I Moved From One South Africa to Another

[Nontombi]
I remember that night in 1994 when the election was called for President Mandela. I took my then 2 year old daughter, Mungi, put her on my back and went out into the streets of Soweto to celebrate. When we got back home, I went into my grandmother’s room and she said to me “I always believed that this day would come in your lifetime. How glorious is our God that I have lived to see it.” That night, with those two women who represented my past and my future, I celebrated sure in the knowledge that we had at least started to truly win against racism. I thought my children would never have to live with the fear and oppression that had been my lot growing up. Of course I knew that one election would not change the world, but I truly believed that we had made a substantial dent in racism worldwide.

[Malcolm]
The slogan 'Praise and Protest' framed the work I was doing in the South African struggle. Each of us activists played a small part in a massive project. My contribution was to help build a library of socially conscious worship songs to enable the church to become a credible prophetic voice in our corrupt and inhumane system. I gathered a multi-ethnic, multilingual community of creatives, and misfits from the margins of our society, to join me in the work. And the songs that we wrote juxtaposed the integrity of the kingdom of God and the injustice of our country. They touched a nerve ending and gave a spectrum of the church language to participate meaningfully in our national march to freedom.

[Nontombi]
I always juxtapose my experience with my daughter and grandmother in 1994 with my experience with Mungi in 2016. The morning after the election I was in her room, in my apartment in Alexandria, talking to her and a friend of hers who had called absolutely sobbing. Through the whole election process, they truly believed that the people of this country would wake up and refuse to go down the road of racism and zenophobia that was Trump’s election manifesto. All I could say to them was: “Our people know how to make it through things like this. We have survived slavery, colonialism and apartheid.” But even as I was saying this to them, and trying to encourage them, in my own head was playing” “Why? Why do need to survive atrocities against us? Why must we prepare our children for a world that refuses to accept their humanity? Why? And, as the days, months and years have unfolded, I feel as though I am reliving my youth. As tear gas is used by the military and police in more and more cities, it feels like we are in 70’s and 80’s South Africa.

[Malcolm]
I always knew that my experience in South Africa was going to help me when I moved to America, but, honestly, I did not expect for it to feel like I would be moving from one South Africa to another. Hence, I am once again in the trenches helping build a musical catalog under the banner “Praise And Protest.” Just like at home, the church here has a long history in the practice of racism. With very similar justifying propaganda, and with white Christians being extremely susceptible to it.

[Nontombi]
Whites, including white Christians, seem unable to contemplate the catastrophic impact of a multi-century traumatic history on blacks and other people of color, while promoting psychological care for much lesser wounds amongst the privileged.

[Malcolm]
Just like in South Africa, when racism is brought up, White Christians all too often respond by stressing their preference to stay out of politics, yet freely jumping into political discourse about select issues that they deem more important or that affect them personally. When someone comes up with a simple and compassionate statement like “black lives matter”, White Christians responses are often shocking and very revealing.

[Nontombi]
White Christians often feel comfortable, publicly supporting and voting for white politicians who have racist histories, rhetoric and policies, when those politicians’ policies safely protect them and their interests.

[Malcolm]
Another similarity, right wing actors stirring up violence at peaceful protests, inciting black protestors to join in their trouble, then artfully fleeing the scene, framing the black participants that they have invoked as the real trouble causers.

[Nontombi]
Law enforcement is unnecessarily aggressive toward black people and other people of color, all too often leading to the loss of life. As I watched the teargassing of people outside the church in DC, I was taken back to the ways in which police and military attacked Black people at church services and funerals at home. How is it that law enforcement cannot see what we see. The times that they peacefully arrest whites who have committed murder as opposed to the killing of Black women, men and children for minor infractions.

[Malcolm]
All this said and done, white people here easily feel victimized when their feelings are hurt, with very little consideration for the way that racism threatens non-whites’ survival and not just their feelings.

[Nontombi]
The list of similarities goes on and on and on.

[Malcolm]
I know it well. I grew up in it.

[Nontombi]
There is, however, one massive difference.

[Malcolm]
In the South Africa in which I grew up, the white community knew we had an issue. We were known for racism. It was our national brand. Our government legislated it and the majority of the white community were HONEST and downright indulgent about enjoying the benefits that they were afforded. Everything was out in the open.

[Nontombi]
In this South Africa in which I now live, it’s hard to find a white person who will be honest about the way that they have leveraged their privilege against others. The sense that many portray is that racism ended in the sixties, yet you will be hard pressed to find any Black person, or, in fac any other person of color, who feels this to be the case, yet the overwhelming majority of white Christians voted for our current President, displaying a tone deafness to his racist history, rhetoric and policies. The dissonance is blaringly loud.

[Malcolm]
And now, in recent times, many of these deniers are coming out of the woodwork to speak out loudly and suddenly against racism, a racism in which they appear never to have engaged.

[Nontombi]
The similarities are real. But this difference is pugnaciously loud and bold, and makes this, my new South Africa, all the more frightening. It is time that we, who call ourselves people of God, speak the truth to a power that oppresses and kills us, our children and our sisters and brothers.

[Malcolm]
God Almighty, help us.

[Nontombi]
Open our hearts that we may hear and live your New Commandment - Love one another as I have loved you. May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.