I have been interviewing scientists and other experts for the Natural Resources Defense Council‘s Visionary Speaker Series. The pieces run online for NRDC’s magazine OnEarth. Each interview has been an education. My most recent one is with sustainability expert Jim Merkel.
The piece is online here.
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JOHANNESBURG—Against a backdrop of hope and fear, a nation’s epic march toward democracy has entered a bloody home stretch.
The people of South Africa—including, for the first time, the majority black population—will go to the polls later this month and alter the course of their bitter history.
They will elect a new national government and officially close the door on apartheid—the code of racist law by which some 5.6 million whites kept 24 million blacks and others of mixed race in symbolic chains for nearly half a century.
“It’s a liberation election that finally puts the beast of apartheid in the grave,” said Larry Shore, a Hunter College professor who, like many white activist South Africans, left the country long ago out of fear or disgust.
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Saraan Ajaye did not even know South Africa was a country until she took a human rights course a year ago.
Ajaye, a senior at the Bronx alternative high school Schomburg Satelite Academy, now sees the country’s gallop to democracy after three centuries of oppression as a civics lesson.
Never take your vote for granted, she said, pointing out how low turnout of African-American and Latino voters affected the outcome of the recent mayoral election. “As soon as I turned 18, I registered to vote,” she added.
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JOHANNESBURG—The epicenter of the violence that rattled this city last week remained a place of frayed nerves and bullet-riddled glass yesterday.
Outside the headquarters of the African National Congress Party, a security guard quickly confronted two visitors who stepped beneath the red and white tape strung chest high along the sidewalk.
Seemingly out of nowhere a car with three men wearing sunglasses and looks of suspicion pulled up to the curb.
Once convinced the visitors came in peace, the guard relaxed enough to talk about the violent moments that led late last week to a war-like state of emergency being declared in the Natal province—the Zulu heartland.
“The shooting here lasted only five minutes,” he said, standing beside the display window commemorating the upcoming all-race elections.
“Over there,” he added, pointing across Plein St., to a 12-story apartment building. “Snipers started firing. And if there’s trouble again, I will know what to do.”
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South Africa, as it enters a world made uncertain by the end of apartheid, should look to the post-independence experiences of Namibia and Zimbabwe.
The same fears being raised today about South Africa’s stumble to democracy were raised in Zimbabwe leading up to its independence from Britain in 1980. and in Namibia a decade later when it emerged from under the thumb of South Africa.
A quick answer—if Namibia and Zimbabwe are guides—is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The liberation fighters who took power retain firm control in both nations. Power has not made blacks wealthier, however. In both instances, they are as poor today as they ever were under white domination.
Whites in both situations, retain economic power and live as well as they ever have.
Namibia, though its blacks remain dreadfully poor, is peaceful today and is much forgotten by the rest of the world.
Zimbabwe, after a brief but violent aftermath to its independence, is poised for its third election next year. It has the most vigorous press in Africa, a stable, though not vibrant, economy and a fairly content white population.
1. IN TRANSITION
The multi-racial Transitional Executive Council shares broad governing powers with South Africa’s ruling National Party.
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JOHANNESBURG—He carries himself like he was born to power—and he was, 75 years ago, in a hut at the bottom of the African continent.
His family ran the village; a cousin, with whom he lived while a teen, was chief of the surrounding region. Under a stand of eucalyptus trees that was the tribal courthouse, they prepared Nelson Mandela to follow in their footsteps.
“The genesis of my ideas is under these trees,” said the Old Man, as he is known among his followers, during a homecoming last month.
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The scenes are stunning: blacks lustily cheering apartheid scion Frederik Willem de Klerk as he campaigns for re-election to the presidency of South Africa.
The happy candidate obliges by donning Zulu tribal hats, carrying spears and cowhide shields.
“I’m white,” he told one black audience, “but my heart pumps the same red blood as the red blood in the heart of every South African.”
De Klerk, 58, was born into a staunchly political Afrikaner family in the Transvaal. As his great-grandfather and his father, he represented the province in parliament. So, the deeply religious father of three caught most people by surprise when he began dismantling apartheid.
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