My near-obsession with history had me asking questions about the people who were here before Jan arrived, questions that were never satisfactorily answered.
The 27 April 1994 changed that for me (and a great many others), and answers became more accessible.
I wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the dove of peace, I learned the words of a new anthem, and I felt just that much more hope for humanity.
Twenty years later, I’ve had to ask myself if my teenage eyes at the time truly saw change, or if one pair of blinkers was traded for another.
There are many — too many — who still suffer, who still don’t experience freedom and dignity, who can’t enjoy their constitutional rights because of the bitterness and bigotry of others, who are slaves to the paltry wages doled out by shareholders.
Dorothy Parker, in an article about her efforts against Francisco Franco’s facism in Spain, for New Masses, March 1939, wrote, “…I have no waking moment… when I am not saying to myself, as… I hear a man with six children telling how he may work two days a week in a mill for $4 — “You’re doing almost as much as you can, baby. That’s fine. But it’s not enough.”
Each of us, doing our best individually to make a difference in the lives of the downtrodden, to inform a national identity, will never be enough — but it will be something, and a lot more than if we make no effort at all.
We have a chance to co-create something new; a nation, not just a motley crew of disparate factions focused on race, tribe, creed or gender, unified under the ideals of those great men and women who saw South Africa as more than just a glorified filling station for ships en route to the East.
May it not slip through our fingers.
Happy birthday, South Africa.
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