The End of Aparthied?

On the anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, let me share an excerpt from my memoir with you. 

When I was in high school, the summer before I left for college, my mother took my sister and I to the Philppines for the first time since we’d moved to the United States. It wasn’t anyone’s funeral. Maybe it was just because I would be leaving home soon enough.

My sister and I were so Americanized, we didn’t enjoy much of what we saw or what we had to do while we were there. It was very hot but we couldn’t wear shorts or short skirts. We couldn’t wear halters and we couldn’t wear the color red.

While we were staying at our grandfather’s house, there were two girls who lived there as his maids. They were around our age and were from a distant province, living away from home. They went to school for part of their day and then worked for him. It wasn’t very difficult, I think, to care for him – cook, clean the house, do his laundry, that kind of thing. And while we were there, they took care of us. Cooked for us, cleaned for us, even did our laundry. I felt badly that they had more work with us there. I wasn’t comfortable with asking them to do things for me, like ironing. I wouldn’t let them, but they insisted. They said, “Please, your grandfather will be angry with us if you do it.” I confronted my mother who explained, “We have the means to give people employment. It is our responsibility to do that. They get to live here and go to school here. Then they send their earnings to their family in the province. They are lucky to have this arrangement. Many people would want their jobs.”

I didn’t understand at the time. But living in Botswana, I did. But the inequalities would not come easily for me, for my family. We had much to learn.

We insisted our sitter/housekeeper eat with us. At first, she would, but if someone came over, she would jump up and run to the kitchen. I told her not to do that, she said, “Yes, ma’am.” But did it anyway. One time, we went out to eat at a local fast food chicken joint, “Chicken Lickin” and she sat at a different table. When I asked her to sit with us, she declined. As we got to know each other, she told me, “It’s OK that you ask. But people will not like that. It’s not proper for me to sit with you.” And after I pressed it and she ran out of excuses, she would said, “I am not comfortable.” One time, I think another housekeeper confronted her and told her to sit separately. I let it go. I didn’t want to cause trouble.

She was embarrassed by what she ate as well. She dipped her fries in mayonnaise. Our children didn’t like mayonnaise so they told her that was gross. It wasn’t that she was gross, but that the food combo was. Turns out Germans eat French fries and mayo, so it’s not just her.

As she got to know us, she took liberties to help us fit in. At first, being “the Americans” was a cool oddity, but after a few weeks, she was anxious for us to fit in. Funny. Our friends from Zimbabwe would tease her that we hadn’t learned any Setswana, but with each passing day, she spoke more and more Amerikan English. She had assimilated to our culture.

Because I moved to Botswana, Southern Africa, the entire continent, clueless as to the history of blacks and whites, this entire situation blindsided me. I was born in the Philippines where there were economic class differences but not racial – we were all essentially the same race. Moving to America when I was four years old in 1967, segregation was pretty much over, although equality for blacks and whites would be a concept, not a reality. Oh, there was racism from my family. Black people were looked down on by Filipinos both in the Philippines and America. And while I saw plenty of racism in the mostly white upper middle class community I lived in, had experienced it first hand, I wasn’t ready for Africa.

Shortly after we arrived, I was invited to join a book club. Unaware of even prejudice within white communities, I drove to the hostess’ house with the office manager. She was an Afrikaner which meant she had a Boer background. Several of the other women were white South Africans who had English backgrounds. Apparently, quite different attitudes, or so they would claim. Then there was the white American who had married a white South African whose family raised him in Botswana. Did you get all of that? I think there was also a white woman from Zimbabwe, I’m not sure. While it was supposed to be a book club, no one mentioned a book. They pulled out wine, some snacks, and served up endless hours of gossip. Maybe they hadn’t meant to initiate me into the whole race issue, but I felt trapped and so I lashed out.

After a few glasses of wine, they recanted stories of how they treated their maids and told me how I should be with mine. Two years ago, when I saw The Help, I cried and cried. That’s what it was like at this book party. A bunch of spoiled self indulgent, insecure, bored housewives spewing venomous shit that repulsed me to the core. Who were these people and what had I gotten myself into? When I couldn’t take it anymore, I delivered what I recall as a soliloquy of epic proportions! One woman said that her maid wasn’t allowed to put her food anywhere near that of the family’s. One said, she did let her put some perishables on a shelf in the fridge, but she had a separate shelf just for her. One woman said there as a bathroom outside where they could use the sink, the toilet and the shower. Another one, who is not so bright and probably way too drunk to know what she was saying, exclaimed that she would beat her maid if she ever found out she had used a bathroom in the house! The way they spoke of the people who worked for them escalated in viciousness and repulsion. As I said, I have seen racism, but not like this. The majority of the women there didn’t just dislike black people, they wanted to see them dead.

And there I was. After years of being a rebel, I had learned to be tolerant. I had learned to keep quiet. I had learned to remain silent rather than divulge myself to people who wouldn’t understand. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be quiet. I wouldn’t be quiet. I didn’t agree with them and wouldn’t be a party to this type of hatred.

I blurted out “Ofentse is part of our family. She not only shares our food, she sits at the table with us. She uses our toilet. She takes a bath in our shower, and sleeps in our beds. She is a human being that we employ, but we don’t own her. She has as much to contribute to our lives as we do to hers. I have experienced the racism you all are talking about to a degree”(because like it or not, these women may have seen an equal because I was educated, from America, and hired to do a particular job) “but I am not Caucasian or did you not realize that?!?”

I was horrified by their deep hatred for black people. I chastised them and I brutally called them out. And when I was done and we all sat in the heaviness of my wrath, I realized, I was stuck there. I hadn’t driven myself. I had gotten a ride from one of the worst of the bigots. And I was going to have to stay at this bookless book club and then ride home with the more ignorant of the group. Ugh! Horrible way to start a new life and yet…I was very proud of myself for not letting them think their way of thinking was how everyone thought and not letting them believe I was going to succumb to their peer pressure.

There were several incidents like this that made me into a full-blown self-righteous race-avenger.

I will take the stories I share here and reflect on my participation and on my self-aggrandizement. I think I need to see myself for who I really am and these stories may help me do that.

But today, on the day that Nelson Mandela was released, I learned how new apartheid was to South Africa. His imprisonment would last 27 years but his release was only 13 years prior to our moving to Botswana. That’s not so long ago, so I guess I can understand the mixed feelings, the resentment that lingered and the awareness that needed to happen.

When we were in Botswana, we often felt the social climate and the attitudes of the residents were those of teenagers. Well, with only 13 years of social reform, racial unity, they had just turned into teenagers, but still prepubescent in many ways. I see now that I could have been more tactful. As a journalist, I had a wonderful opportunity to see the world from many different perspectives and I failed. Instead, I got on my soap box. How many times have I done that? And to what avail? I could have learned something and in turn, shared my feelings as well. I took a seemingly safe environment for these women and exploded a ticking time bomb!  Mandela promoted peace, but I declared war. What I hadn’t taken into consideration was that the battle is one they face moment by moment and has changed the course of their lives forever. I, on the other hand, had just entered the mix, taking out all of the injustices I felt as a woman, as an Asian, as a Filipino and right then, as an outsider, an American in Africa.

What I wouldn’t appreciate until we had returned to the USA three years later was that there were so many people who lived in Africa and they were displaced, they were forced to live in Botswana. None had chosen their new life, but my family had. And we had the choice to leave any time we wanted. Something they couldn't do. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/nelson-mandela-25th-anniversary-release-from-prison_n_6661646.html