It’s interesting how seeing something a second time can give you a completely different perspective on an experience. This will be my second time in South Africa, and while most things from this week in Johannesburg have felt very familiar, others have also felt very new to me. I was previously in South Africa last summer for a study abroad focusing on the health systems and health issues of South Africa. Looking at South Africa this time around from a lens of social justice though feels almost as if I was visiting South Africa for the first time again, or as if many of the missing gaps and questions from my previous visit were starting to be filled and answered. Just from this week, I’ve learned that there is a lot of value in experiencing something more than once, and in fact, I now believe it requires more than one go around in order to truly understand and appreciate a place, its history, and its people. Before coming back to South Africa, I thought I had a deep understanding of the place, and I now realize that I had really only scratched the surface.
A few moments have stood out to me from this week. The first was visiting the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, where the narrative was clearly directed towards a white-centric and one sided point of view. Our tour guide, an older white South African woman, was a little too enthusiastic about the history of the monument, so much so that at times her glorification of the Voortrekkers was quite nauseating and honestly a bit horrifying. I don’t doubt that the Voortrekkers faced a lot of adversity on their way through the interior of South Africa, but they also were venturing into territory that was not exactly theirs to claim – what did they really expect? I noticed several parallels between the Great Trek in South Africa and the pioneers of America. Both groups traversed unknown lands, massacred and displaced thousands of innocent people, and established ideals of white superiority and racial hierarchy that would influence society until this very day. It’s funny how history, regardless of location, has a way of repeating itself.
Another moment that touched me was visiting Soweto. Prior to visiting the Hector Peterson museum, I did not know much about the role of students in the struggle against apartheid. The Soweto student protests against the mandated use of Afrikaans in schools allowed South Africa’s youth to remain in the forefront of the resistance to apartheid. Hector Peterson’s death became a symbol of the movement, and to this day, he is revered almost like a martyr of the resistance. Coming to the Hector Peterson museum prompted me to think of how people use the death of youth symbolically to stimulate social movements. I see many parallels between Hector Peterson in the anti-apartheid movement and more recently, racial tensions in our country and black American youth, Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, to name a few. In all likelihood, Hector, Michael, and Trayvon were all just kids who never expected to become such pivotal figures in the fight for social change, but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and became victims of racial injustice. Their deaths and stories were used to stimulated movements. As powerful as these narratives are, it is also equally unfortunate to realize that social change seemingly requires something as devastating as the death of youth to mobilize people and spark social movements.
I am excited to arrive in Cape Town with these new experiences and new context in mind, and I look forward to learning more through my work at Sonke and my interactions with the city.
