“‘Ubuntu’: It’s a cosmopolitan idea, of unity among diversity, using our differences as a way of making our society stronger as a whole.” This description of the South African concept of ubuntu was relayed by a close friend of mine from South Africa a couple years ago as we discussed the concept in terms of building sustainable communities. With 11 official languages and many more distinct cultural traditions, religious and ethnic diversity is a hallmark of the “Rainbow Nation” of South Africa. Taking this course as a junior, I saw the experience as an extension of my First-Year Seminar (FYS) which examined the relationship between community and diversity.
Our course took an approach consistent with this rich diversity. Rather than having one professor as a constant leader and teacher throughout the course, we heard presentations in various forms from a wide variety of subjective sources – examining the rainbow by looking at each of its colors.
To begin the course, we celebrated New Year’s aboard the world’s longest direct commercial flight from New York, the United States’ largest city, to Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city. Along the way, we read some of Nelson Mandela’s experiences in living with and later removing (by mostly peaceful means) the oppressive apartheid government as a leader of the people, from his autobiography. We also read the story of a journalist who covered the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, relating South Africa’s story through the testimony of victims and perpetrators alike, and some short stories by one of South Africa’s famous novelists, sharing scenes from present-day South African life. These texts would provide framing and background for our experiences in the next three weeks.
On arrival, we spent a night near Johannesburg before heading out to Kruger National Park, a wildlife reserve the size of The Netherlands. This area is large and wild enough to be a natural habitat for lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, hippo, hyena, wildebeest, leopard, giraffe, kudu, zebra, warthog, impala, crocodile, chameleon, and countless other species. On game drives, safaris, and bushwalks once or twice daily, we got to see much more than these animals and enjoy the amazing natural beauty Mandela describes as “the Africa of myth and legend.”
We then flew out to Cape Town, South Africa’s legislative capital and third largest city. On our first full day in the city, we learned the story of District Six, which had enjoyed a thriving community life and nearly color-blind racial integration for several generations. When the apartheid government declared it a Whites-only area, they forced all the residents to move out to “race” specific areas, even separating families based on subtle variations in skin tone that might make the difference between black and colored (a South African term used to define an interracial person). They then bulldozed the places people had called home for three or four generations....and even today, little has replaced that area.
For this and the remainder of the trip, we stayed at Stellenbosch University, a primarily white, Afrikaans (based on Dutch, imposed during Dutch colonialism, as opposed to the English brought in during British colonialism or any native language) university located in beautiful coastal wine country just outside of Cape Town. Most weekday mornings, we heard lectures – each from a different local professor, on a different topic. Most of the time we were joined by a smaller group from UC Davis, who were there on a service learning “quarter abroad.” Lecture topics included South African history & politics, economic development and future challenges, HIV/AIDS and public health education challenges, South African art, music, and writing, and language/culture lessons in both Afrikaans and isiXhosa.
In the afternoons, we often went on excursions to hear other local perspectives. We visited a few local townships including Khayelitsha (meaning “new hope”), which according to our tour guide has 1.5 million people in 18 square miles, mostly living in “informal settlements” we might describe as shacks. A group of children who had gathered to see us sang traditional songs and the national anthem quite enthusiastically, and some local business owners thanked us for coming in with an interest to see and learn about their lives – not in the hopes of a financial donation based on pity for poverty, but that we would see the hope and spirit of community that brings people together in these areas.
Residents of white ‘neighborhoods’ generally live in mini-fortresses with little trust or communication with even their neighbors, let alone the black and colored South Africans. South Africa may be a “rainbow nation” with a diverse population, but after several decades of institutionalized and even militant government-imposed segregation (which ended officially only in 1994), the colors don’t quite run together yet. The process of resocialization and integration will take many generations before that spirit of ubuntu becomes a fact of life for most South Africans.
In the townships, we also sampled some of the local traditional food and heard a great musical performance by a group called Siyaya, who is touring the U.S. later this year. We visited a couple elementary schools, played with and talked to some of the kids there, and donated two large piles of educational materials that we’d brought with us expressly for this purpose. |
