This Land Is In My Blood

Photo by Student’s Name

The floor mosaic leads to the stone pyramid in honour of Sir Donkin’s wife, Elizabeth. This mosaic was created by a multicultural team of Port Elizabeth artists, representing their common passion for the city, a meeting of the old with the new.

During the early 1990s, our leaders stepped away from the expected and made a difference for each of us.

By Kate du Toit

There is drumming in the distance. A lone black man is sitting cross-legged on the mosaic ground facing out to sea, eyes closed, bongo drum in his lap, the morning sun on his face, braids swaying as he moves his head to his own rhythm. The city centre is below.

Not very long ago, this man would have been arrested. Not because he’s drumming, but because he is black.

It is early. The sun is just up. This is the prettiest time of the day to see the centre of Port Elizabeth, a city on the southernmost tip of Africa.

An old Chinese tourist couple stares up at the 12-meter-wide flag, grey hairs shimmering, camera around the neck. A man is walking fast across the open space, toward town, taxis and work. Large pieces of artwork can be seen in different parts of the open ground. Every piece has meaning.

Eighteen years ago a miracle happened. Civil war did not come to South Africa. Our leaders broke from an African stereotype we all are tired of hearing about.

Look for information on civil wars in Africa, and the list seems endless. About half the nations in Africa have had a civil war during the last five decades. These and other wars over control of land in Africa have cost millions of lives, and millions have been displaced.

For many, war has raged in their African nation for their entire lives. They know nothing but war.

But, thankfully, in South Africa during the early 1990s, our leaders veered boldly away from the expected. F. W. de Klerk stepped aside, and Nelson Mandela (1994) declared, “We place our vision of a new constitutional order for South Africa on the table not as conquerors, prescribing to the conquered. We speak as fellow citizens to heal the wounds of the past with the intent of constructing a new order based on justice for all.”

On the first day of Parliament, he walked in with his arm around de Klerk and then sat in the same seat from which de Klerk had led apartheid during his presidency — also the seat previous apartheid presidents had sat in when they had decided again and again to leave Mandela and his fellow freedom fighters in jail. Time after time they had decided that segregation of races should continue and only some should have rights.

The international media hailed South Africa on that day in 1994, relieved not to be reporting on yet another war. They came, they felt the pride, the respite of the nation. And they wrote about it:

“When history delivers something that looks like a miracle … the mind experiences a kind of electricity, the thrill of beginning, of seeing a new world. That was what it felt like last week to watch South Africa. Here was a spectacle of true transformation.” (Time Magazine, 1994)

“The spectacle today shattered not only the South African tradition of minority dominion but also the stereotype of liberation parliaments, for here the former prisoners were sworn in alongside their former jailers, returned exiles sat across from recycled racists, and the descendants of the system joined its victims and the next of kin.” (BBC, 1994)

“The power that had belonged to whites since they first settled on this cape 342 years ago passed today to a Parliament as diverse as any in the world, a cast of proud survivors who began their work by electing Nelson Mandela to be the first black president of South Africa.” (The New York Times, 1994)

The world could scarcely believe a man could refer to his jailer of 27 years as, “…one of the greatest reformers, one of the greatest sons of South Africa.” (Mandela, 1994)

Eighteen years on, and the world is still watching.

Port Elizabeth, the city I am now looking over, is particularly interesting in the history of South Africa. It is the largest city in the Eastern Cape Province, the area where the Xhosa tribe originates. The African National Congress was originally founded by Xhosa men, most of whom were born in villages in the interior of the Eastern Cape. Nelson Mandela. Walter Sisulu. Steve Biko. Oliver Tambo. Thabo Mbeki. Today these men are famous throughout the world for the part they played in the anti-apartheid struggle. The city is famous for its role, too. Here, Steve Biko was arrested and beaten repeatedly for more than three weeks, eventually slipping into a coma and then dying whilst being transported to Pretoria, naked in the back of a van. The first UmKonto we Sizwe cell was established in Red Location, a township just outside the city centre.

It is the centre of this same city where the sound of the drums now resonates. It is here, at the Donkin Reserve, where Route 67 culminates in a series of artworks on open, green ground at the top of a hill overlooking the harbour and the city centre.

As I stand looking at the huge, metallic Fish Bird sculpture, the stone pyramid in honour of Elizabeth Donkin in the background catches my eye, reminding me of a history before apartheid and the question so often on the minds of foreigners when one travels.

You’re white. From South Africa?

The day before, I am sitting on a little veranda. It’s a sunny winter day, the kind for which Port Elizabeth is famous. A tray sits on the table in front of us, some biscuits in a bowl, tea cups waiting to be filled. My grandparents on my mother’s side are 85 and 84 years old. They look their ages but mentally they’re quicker, it seems, than most people I know. My grandfather comes out with a piece of paper, his section of the family tree: Names, dates of birth and death neatly typed onto paper. Emotion removed. 1807 – Henriek Desmond Lupnof from Lupnof, Poland.

Why? I ask.

Why what? He replies.

Well, why did they come?

It seems almost incredible, as I sit there looking at the names, that these people made a decision 205 years ago to come to a completely uncivilised place for the rest of their lives. Would I move away from everything I know to live in a land with a completely different climate, disease, wildlife, “natives” defending their land …seemingly imminent death. Completely cut off and separated for the rest of my life from those I left behind. Why would they do that?

His answer is shocking.

It was a kind of escape. A search for freedom. They were peasant farmers. Desperately poor. Barely surviving. This was their chance to start again, to make new lives for themselves.

I am taken aback.

And here I am standing in the middle of Route 67, a representation of freedom fought for and gained — a freedom that those who lived here had until my ancestors arrived in their own search for freedom. Frontier wars, thousands of lives lost, segregation, separation, untold suffering … all because we all wanted our own version of freedom.

My grandmother’s ancestors came to South Africa in 1820 as part of the 4,000 settlers who arrived from the United Kingdom to strengthen the European presence in the Eastern Cape. Some from Scotland. Some from England. Also poor. Also looking for a new start, a kind of freedom from their endless struggles. My father’s ancestors, I discover (after a long detailed email from my father), also arrived originally from England and Ireland.

I walk across the grass, along the exquisite mosaic floor and slowly along the “Voting Line,” silhouettes of people standing as if in line to vote. Children are also part of the line and those at the front stand holding their newly acquired ID books, a symbol of their recognition as true South African citizens. It seems strange that they should have to have a green book with numbers in it to feel at home in a place their ancestors had lived in longer than my ancestors. A green book my ancestors created. This, I realise again, is what makes our history, our nation, our politics, so complicated — so interesting.

I begin to stroll down the hill.

His name is Banga. From Zimbabwe. He has been selling handmade leather bags to South Africans and tourists in the same location for seven years. The difference for the last three years is that he has been provided with an official space from which to sell. It is in the middle of the pedestrian only section at the top of Govan Mbeki Avenue, the main street running along the city centre. It is a large metal cubicle with a table and doors he can lock his items in

Photo by Student’s Name

A silhouette of Nelson Mandela leads the “Voting Line” of South Africans ready to vote in the first free democratic elections.

overnight. In the day he opens them and uses it to display his goods. The Mandela Bay Development Agency, that instituted Route 67, also has been developing different areas within the city, and the environmental upgrading of this section of the Port Elizabeth main street was one of their first highly successful projects.

My life has been very different since then, Bango tells me. I feel accepted here. I can give, too. And I like coming to my work. Every day my friends are here. We are all the same. Different blood. But we want the same things. This city is good to me.

I ask Banga if he perhaps knows the man who is playing drums up at the Donkin.

Yes. He is there every morning. He welcomes in the day, says Banga.

Where is he from?

Mozambique. He tells me his father and older brother were killed in the civil war. He was only 5 when it started, but his eldest brother was 18 so he had to fight. His three other brothers were also too young when the war started. But it carried on. They got older. And then they had to fight, too. His third eldest brother lost both his legs to a land mine, but they were just glad he survived. As a young boy he had to leave his family home and live in refugee camps. At 22, he heard that South Africa had a black president and so he made a very long journey to the border of South Africa and claimed refugee status. The sea seemed like the most peaceful place he could go, and so Port Elizabeth became his home.

A recent immigrant to a nation once again promising wealth and freedom from the hardships of life back home, Banga helps me realise for the first time what freedom means to me, and I cannot help feeling a kind of companionship with him.

Freedom is knowing those who make up the city I live in, regardless of their culture. It is knowing my history. It is appreciating the hardships my ancestors faced so that I could have all the luxuries I have today.

Some might say this isn’t my land, and I might, at times, feel a bit estranged.

But this is my land.

And freedom is knowing that this land is in my blood as much as anyone’s.

Bibliography: Marrow, L. 1994. www.time.com . [Online]. Available: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,980663,00.html . [20 August 2012]. BBC. 1994. [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/10/newsid_2661000/2661503.stm. [20 August 2012] • Keller, B. May 9, 1994. ‘Mandela is Named President, Closing the Era of Apartheid’. New York Times. • Port Elizabeth. N.d. [Online]. Available: http://www.port-elizabeth.org.za/history.html. [19 August 2012]. • Red Location Museum. 2006. [Online]. Available: http://www.freewebs.com/redlocationmuseum/. [19 August 2012]. • Franco Frescura. N.d. [Online}. Available: http://www. francofrescura.co.za/urban-issues-PE.html. [19th August 20120]