Becker’s African Diary #4: Memories of a not-too distant past

(written on Saturday 5^th June, 2010)

Had my Berlin moment today…

Got up early, taking my bike through the sleepy city and rode over to the Waterfront, jumping on the ferry over to Robben Island. This is the prison island that saw the leaders of the Anti-Apartheid movement imprisoned during the dark ages of South Africa, most notably Nelson Mandela.

It is sad to see that it is obviously not a German monopoly that a whole nation/tribe/ethnical group, motivated by a ridiculous feeling of supremacy based on political belief/religion/philosophy or just skin colour turns into “their neighbours wolf”, and it is important for that former inmate of 9 years who showed me round – a member of the military arm of the ANC – to point out that his friends and comrades have lost their lives for something that goes unnoticed today, just 16 years later, by most South Africans.

Being here for only a few days and yet it is easy to see – and feel – what it was that he tried to describe; the sheer fact that two people of different colour meeting and facing each other, and yet the subconsciousness of them is NOT sending them signals related to “power” and “dominance”, and that these two meet as equals…in the bus, at the newsstand, giving each other way in the pedestrian zone…

The absence of these signals – permanent companions less than a generation ago – is what they fought for and first of all is a psychological more then a political dimension: Dignity. Pride. Value.

I had to think of the young 23 year old partygoer in Friedrichshain, deciding to dance the night away at the Watergate Club, crossing over Oberbaumbrücke and NOT facing a wall, NOT realizing that merely 20 years earlier he would have been confronted with structures, build by individuals who have been insane enough to believe that they have the right to limit or control their neighbours fate based on their own possession of a higher truth.

The absence of any other thought than the joy of clubbing for the boy crossing the Oberbaumbruecke and the absence of any other thought than the purchase of a newspaper by a white businessman in downtown Cape Town from a black South African salesman – both times unnoticed in most cases – is the freedom Mandela and the man at Robben Island spent their best years in prison for, and that some of their friends died for and is the same freedom that dissidents got tortured for in Stasi prisons in Germany.

Madiba, as Mandela is known, is rumoured to be in the stadium in Jo´burg on the 11th for the opening ceremony, and I am looking forward to see the 100.000 rising in admiration and love for this man, and I´ll rise too… Admiration for his “rising above bitterness”, which is something many of us do not achieve although our battle is so incredible easy compared to what he went through. There is a feeling among South Africans that he might not be with them for much longer, and some feel that this might be one of the last occasions where he faces the whole nation.

EDIT – I have had to close the comments on this article because of a spam-attack…but if you want to leave Andreas a message, go to the most recent of his articles. Thanks – Paul