Durban, South Africa—
It took dropping a goat’s head into a boiling black cauldron to become a member of my South African family. I was in the backyard of a small house in Umlazi, a former black township on the outskirts of Durban. Prior to the official fall of apartheid in 1994, all living areas in South Africa were separated by race; Whites lived in the posh neighbourhoods, while Blacks, Indians, and Coloureds were relegated to places like Umlazi—huge, undeveloped swatches on the map overfilled with people living in shacks without plumbing or electricity.
For the first five weeks of my program I lived with the Zondi’s, a Zulu family who had lived in Umlazi during Apartheid. After years of saving, in 1996 they were able to scrape together some money and move into Montclair, a former White suburb of Durban. Compared to the one room they occupied in their former township, the Zondi’s now shared a comfortable three-bedroom apartment in a racially-mixed building. But on this Saturday, they took me back to their township for a family celebration. Part of Zulu custom at an event like this is to slaughter and roast a goat, to honor their ancestors.
My host-brother, Samqele, and I gathered sticks and built a small fire. While we were getting that ready, some other family members carried out a huge black cauldron that looked like it was straight out of a witch cartoon. It is considered an honour for a guest to slaughter the goat, but a disgrace if they fail to kill it on the first try. I had opted out because I was not confident in my goat-killing abilities. When the fire was ready, we lifted the cauldron over it, and filled it with water. The pieces of goat were then brought in from the back. My host mother, Mama Gugu, handed me the head and asked me to put it in.
“My son,” she said. “We are so happy that you will be able to go back to America and tell everyone how to roast a goat!”
Despite being of a different culture and a different race, I was a “son” to this woman.
The Zondi’s are just an example of the over twenty families that open up their homes each semester to students in my program. The families do their best to expose us to their customs and make us a part of their lives. They have been able to transcend the steaming racial tensions in this country and accept people of other backgrounds and races for who they are. Unfortunately, the far majority of South Africans have not. There is the Indian taxi driver telling me that, “Blacks are like robots. You give them a crooked nail and they will just try to hammer it in without thinking.” There is the Coloured woman saying to me that she would kill all white people if there were no consequences. There is the White woman telling me not to go to the beach because it is “overrun” by Black people. There is the Black teenager going off about how Indians are “stupid and can’t drive.”
Before I left the U.S., I had read about South Africa being the “rainbow nation,” where people had overcome the 50 years of racial barriers put up by the White government, and now live happily ever after. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and has probably been the most troubling part of my trip. Sure, progress has been made, but the tensions that exist have not been mitigated. Political parties are still basically split by race. Whites still monopolize most of the wealth in the country. Some Blacks have moved into the upper socio-economic tier, but the large majority have actually regressed economically since the end of apartheid. How can a country move forward and break racial barriers when 40 percent of adults are unemployed, when 25 percent of adults have HIV or AIDS? So while frustrating, it is hard to blame South Africans for their ignorance in terms of race. This “new” country is not even 10 years old, and so much more work needs to be done. It takes so long to see the richer sides of the culture, and there is still so much that remains to be understood. So instead of complaining about the problems or denying that they are there, I should instead relish the fact that I can meet people like the Zondi’s, who will take me into their home and share a piece of their culture with me.
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