that the modern
generation build on those foundations to find the peace that we found when
together chatting our idealistic thoughts.
I am in you and you are in
me.
