Tuesday, July 17, 2007

A dimly lit future with sharp obstacles

"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there." Charles F Kettering

I came across this quote yesterday while going through some old boxes along with this one, "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past." by Percy Bysshe Shelly. Both struck a cord with me. I found them going through some boxes filled with musky old trinkets from my varsity days. It brought back memories of toga parties, getting drunk on a single can of cider and many sleepless nights. I remember desperately trying to etch out an identity for myself, to try to fit in and to find a cause to fight for. I remember watching Nelson Mandela speak in an overcrowded student hall crammed with almost two thousand students on a sweltering Durban day.

Thinking back now, I feel extremely privileged to be living through one of the greatest political transformations of our country’s history. Having just begun university just prior to Nelson Mandela being released from prison I remember it as an exciting time. The air charged with the prospect of change, apprehension, fear, uncertainty but mostly positivity and a general sense that finally we would be moving forward as a country.

One of my most vivid memories of my first year at university (pre-post-apartheid) was of my Dad driving me to school every morning on his way to work. The endless traffic and the long winding roads through lush overgrown stretches land. As I lapped in the scenery of giant jacaranda's, coral trees and the rising morning sun, the discussion was almost always exactly the same. There was a particular 5km stretch of road that surrounded the university grounds that raised the same heated comments every, single, day.

“This land use to be ours you know?” my Dad says pointing vigorously out the window. “They didn’t even pay us for the land!” he complained.
“Yes I know Dad” I say sympathetically.
”They just made us move!”
“Yes Dad, I know..” sighing
“ They didn’t even develop the land!” more sighing. ”Are your listening..?"
“Yes Dad...”
more long sighs
“We use to live right over there! Between those two trees!” he says pointing to giant palm trees on the hill.
”I know Dad...” I say wondering exactly how it was possible that my father did not suffer from high blood pressure. Not at all surprised that my mother did.

And so it was the same almost every morning. The saddest thing was that the land was never used and remained vacant futher compounding the injury. Many were never paid for the land and if they were it was considerably lower than the market value. Save for three religious building and a crematorium, every home in Cator Manor was destroyed and thousands of families displaced. Hundreds of hard earned properties lost.

Today many years later, I watch as my father grapples with the social changes and mindsets of the new South Africa. He tries hard but some of the pain is still too deeply entrenched and I have come to realise may never be dispelled in his lifetime.

Our new democracy has afforded us many liberties but like my father many struggle with old wounds. Some attempts to heal old wounds have resulted in the infliction of new ones. Many have to reconcile themselves to that fact that they will never be any retribution or justice for past wrongs. That some wounds may never heal in this lifetime but perhaps in the generations to come. It is all very sad and frustrating.

I find myself wondering what sort of future we can look forward to in South Africa over the next 10 years? On a good day the horizon looks dimly lit and route there is littered with the sharpest of obstacles. Despite this I have to believe that our future is a good one or where does that leave me? I have to believe that we live in a good age.

Everything is possible.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really liked this post. It got my thinking about my dad...His cator manor was Fietas, which, coincidentally, was on the way to Wits...we have a weird relationship, me and my dad... where displays of emotion are shunned...I dunno...perhaps as a sign of weakness. So we never spoke too much on the way to campus...just the mundane shit fathers and their sons talk about...you know, like 'what time did you get in last night?', 'are you smoking mandrax again?', 'i really can't have you having sex under my roof'...that kind of thing. But i would often catch him stealing a glance down 13th street, where his old stood...a thoughtful look on his his face...and impenetrable sadness that is the legacy he leaves me. Ja, men and their sons. Only under the spell of whiskey has he ever opened up...to me at least. not about Feitas so much. if he talks about old neighborhood, it’s usually coloured by a nostalgic bravado...stories about so and so who was a gangster and who my father was the only one to ever stand up to…no doubt, the kinds of shit I will one day share with my son, thereby reproducing the cycle of emotionally dysfunctional male subjectivity. But, one night, three quarters of the way into a bottle of chivas, he told me about Haystek (sp?). He was the head of the security branch operating around southern jhb. Of course I knew the name. kids always know more than they should. I had even seen him once outside a june 16th rally in the 80s. But my dad and he knew each other well. See Haystek had the particular privilege of interrogating (read torturing) my father, and two of his brothers (for my dad and one of his brothers, on more than one occasion). And it didn’t end there… in so many ways that are not worth recounting, this bastard really fucked with our family...anyway with a tongue loosed by whiskey and triumphant glint in his eye, my father told me he met this ‘shit’, in the oriental plaza recently. With great pleasure my father recounted how, the once seemingly omnipotent figure now ‘beaten by history’, struggled to look him in the face...and then in a flash of wickedness how my dad said to him, “now, do you see?”...apparently leaving haystek speechless. I know that, like me, my father has many disappointments about how it all turned out...but I think that moment of confrontation, however insubstantial it might seem to me, was a one that redeemed a piece of his past.

(if this is a distraction from your blog, please delete it. It will not offend me. but your blog teased out this memory…and I wrote it, so I figured I would post it. Either way, thank you)
.

Anonymous said...

My family has no stories like this. Our stories of war and “interrogation” are rather rooted in WW2. My one grandfather kept alive through a cold Austrian night by the warmth of strangers bodies, shot dead in the morning. The other, escaping occupied Holland to the ‘opportunity’ of South Africa.

But, still, the shadows of that war haunt the edges of our family. And that was two generations ago. And for a war that had some semblance of meaning; an outcome from which some comfort could be taken, no matter how wrong.

So how do the people of South Africa heal? How do I, with my different past, help, understand, empathise? I also have to believe. But in dark moments, I wonder if I have the right to. A selfish thought. It’s not about me.

I suppose what I’m trying to say, or rather to do, is stand in a kind of silent support. Where I can’t necessarily relate, but where I can say it was wrong. And that your hope is mine too.

Flutter said...

DS, thanks for sharing that. We all have similar stories. I am glad your Dad was able to share his with you. I am sure it helped you understand him just a little bit better. The thing I have realised with parents is that they are so traumatised by the past but have been taught never to complain or talk about it. So it just lives with them - these festering wounds waiting to explode - not always making them the best parents sadly.
Sometimes I think they did the best they could with what they had to work with. Other times not!

It breaks my heart when I hear my Dad say things like: "You know when I was your age, I never thought I would ever be able to fly in a plane or visit wherever I like". Such a sad 'reality' to grow up with.

We grew up in a better age than them. We missed alot of the great struggles.

Flutter said...

Dolce, I it's kind of like how I feel when I talk to Jewish people about the holocaust or families liek your about war stories. I too can't relate and all I can offer is silent support and agree that what was done was wrong. I suppose it is all that one can do really.

We all have inherited wounds.

Beenz said...

Beautiful post and responses.

Flutter said...

Hi Beenz. Thanks, DS & Dolce have a particularly good way of expressing themselves. Hope to see you again on here.

Anonymous said...

Thing about the future is that it is never quite what you expect it to be. And when it has arrived, how do you know that it’s here. I’m just getting my head around the fact that from a quantum perspective all of life is an illusion – a dream if you will. What does that make the future then? This was such an awesome blog flutter, one of the best I have read in the longest time. Tx. Frankly.

Flutter said...

Thanks Frankly, coming from you that's a wonderful compliment.

Thanks for reading.

Anonymous said...

Flutter, my compliments on a well structured yet and nostalgic post. I grew up in the (then) "Independant" Transkei. Our school colours were black, green and yellow. Every morning, along with the school song and Die Stem, we sang Nkosi Sikele. We were young and totally unaware of the horrors that the majority of people ("non-whites") were suffering. The little town was like the proverbial desert island. Reality hit me between the eyes when an ex-boyfriend was arrested for socialising with a "coloured" girl. Parents were shocked and horrified but to me, suddenly, the masses and their sufferings, became painfully real. They were both tossed into jail and only released weeks later. In my varsity days, the Soweto riots shook my world again. I was scared, uncertain with feelings of guilt and horror all rolled into one. Only then, did I come to realise the significance of the school colours and the song we sang at school. I berated myself for years for being so naiive. In my recent "aimless wanderings" into my family history, mom (being Dutch) endured the occupation of Holland during WW2, an uncle being KIA in WW1 along with many other facts, make me realise that the problem is, in my humble opinion, is that we don't communicate enough. With family, co-workers, friends, domestics etc. etc. Only after hearing other peoples stories of loss, injustice and frustration can we truly appreciate what those brave soles did for us. Collectively.

Flutter said...

Hey Nossie, thanks!

Also feel we grew up in much easier times and I too am so grateful for all those who fought through 'the struggle'. They have given me so much. I try not to take for granted all the rights and priviledges I now enjoy - those that many parents and grandparents did not have a chance to.

Anonymous said...

I can remember walking amongst the "houses" in Cato Manor and feeling the scars - I think they could never develop the land because of the guilt they must have felt. The land around there felt hurt.

Anonymous said...

Good post.