01.11.2006 – Johannesburg, South Africa

This has been a remarkable day.  But before I get into the reasons for that assessment, I’ve decided that there are a few things about British imperialism that left beneficial results.  One, especially important to us linguistically impaired Americans, is that the British spread the use of English to so many places on the planet.  There are eleven official languages in South Africa, and Afrikaans is the first tongue in the Pretoria area, but English is spoken by most people, which is certainly helpful to an American traveller.

A second benefit of the British Empire, in my view, is the widespread adoption of the English breakfast.  There’s nothing quite like a “full English” to get my day off to a proper start.

Among the less happy results of British imperialism is driving on the left, but you can’t have everything, and I’m not driving here, anyway.

One of Alan Storey’s associates, Paul (I didn’t get his last name) picked me up at nine and took me first to the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, which Alan had suggested would be a good place for me to see.  It is built on the site of the Fort or Number Four prison, much of which is still standing and is available to be toured.  The prison was used to hold both hardened criminals and political prisoners, along with innumerable blacks who were imprisoned during apartheid for not having their pass with them, which was required of all blacks.  Among the prisoners held there for a time were both Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

The conditions in the prison were awful.  Prisoners were segregated by race, of course, with blacks placed in common cells with many others, with nothing but the cement floor to sleep on.  “Coloreds” (mixed race) were given slightly better conditions, Indians better, and whites the best, including wooden floors, which were not as damp and cold as the cement floors.  The racial hierarchy was most dramatically reflected in the foods given to different races, with blacks receiving by far the worst types and smallest quantities, coloreds slightly better, Indians better, and whites much better.

To guard against contraband items being smuggled in, prisoners were periodically required to strip naked and then dance around in front of guards to make sure that they were not hiding anything in their rectums.

Physicians supervised the beatings of prisoners, supposedly to ensure that they were not life-threatening, but in fact these men who were trained healers were being put in charge of torturing people.

Blacks put in solitary confinement had all clothing taken from them and were hosed down every day and left in small cells with cold cement floors, on which they had to sleep, wet and naked, even in winter.

In the women’s prison I learned of another horrifying example of the racism of the old regime in this country.  Black women prisoners were not allowed to have sanitary pads or underwear.  One woman prisoner became famous for fashioning panties for herself out of a plastic trash bag.

The building that houses the Constitutional Court—South Africa’s supreme court—was built on the site of Number Four, using bricks and stones from the prison.  This is inspired symbolism: justice rising up from injustice.

Following the tour of Number Four and the Constitutional Court, Paul took me to the Apartheid Museum—another fascinating and inspiring place.  I could go on and on about it, but a few things really stood out to me and I'll just comment on them.  Before you enter, you are randomly given a card that identifies your race.  I got black and went in through the separate entrance marked for blacks.  After entering, you go up a ramp, alongside of which the ancient history of the area is depicted with replicas of rock paintings.  As you go higher, the path narrows and then you descend, representing both going into a gold mine and into racial discrimination and, eventually, apartheid.

When I got into the main museum, among the first things I saw, in a large side room, were a KKK robe and a Confederate flag. It turned out to be a temporary exhibit on segregation in the United States and its similarities to apartheid. The exhibit seemed generally accurate about American segregation and racism.

What struck me most in the museum was a film from 1938, They Built a Nation, made to commemorate the Voortrekkers and the Battle of Blood River. It has remarkable parallels to the similarly named Birth of a Nation. As in D.W Griffith’s 1915 racist epic, in They Built a Nation it indicates that blacks, including slaves, were happy under their subordination. They are said to have loved their masters and are shown dancing and singing, just as in Birth of a Nation. Also as in Birth, blacks are shown as a threat to white women, thus providing a rationale for the defeat and repression of blacks. The Afrikaner film goes on to depict the Battle of Blood River as a great victory showing that God favored the Dutch-descended invaders and it ends with two black men reverently standing outside a building from which they have been excluded and into which the Voortrekkers have gone to thank God for their victory. The two blacks are shown as happy that God has defeated their people.

Like Alan, Paul is an amazing genuine Christian—a Christ-follower, 180° from the people who shout “Jesus” so loudly and disregard everything he taught.  I felt privileged to be in their presence.  Unlike the WWJD crowd with which we’re so familiar, who rarely if ever really do as Jesus would, these guys try to do just that.  As Alan puts it, “Having faith in Jesus is less important than having faith in what Jesus had faith in—turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, helping the poor, opposing materialism, etc.”

Alan also said that it is a major error of organized Christianity to think that Jesus was sent to die for our sins.  This misleads people into thinking that violence and death can be godly and redemptive.  Rather, Alan contends, Jesus was crucified because of the threat he posed to the entrenched economic powers of his day.

In the afternoon, Alan took me to Soweto, the vast “township” made as a separate area for blacks so that they would be available to work in Johannesburg. There have been many improvements in Soweto since the ANC government took power. Few streets had been paved and almost all homes had been “little boxes.” South African whites had no reason ever to enter Soweto and it is still rare for a South African white to go into the township. The whites who are there are almost all foreigners. We visited the only street in the world where two Nobel Prize winners had lived, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

The areas of Soweto that border highways were the only areas whites ever saw, and the houses built along the edge next to the highways were better than those inside the township, giving a false impression of the townships.

Then we went to see Alan’s Calvary Church. In the yard there is a distinctive cross, which Alan designed.  The left arm of the cross is noticeably longer than the right.  The reason, he told me, is that the left side is the side of compassion and the location of the heart, while the right is that of power, and it is the former that Jesus represents and for which he was crucified.  The arms of the cross also bend forward, offering an embrace to those who come before it.

They open the church grounds and shelters to homeless people each night—although they are located in an affluent suburban area, what Alan described as the Silicon Valley of South Africa.  They also make small plots of land on their property available for people to grow food.  Alan himself went to live for two years in an “informal settlement”—a shantytown—to understand the lives of those he feels called to serve.  He is an amazing, inspiring person.

RSM