the Fairy Tale called Stellenbosch


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Africa » South Africa » Western Cape » Stellenbosch
November 3rd 2006
Published: November 3rd 2006
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I have been living in Stellenbosch for three months now and the oak-lined streets, the mountains glowing orange with each sunset, the Afrikaans language that floats around the campus and fills the background of my thoughts—these features and a thousand others greet me everyday. Slowly but surely they have become the sensations of home, the everyday commonalities that I hardly notice but cannot imagine Stellenbosch without.

This process of Stellenbosch becoming my home has been marked by countless distinct experiences, snapshots that so clearly displayed the reality of this place. Yet I have time and time again deferred the responsibility of pronouncing and exposing this place in all its style and shame. Perhaps this is because I recognize my ignorance and I fear that my short-sighted judgments cannot do this situation justice—each new encounter unfolds for me just one more dimension of this complex situation called South Africa, the child of a history of anguish and injustice. I shrink under the weight of the task of unearthing even the first layers of this place. By articulating the injustice and the beauty, my personal reflections take on concrete form; these thoughts become pieces of reality in you, in your reading of them. And by naming these truths, I must at the same moment confront myself because I too, have a role to play. I am situated in the midst of these complexities, in this place I call home. In my everyday life, I have become a participant of both goodness and injustice.

The truth is, Stellenbosh is a fairy tale. It is a lie. It isn’t real. Sure, you can place your feet firmly on the pavement and the coffee will still burn you if you drink it too fast. Hell, you can even sit in a classroom, listen to a lecture, acquire knowledge, and get a degree. On the surface, it all seems real enough. But just because it’s tangible doesn’t mean it’s true. Nope, not so. In fact, the entire White South Africa is a complete artificial construct. If you look close enough, it’s not so hard to see.

Look a little closer. They cook my favorite pizza down at Bohemia, the local pub. They sweep my floor and clean my toilet. They froth the milk in my cappuccino. They plant those beautiful orange flowers I pass by on the way to class. They build the apartments and repair the roads. They patrol the streets at night so I’m safe walking home.
And when their work is done, they return to the township, to homes made of cardboard and tin. They have no toilet or floor to scrub. You can forget about the pizza and cappuccino. And safety and security in a township? Are you kidding?

And here is the dream, that somehow everything we see is rightly ours. And by “we” I mean, us whites, of course. Perhaps this is a hasty generalization but I’m just telling you what I see. Look a little closer.

And here is the reality, that this entire white South Africa rests on thievery. The place was usurped by colonizers. The fantasy is a design of apartheid, and it lives on in the material inequalities inherited from the past. Yesterday’s segregation by law is today’s segregation by access to resources.

This fantasy world is not ours and it never was. This entire world is built with resources we stole by people we enslaved. And the fantasy depends on inequality. The entire dream—in all its beauty—is infested with injustice.

The problem is, when the lie is all you know, you never question it. And this lie is an intricate one, embedded in the very structure of this society. Injustice seen in its true form pierces the conscience and destroys the euphoria of the fantasy. So the fantasy must be protected by a towering wall of ignorance and inexperience.

My time here in Stellenbosch is a testimony to force of this fantasy. My days are a recycling of forgetting and remembering. These injustices that I once saw so clearly have faded into the background with the mountains and the thousand other features of daily life. I have wrestled the evil of apathy that comes with a life of constant comfort. I have struggled to remind myself again and again of the true context of my life here.

Every Wednesday I go to Kayamandi Primary School in the township and I help a handful of cool kids with their English pronunciation and vocabulary. I joke with Lucky about being a gangsta and try to get Lulama to crack a smile. Sometimes I ask them what they are going to do to change South Africa. Before I know it the hour is over. I get back in the minivan and return safely to campus and go on about my business writing papers and drinking coffee. I have no idea where those kids go once the final bell rings. I don’t know what their houses are made of or what they eat for dinner. I don’t know if their parents tell them how much they love them, if they have parents at all.

And the fantasy depends on me not knowing. The fantasy is structured to preserve itself, so the wall is built in. The very structure of this place restricts me from the experience of everyday life on the other side of the fantasy, with all its tastes and smells and joys and fears. I am barred from that post script to this paradise.

I have no conclusion to these reflections. Any word of closure I might offer would be utterly insincere and altogether false. With no conclusion in sight, I publish these thoughts, compelled by a sense of urgency to fill the silence. To make some attempt at truth.















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3rd November 2006

That was good.
3rd November 2006

i think it's so necessary that you wrote this. i'm glad you did. i love you, crazy mama! -whit
4th November 2006

More food for thought
Current South Africa is a legacy of a horrible system What is going to be the legacy of the current attrocities being committed? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5052138.stm
4th November 2006

amen. i know i've said this before, but thanks for putting into words all that is so overwhelming and most challenging in SA. it kind of lets me off the hook of publishing like this for my family to read. :) you interested in writing a thesis on theatre??
4th November 2006

Truth beyond the Tale
Sarah - Thank you for continueing to look critically at the world in which we live and reflect on the the truth that is so often overlooked due to its common existence. What action will spring from knowing the truth?
5th November 2006

excellent
So Seeing really is not always believing! You've got compassion and in-sight bigger than all of Africa. Love you so very much-mom
5th November 2006

Wow!
Sarie- I just wanted to thank you for your words of truth. Your expression of the fairy tale is incredibly moving. You have a way with words that helps the mental picture of life. I respect the fact that you are there and that you see that truth. Oh my goodness, you are an incredibly awesome woman and writer. Do you have any idea what you could do with your words alone? Not to mension your passion and determination behind those words. You are such an inspiration and I am proud to be your sister. I love you and again I appreciate the awarness you are giving. -Val
6th November 2006

Sarah~~ Your words are so powerful and your heart is so strong. We spend our lives fighting the battles people call hopeless and in many senses we refuse to define hopelessness for ourselves. Our strength is in our love, it is in our cautious and ever watching eyes and in the attempt to expose reality and injustice for what it is…in hopes to find some truth. As I have watched you grow and become so much more wise and understanding, it makes it that much more painful for me to not be there to experience this with you. I think we have learned through this past year in each other’s physical absence that we are strong on our own…but also that the increasing love, compassion, and understanding of a true friend often makes many of the battles worth fighting. You have been this for me and I thank you…now just get back here (and please…no little surprise packages)!
10th November 2006

freedom
yes and amen. it sucks when i am let down by the fantasy that i bought into my whole life. and i am surrounded by its injustices daily when i pick up a dang history book. like who do we think we are? i guess that all depends on who we think they are... i love you sarey.
15th November 2006

Serious thoughts
Think you need to slow down on the coffee. Actually, I was moved by this last round of contemplations and sensations. I have been educated, entertained and enlightened by your blog. See you when you get back to Murvil.
15th December 2006

white american
I am overwhelmed and grateful for this response, and I don't know if you'll read this, but I would like to give an account for my words. Injustice is everywhere, and my experience in Stellenbosch is just one place that I have encountered it. Could I think for one second that the entire American Dream, the food we eat, the petrol we fill our huge cars with, the land we live on, our consumerist lifestyles, and even most of our religion is all an appaling lie. This is my burden to bear and the struggle that I am responsible for as an American. I do recognize that my situation is a variation of the South African legacy. My ancestors murdered the native people of our land. We enslaved Africans. We upheld segregation until the 1960s. Today we discriminate against latinos and Mexicans and we expliot their labor, barring them from basic human dignity. The United States has been engaged in military endeavors every single day since Pearl Harbor and we now are responsible for the sensless death now taking place in Iraq. All these are not just mere facts, they are burdens that I bear responsibility for as a citizen of the United States. The point of my record of South Africa is not to downplay any other injustice going on in the world, but simply to name the injustice I was confronted with there. I never claimed that my account was the full picture, because that simply is not possible. As I said in the blog, I put off writing it for so long because I recognized that my perspective as a foriegn exchange student was limited. But still it was something, and my conscience wouldn't let me sit in silence--posting only blogs of cute animals and smiling friends. Some of the most amazing people I met were White South Africans, but that doesn't wipe out the privildge and selfish ignorance that was also a large part of my experience there. As for your identity as a White African, I did have that talk with a friend of mine there. As the inheritance of colonization, we all who care about the present reprecussions of the past must struggle with how to turn guilt into positive change for our society. You are not alone on that, and just as I am an American, so you are an African. It is a part of our identity that must not be denied. That's it. This world that we find ourselves in today is often an overwhelming web of injustice, and sometimes I get exhausted and hopeless struggling to free even myself from it. But I am learning to do what I must. The bottom line is that back home, nobody would ever know about these injustices if I didn't publish them, and I do have a responsibility to speak this truth. And I thank you for doing the same. Feel free to email me further at sarahehailey@hotmail.com
2nd January 2007

hi
hi. I live in Stellenbosch, too, I'm 19 years old and attend the local university. I hate to ruin your fantasies even more, but Stellenbosch sucks more than you know. I even feel sorry for you because I get the feeling you mingle with the "upper classes" of Stellenbosch ( the brainless little fashion victims who drink all their parents' money away at Mystic Boer and Bohemia while the country is starving with poor people, crime etc. ) Here is the deal: Few people give a damn about anyone but themselves in that town. Take away your cool clothes and your money and see if anyone is going to love you. Criminals run amock in that town. There have been 3 attempts at my life and I have done nothing wrong. The "white guilt" picture you have painted is beautiful and moral and all, but the country is dying and black people kill each other more often than they kill white people. It is easy to sit in the seats of the rich and condemn white people and past generations for all they have done but the truth is this: The Government Here Sucks. Ok? It is not my fault that people are still poor. The government promised its people free HOUSES AND A GOOD NON-CORRUPT LEGAL SYSTEM TEN YEARS AGO. The government won't even use the death penalty to protect the innocent little children IN TOWNSHIPS who are being raped at age 2 or whatever. WAKE UP. REALITY is a sick thing in this country. I suggest you enjoy what you have and stop feeling bad about your ruined fantasy right away, because you are in a fortunate position. And don't blame us whites when some criminal saws your head off. I've heard lots of black people say the country was better under Apartheid. Cuz, back then people were poor, but now they are not only still poor, they are being chopped up. Like I said, your fantasy will be doubly ruined if you realise that black and white in this country is on a filthy stinking quest for power, sex and destruction.
2nd December 2007

Really good
Interesting. Sorry for adding to an 'old' article but as a Brit who was comtemplating coming to study here I wondered if it were a 'multiracial' environment clearly ready by what you've said, it's not. However, I would still like to come as I'm interested in the W. Cape. Cheers!
31st December 2007

I think it's always easy to be idealistic when you are young, a student with limited responsibility. I guess seeing that you are studying you are aspiring to have some career, make some money and join the billions of consumers of the world. The majority of people, white and black are struggling hard to make a living and provide for their families. Those who do better will provide better opportunities for their children (I guess as a foreign exchange student you have been given some of these opportunities as well). How did you determine that some of those people in their BMWs are not philanthropists themselves helping where they can. Finally Stellenbosch is a fantastic place with a fantastic diverse culture, I think it's great that you help out in the townships but I don't really believe this blog is of any use other than to ease your own conscience.
25th May 2008

wow, that was so well written. nice one!
18th September 2009

Ag shame.
5th November 2009

Utter bullshit
I live in Johannesburg not Stellenbosch, but I strongly disagree with this article. Just because you were there from your disgustingly priveledged background doesnt not mean you can smear all white people, especially those of a country you are not even a resident of, in the same colour. Every day I experience black against white racism. I have been unemployed for 7 fucking years. Every news headline is an attack on my people and my culture. While ignorant fly by night martyrs like you want to tell everyone how we must give more to blacks, poor whites like me with nothing are ever more burdened with your misplaced guilt. And truly undeserving lazy blacks rise ever higher and richer in all facets of society.
27th March 2010

what are you going to do about it?
So you think it's a fantasy? Have you seen the cars that some African people drive? It is not only a white problem- it is a rich problem! Teach them to fend for themselves and although the world might think English is the way - what is their mother tongue and why can't they learn that? I dreamt of going to STellenbosch University but did not get that dream - my parents and my waitressing could not afford it!! I made a new and eventually better plan- at Home in Rural Zululand! Now here in Cape Town I'm teaching in my mother tongue children who don't speak it!?? Wake up and don't blame the past look to the future and what are you going to do about it? Drink more coffee because if you worked hard for your money then you deserve to drink the coffee without a guilty conscience. Birth control and going back to your cultural home is far better than living in squalor in a shack- if all else failed you'd go back home before living in cardboard!

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