Besides being committed to the beautiful game, we’re committed to learning more about daily life in South Africa for people unlikely to ever attend a match. Our recent connections through IDEX with the Whole World Women Association in Cape Town illuminated the troubling and heart-braking circumstances of women and families struggling to re-establish their lives in South Africa.
Historically Cape Town has been an international crossroads, with a permanent Dutch settlement in 1652 pushing the indigenous Khoina (originally from Botswana) from their ancestral land. The slaves brought to the Cape were from Malaysia and other parts of southern and eastern Africa (e.g. modern day Madagascar, Somalia). A more recent wave of immigrants to Cape Town, as we learned from WWWA project coordinator Mary Tal, includes African immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Uganda, Cameroon and Zimbabwe, displaced by war, economic hardship, the threat of female circumcision and political conflict. The WWWA, founded in 2002 as a self-help and support group to refugee women and their families, provides women with knowledge, resources and referrals to alleviate their struggle to establish themselves in new circumstances. It is an advocacy organization seeking to develop a more tolerant society through various means, including writing workshops. Several of the women have published their poetry and autobiographies. We met Epiphanie Mukasano, a former teacher who fled Rwanda in 1994 with her husband and three children seeking a place where human rights were respected. Recent xenophobic attacks and less blatant discrimination have made the transition to South Africa painfully difficult for many women, as the following poem by Ephiphanie Mukasano reveals:
I am the woman
you despised the other day
throwing out wicked words
which cut like a sharp knife
I am that woman
at whom you threw burning pots
and whose clothes you scornfully tore away
chasing me with a broom out of your house
I am the woman
who wandered naked
in the dark street
wondering where to go
I am the woman
full of scars, but
I do not hold a grudge
Today I am stretching out my hand
Will you take it?
Published in Living on the Fence: Poems by Women Who are Refugees from Various Countries in Africa, compiled and edited by Mary Magdalene Yuin Tal and Anne Schuster.
Out of the struggle comes fortitude and at times an astonishing capacity for forgiveness. Adela and I attended part of a half-day workshop sponsored by WWWA and a partner NGO, Magnet Theatre Productions, where a talented group of women planned and choreographed an event for World Refugee Day to foster awareness of refugee issues through spoken word, dance and song. As we sang and danced with them, as we read their poems, we are honored to be a small part of the community and collective spirit nurtured by WWWA for the betterment of us all.