Legacy of Slavery in South Africa by Shao-yi Chiang

Legacy of Slavery in South Africa

SHAO-YI DODO CHIANG Fall 2013

Prologue

During Thanksgiving break of 2013, I had the opportunity to go on a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, which is initiated and supported by a Liberal Arts elective course: Dialogue Across the Diaspora: Haiti, South Africa, Art, and Narratives of Resistance, taught by Jonathan Highfield. Within this class, we drew connections between Haiti, South Africa and our base city, Rhode Island according to the colonial history of slave trade and its consequential legacy. South Africa, Haiti and Rhode Island, each played as an essential role in the colonial history of slavery and slave trade. The impact still remains and reverberates as the derivative of colonial history - globalization continuously shapes the two countries. While Haiti became the first colonial nation to escape slavery, cheering its independence in 1804, South Africa was the last nation on the continent to accede to majority rule, with the official ending of Apartheid in 1994. Prior to the trip, we read narratives from both Haiti and South Africa, bringing about dialogue between the two countries. By looking into both countries' colonial histories, issues on politics, struggles for freedom, racial injustice and poverty, we start to realize the embedded strong connections of historical events and the enormous impact the legacy of slavery induce throughout history and nations. It is not only an engraving of a human catastrophe, but also a recurring collective memory continually imprints the same traces in the mind of every one of us.

What is Legacy?

Legacy is at the same time the consequence and the cause of an ongoing influence in the way we judge and make decisions. Such legacy is embedded in one or multiple structural systems like history or social status that are constructed by human society. It implicitly affects our perspectives and generates different filters before our eyes. It is the social, intellectual, political and economical baseline we inherited and accustomed to which continually shapes both our psychological and physical world.

The Imperial Gaze Legacy of Cecil Rhodes Throughout the week, we received the warmest hospitality by our hosts from University of Cape Town (UCT), who provided us wonderful accommodation within the beautiful campus, and mind opening tour. On one of the tours around campus, we arrived at the Rhodes Memorial on the hillside of Table Mountain. In the middle of this classical style memorial is the giant statue of Cecil Rhodes, an imperial English businessman who established the former campus of UCT in the early 19th century, gazing straight ahead with his back against the Table Mountain. The memorial is a symmetrical architecture featured with provocative statues such as a nude horse rider and four lions lay on each side of the step, providing a view to north east towards the Cape to Cairo route. Along with pride, as British taking over the global marine authority, and the ambition to conquer the entire Africa all the way through Cairo, Cecil Rhodes established an imperial legacy that overlook the entire Africa as place to conquer and exploit. As the discussion of this legacy of Rhodes heated up, I stood on the edge of the lookout and squinted my eyes. Right in front of me, are lanes of wide highways with cars whizzing by and the entire Cape Flat where thousands of colored and black communities were forced to move here during the Apartheid. These motorways were racial and are now

economic boundaries that create pockets of inclusive lots and segregated communities. People set up fences and hire security companies, trying to enclose themselves and also between the communities. What is the legacy of Rhodes? I believe this is the legacy of Rhodes, the imperial gaze, for which the people who has to pass across the highways do not matter. What matter is the prosperity and development of an economic infrastructure from the perspective on top of the mountain gazing across the Flat.

Bottom Panorama of the view towards Cape Flats

Lwandle Legacy of the Migrant Workers Lwandle is one of the famous townships in Cape Town. It was formerly built as an migrant workers dormitory for controlling the numbers of black workers during the Apartheid period. As the new democratic government set out to transformed the dormitory into single-family residence, the local community realize the need to preserve the legacy of these migrant workers and their families. The Museum of Lwandle Migrant Labors consists of three parts, the museum, community center and Hostel 33. The museum housed a variety of artifacts and historical documents, from the passes workers carried to the kitchen wares and furnitures. There were rows and rows of exhibition materials explaining the history of Lwandle and the formation of its current condition. Hostel 33 is a single story building preserved in its original condition as a migrant worker dormitory unit. Each building housed eight units, with no privacy or common space. Each units consists of two beds with a table in the middle. As migrant workers policy eased, families were allowed to move into the dormitory with their worker fathers. The population grew but not the space. Crowded with children from each family, the space was used to be filled with sweat and infantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cries. Looking up at the ceiling where cardboard and used textile loosely fixed to insulate the corrugated metal roof.

Further in the back of the museum is the community center which houses after-school programs for the children and a library with small collection of books. As we walked in and stirred up a small commotion within the little readers, Alex, the museum manager who is maybe only in his early 20s, commented, “I am interested in how these kids will do in the future, I didn’t have the opportunity to have access to books when I was their age.” During our tour around the township, there is an unusual tension between the locals and our herd. It was a complex feeling that seems to carry a bitter taste at the end of your throat. Township tours are popular and a major tourist attraction in which vans and vans of foreigners travel to the nearby unofficial settlements with their particular gaze and cameras. They awkwardly walk around people’s neighborhood and capture the innocent laughter of local children. Are we seeking a relief from guilt or satisfaction out of sympathy? As we walked passed their home, children openly approached us and ran in circle. Some of them even attempted to hold our hands. Why did they do that? Should I respond to their friendliness by holding their hands or are we just engraved harder in the mind of the kids, their parents and ourselves an unspoken system, a very complex legacy of superiority? While Alex and the founders of the museum spearhead in protecting the legacy of their community, they are inevitably dependent on this bigger, unspoken legacy. But what else can they do to reach out and to create platform for entities to exchange and interact?

Madiba Legacy of the Nelson Mandela At a phenomenal time and a phenomenal place, we have the great honor to visit the studio of Benny Gool and Roger Friedman. Two influential journalists who closely documented and recorded Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Jasmine Tutu from Apartheid to the current time. Benny is known for his first-hand photographs of the political transformation in South Africa. Inside the studio, we discussed about the future of South Africa. About how to sustain and commemorate the legacy of Nelson Mandela. We talked about the role of photography and how it as a tool of art objectify/flatten but also creates access to the subject. One cannot imagine their tremendous effort in drawing the public attention to the political issues of South Africa. After the long discussion, we were invited to the Civic Center for the opening of an Mandela exhibition put together by Benny and Roger. As we arrived at the Civic Center, where public administrations resides each corner of the building and creates a indoor plaza. The exhibition located right in this

indoor plaza where public can casually stop by and view. There were many precious and exclusive photographs of Mandela which depicts his genuine characteristics of tenderness towards children, firmness to global parties and humor to friends. Even without knowing the fact that Mandela is going to pass away few days after we got back from South Africa, I was right there, inspired by his short and simple quotes displaying on the board. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am influenced more than ever before by the conviction that social equality is the only basis of human happiness.â&#x20AC;? Carried with his quotes of inspiration, we headed to Robben Island a few days later. There is one specific place made me throbbed with respect and hope. It is a pile of stone few yards in front of an old lime quarry. The lime quarry was designated to torture and undermine the political prisoners both mentally and physically. They chiseled, carved and carried the stone back and forth without purpose under the stingy sun and above the heated ground. In 1995 Mandela returned to Robben Island where he spent 19 years of his imprisonment and revisited the lime quarry with other ex-prisoners. He walked out of the crowd and picked up a stone and place it on the ground. Following by the same action from the rest of the ex-prisoners, this pile stood here to commemorate the lives who suffered and the hardship they endured. I was extremely moved by this scene for he transformed the definition of memorial into an action which rejected the arbitrary statute or grand structure and become as humble as something embodied the human natural instinct towards gravity - pile of stones. For Mandela the legacy of Robben Island has to be memorized through simple human action in which we materialized in the physical world and we make action.

During this short 6 days in Cape Town, I experienced surprise, agony, sadness, helplessness, empowerment, excitement and hope, that all mixed and generated numerous fruitful thoughts. In the end, I ask myself, what is legacy? Legacy is something we carried unintentionally, unaware, and somehow it is destined to each individual lives. It could be alter, but it can never be removed. it is something amorphous and constantly seeping through the cracks of our consciousness. It is the history and the making of history. We ignore its presence, but we will never able to abandon. So the most important thing is to acknowledge the presence of legacy, to contest the meaning and to commemorate what it has carried. The reason to study and experience Cape Town through narrative and literature prior to the trip is to allow us to see clearly, beyond the superficial, to the embedded, historical legacy of slavery in South Africa. At this moment this legacy is still the driving force behind human exploitation. By learning and acknowledging the legacy we can trace back the unseen structure, find the real game players, discover the connections in between, and understand its formation and consequences.