An evil system like apartheid does not appear overnight.
Learning
“Mom! Trade with me!”
My 30-something daughter has just flipped over her entrance ticket to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. To her annoyance she has found the words Blanke/White. The museum tells the story of apartheid, arguably the world’s most egregious example of White supremacy. The system of apartheid, in force in South Africa from 1948 to 1994, stripped non-Whites of political, economic, and social rights and dictated where they could live and work and study, all with the aim of ensuring the continued dominance of the White minority.
The separate entrances to the museum replicate one of the hallmarks of apartheid. The underside of a visitor’s entrance ticket tells them which one they are to use. My own ticket says Nie-Blanke/Non-White. I’m much happier with mine. After all, in this setting, who would want to be aligned with the oppressors?
“No way,” I tell her. “I’m not trading. And anyway,” I add, “that’s the thing about race, you don’t get to choose.”
There’s an irony here, though. In real life, I’m the White person in my Black family. My husband, who is here too, grew up in one of Johannesburg’s Black townships during the years of apartheid. Our children, born in Canada and of mixed race, have been raised to identify as Black. This trip to South Africa in 2018 is no mere vacation, nor is this museum simply a passing interest. This visit is deeply personal for all of us.
Once we enter through our separate doors, it doesn’t take long for my mood to shift. The Nie-Blanke/Non-White ticket no longer feels like a “win” now that I am moving through the exhibits. Very quickly it’s the burden of my actual race that I experience, both in the cruelty of its history and in the knowledge that, simply due to my skin colour, I would have been protected from the injustices I see on display. How can I even come close to understanding the real experience of the racial designation on my ticket? I look at the passbooks that Nie-Blankes had to carry, and I think how I have always been free to come and go wherever I want. Has anyone ever told me which washrooms or restaurants or stores I was allowed to use, or which jobs were open to me? No one removed my family to make way for homes for Blankes. I didn’t need to leave my own children to the care of grannies so I could instead care for those of a wealthy White family. I didn’t need my children’s father to stay in hostels near the mines because there was no employment in the homeland we had been assigned. I did not have to fear police raids in the middle of the night.
One thing the museum shows well is that an evil system like apartheid does not appear overnight. Its roots are complex, and they grow incrementally. It starts with the mentality of colonialism and its implicit belief in White supremacy, but it is also fed by things like a gold rush that requires cheap labour, and a backlash against the British cruelty during the Boer War. The strand that hits frighteningly close to home for me is the role of the church, specifically the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa (the DRCSA), which sanctioned apartheid and gave it a theological basis. I say it’s close to home because this denomination is an offshoot of the Gereformeerde Kerk in the Netherlands, just like the Christian Reformed Church in which I myself was raised. That’s an unsettling association.
What would have happened, I wonder, if my father had immigrated to South Africa instead of Canada, as he had in fact considered doing in his younger years? Had he done so, I would likely have been raised in that White Dutch Reformed Church. Would I have grown up to believe that I was part of the chosen people, the people of God’s new covenant, and that we were ordained to have dominion over that land?
That’s one of the things I have learned about religion: how it’s all too easy to use it to justify behaviour. The language of Christianity is used, but its essence is distorted. Historically, this was how apartheid, enslavement, and other heinous racial systemic injustices like our own Canadian residential school system were justified.
As I write and reflect on the apartheid system—which was dismantled in 1994—it might be easy for some Canadians to distance themselves from that racial reality. Apartheid happened several decades ago in a land that is far away. But the roots that led to apartheid in South Africa continue to live on today in the Canadian context. It is particularly manifested in Christian nationalism, a movement that was highly visible at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa in 2022. Currently, as this recent article in Xtra* shows, much of this movement’s focus has moved to protesting drag shows and school inclusivity policies.
Faith Reflection
Prayer
Creator of the Rainbow Peoples,
We confess that we sometimes hesitate to call out racial injustice,
and sometimes we might nuance racism when it is spoken by “family.”
Help us to accept one another’s stories.
May we learn to honestly confront our own complicities
And to respond with justice and compassion for change.
Amen.
Living It Out
Black churches in South Africa, particularly the ones that have lived through apartheid, have much to teach the worldwide church about countering and working toward dismantling racism. Many of the Black churches in South Africa developed the Belhar Confession in 1982, which is a statement of faith that confronts racism and suffering. The statement also invites the church to denounce all forms or racism and injustice.
For your community of faith, is there inspiration you could draw from? Can you use the Belhar Confession in your worship? Can you write your own confession? What would you denounce? A clear statement for all—followed up by action?
—Magdalena Vanderkooy (she/her) is a member of the Anti-Racism Working Group at Islington United Church in Toronto. Before retiring in 2013, she worked in management at the Toronto Public Library.