Looking Back

I’ve been in South Africa for 3 weeks now. It’s the longest amount of time I’ve spent outside of the country. I think it has been a very valuable experience and I’d like to reflect on some of my thoughts looking back at the trip.

The purpose of the class was to study reconciliation in South Africa. We focused on post-apartheid race relations as a measure of the effectiveness of reconciliation and what that process entailed for South Africa. The rest of my summer will be spent applying this information to a project at a local level.

The main thing I’ve noticed through conversations with individuals is that reconciliation has occurred to different degrees for different people. The macro-level adjustment to post-apartheid relations is independent of each individuals progress of coming to understanding. Aretha, the Afrikaner who I talked with on the plane believed people naturally segregate themselves, which is why nothing is better for her now and in fact sees the country as sliding backward now that white influence has retreated slightly. Her view had some credibility added to it when Don Foster pointed out that contact isn’t happening between different racial groups with the volume necessary to create an integrated society.

Last night though we attended a book signing event that one of our lecturers invited us to and the audience was mixed 50/50 black and white with discussions taking place between the two groups and no evidence of “natural segregation” to be seen. Attendees were openly talking about racial issues as well as gender and sexuality discrimination. It was hard to imagine, looking at the crowd, that these people could not legally gather like this twenty years ago.

I think the primary difference between these totally opposing viewpoints is the level of engagement the individual had with the process. For the folks at the book signing event it seemed that many of them had been active in the anti-apartheid movement, were progressive on social issues, and pursued equality with every action of their daily lives. For Aretha, she was raised in apartheid and was unaware about it’s existence until it fell. Afterward, she sees her place of living become something completely different than what she grew up to. She attributes high crime rates to racial tendencies instead of socio-economic conditions; shanty town living to an African culture of village living instead of lack of access to basic resources and jobs; and sees the black population dominating the unskilled labor force as natural instead of the product of oppressing the education of several generations.

I believe much of this can be attributed to the conditions upon which contact hypothesis operates. These are as follows…

Equal Status, both groups taken into an equal status relationship,

Cooperative Activity, both groups work on a problem/task and share this as a common goal, sometimes called a superordinate goal,

Personal Interaction, the task must be structured so that individual members of both groups are interdependent on each other to achieve this common goal,

Social Norms, some authority that both groups acknowledge and define social norms that support the contact and interactions between the groups and members.

I believe that the individuals who were advocating for equal rights and were aware of the inequality before South Africa became a democracy had all of these conditions meet. They therefore came in contact to work on the common cause of bringing down apartheid and became friends and equals in the process. Don Foster said when he returned to South Africa after studying in London, he worked with political groups acting against apartheid and said he had some of the best experiences of his life and formed the strongest friendships. These types of personal interactions seem necessary for individual reconciliation. The collective reconciliation that then results from the accumulation of all these individual interactions allows for societal healing at large.

This distinction between the macro and micro level reconciliations is something that our group has dealt with extensively. My understanding at this point is that individual reconciliation may occur through a variety of processes including forgiveness, justice, reparations, apology, mindfulness, and contact. It is not the job of the government to make these interactions occur, but to provide a safe space for them to take place. This was the purpose of the TRC. For some, who felt that justice of reparations were necessary for their personal reconciliation, the TRC fell short. Others felt that the purpose was to provide a venue for truth telling, in which it partially succeeded. The final viewpoint I see regarding the TRC is that it was there to form a common history, something I believe it succeeded in. Every tour guide and lecturer have common aspects of South Africa’s history they consider important and while each one knows different smaller details. The academic and tourist industries seem to be on basically the same page when it comes to history.

So I leave South Africa optimistic. The complexity and sheer number of issues the country faces seems daunting, but the frank manner in which they are addressing them signals promise. Perhaps it’s a similar mentality that we should be adopting with our conflict mediation in our community at home. We’ve heard some people say that since the US has gone through the struggles of becoming a democracy sooner it should be South Africa learning from our experiences. This trip has proved both countries have wisdom to bring to the table and that the long walk to freedom is one that knows many bends and dips, not all of which can be conveniently charted out. It has been an exceptional experience to be able to learn from a new culture and a different history. I will continue to blog throughout the summer as I compile the many hours of video and audio I’ve recorded into a succinct project. Thank you very much for following this blog while I’ve been abroad and safe travels to my peers.