On April 27, 1994, I traveled from Milwaukee to the South African consulate in Chicago to vote in support of the new South African government under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, who died this past Dec. 5.
Unfortunately I did not get to experience and share in all the excitement and anticipation leading up to the establishment of the new Rainbow Nation. I had left South Africa in 1987, at age 18, to study in Israel shortly after graduating from high school, many years before Mandela’s release from prison.
The political atmosphere then was tense, and white South Africans feared the country was on the brink of a civil war. Most feared their fate would be similar to their neighbors in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).
There, under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, whites were displaced and lost most of their former privileges, land and status. Among other factors, this was the outcome of the complicated and violent Bush War between the white minority government under Ian Smith and the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army led by Mugabe.
Frequent images of murdered white farmers flooded our nightly news on television. It seemed inevitable that majority rule in South Africa would be our ultimate demise.
Conversations amongst my family and friends focused on who was next to emigrate. The “brain drain” was in full swing as many whites scrambled to get out of the country.
I was about seven years old when I first heard of Mandela from my African nanny, Margaret Makube. She sang to me songs of resistance such as “Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika” in her Xhosa language.
“Melanie,” she would say, “you are blessed to have white skin, not cursed like me who was born black. One day Nelson Mandela will free us black people from all this oppression.”
I saw apartheid through the eyes of a child. My experience was unique as Margaret was more of a surrogate mother than just a nanny, since my mother was often too ill with complications from a stroke and ulcerative colitis to take care of me.
I spent many hours after school sitting with Margaret and her friends listening to their conversations, partly in English and partly in Xhosa. I heard stories of pain and suffering; of how the government-imposed curfews and racial laws made their lives marginal and unbearable.
While Mandela was serving life in prison for high treason, and while his African National Congress Party was strictly banned from society and was viewed as public enemy number one, he symbolized liberation for Margaret and her friends.
Historically, Jewish South Africans were sympathetic to the plight of those affected by apartheid. After all, our Jewish history in Europe was also fraught with discrimination and racism.
Major outspoken opponents of apartheid were Jews such as Helen Suzman, a liberal anti apartheid activist; Harold Wolpe, a lawyer, sociologist and activist; and Joe Slovo, a leading member of the African National Congress. They later, together with Mandela, helped formulate the new South African government.
My father was particularly sympathetic and showed compassion and kindness to Margaret, her family and her friends by giving them extra money, food and clothing. However, this did little to alleviate the harsh reality of their lives.
On more than one occasion our neighbors reported my father to the police for sheltering too many Africans on our property. He wanted Margaret and her children to be able to live together, but the harsh Pass Laws dictated that her children live away from her in Alexandria, a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
Margaret’s life was a constant testimony to the evils of apartheid. We feared one day the oppressed would become the oppressor. How could peace and coexistence follow such cruelty and inhumanity?
It was unimaginable that the imprisoned Mandela would one day become the face of reconciliation and the leader of a new democratic South Africa.
And so many years later as I cast my vote my thoughts were of Margaret Makube who now had dominion over her life and her future.
I imagined her singing “Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika,” the new South African anthem, the words no longer symbolic of resistance but rather acceptance:
Sound the call to come together,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom
In South Africa our land.
South Africa-native Melanie Wasserman, MSW, LCSW, is a psychotherapist at Health Psychology Associates in Milwaukee.
Loading ...