Nothing is as it seems

When Jeannette and I traveled to Cuba, we left with the distinct impression that things are much more complex than they might originally appear. I now think that this is just an axiom of travel, indeed of life. Case in point: Cape Town. On our last day in the Mother City, we visited the District Six Museum, a memorial to a neighborhood that thrived as a cultural melting pot until the Apartheid government declared it a “Whites only” area. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the neighborhood was bulldozed and residents evicted and separated by race. Since the return of democracy in 1994, the new government has offered restitution to over 70,000 former residents, with the choice of cash or land. One of the 15,000 or so people who have chosen to return and rebuild is Noor Ephraim, an Indian-born Muslim who regales visitors to the museum with personal tales of District Six’s golden age. Much of what Noor told us was inspirational and unsurprising, but one thing struck me. When talk turned to the World Cup, as it inevitably does, he said, “I cannot support the Bafana,” referring to the South African team. The reason? According to Noor, the black sporting leadership has excluded non-black players, re-creating the kind of separation that dominated under Apartheid. He ticked off several qualified White and “colored” players, and concluded, “I will support the Bafana when they choose players on merit.” And this from someone who also expressed a profound ability to follow Mandela’s example and forgive those who had taken his home from him. A younger museum colleague, Clayton, expressed his support for Bafana and suggested a generational divide at work. Perhaps. But, to me, it was a reminder of the complex social system that exists in South Africa and has been made ever more complex by the coming of democracy.