| Posted By Ramzy Baroud
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
American author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com; his latest
book is The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s
Struggle (Pluto Press, London)
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