Being part of the SAWIP team and being emerged in matters of current affairs brings along with it a mental awakening and an awareness of everything that surrounds in moments of daily life ( you know, the kind of reality you become desensitized to). Daily life for me this past week has been like a splash of ice cold water on a warm face that’s still fast asleep all because of a single story…
As fate may have it, my mother read my very first blog a day or so after I had posted it. In my previous post ( in case you have not had the chance to read it) I wrote about the stomach punch of a moment I encountered whilst watching a documentary of the forced removals in district six and hearing the happenings of the forced removals on “ Die Vlakte “ in Stellenbosch.
We ( my mother and I) sat on my bed as we usually do, she on the edge near the door with her knitting and me at the opposite corner ( my favourite corner), talking about anything and everything under the Sun.
Deep in discussion, I don’t pay much attention to my mother reaching over to take my laptop. She reads a few sentences, turns to me and says : “ Waa het djy gehoor vannie vlakte? “ translated, “ where did you hear about “The Vlakte”. I say : “ Oh, os het n session oor dit gehadt in SAWIP” translated, oh, we had a session about it with SAWIP. She looks up at me with a slight smile on her face and says “jaa, os het da gebly”. I see her face before me but simultaneously see a flash back of a moment in class when those documentaries were playing and I had to turn my head away from my peers so no one would see that I was crying. My mom went through that? my family lived through that?…
My mother was 15 years old when she and the rest of her syblings was removed from “Die Vlakte”. They lived on Bird street. She was separated from my grandmother. My mother and her syblings moved to Cloetesville to go reside with my grandmother’s husband’s sister. My grandmother had a live-in job with a Jewish family in “Die Vlakte” so she remained behind.
After roughly 15 years of uncomfortable silence whenever I asked about life during apartheid ( or watching them talk around the subject ), this was the first description I had of what happened to my family during the years of apartheid. The trauma never spoken about, only the good memories before. I include pictures of the good memories to this post.
Now, fast forward to the world I live in today where to two hours ago, I had to pass a group of gangsters as my mom and I walked to the store, watching young guys enter the yard at the drug dealer, anger welling up within me, I was reminded… this is the remnant face of a displaced society. A place where issues such as race, class, belonging, poverty and violence is still very much the reality of the world we live in.
Burdened by the question, what is the South Africa you wish to build and see manifest and how will you exist and influence the space you inhabit to realize it Mauricia?.
I also turn to you my fellow reader, we have all been given the responsibility to bring forth change, it is OUR CHOICE whether to influence positively or negatively. So amidst the hurt, anger and unrest, what will YOU CHOOSE? What will YOU CHANGE?
Yours In Leadership,
Maurica