Apartheid Memory Project youth talk about “home” and the Eastern Cape

Posted by Czerina Patel:

I’m sitting in a suburb of Cape Town with Luvo (15), Odwa (15), Bongo (18) and Zikhona (14) who are part of the Apartheid Memory Project. It’s nearly December and they’re all getting ready for school holiday trips to the Eastern Cape – a place which they all call “home”.

Odwa says the E. Cape is home because it’s where he was born. Luvo says it’s home because he lived there when he was little. Zikhona says it’s the home of her parents, and where some of her ancestors are from. Dan says that the Eastern Cape is “where we come from – the roots of our people “… and Cape Town, where they all live now, Dan calls ‘”home away from home” – the place where people came to work.’

Here, some of the AMP participants are writing about the Eastern Cape, and about the ceremonies and traditions (such as those around the passage into manhood when a boy “goes to the bush” to get circumcised) that are part of their experience of this place.

The South Africa he never knew…

Czerina Patel:

My friend Fabienne told me that her nephew Byron was coming to Cape Town and bringing someone who worked for his family with him. It was to be this man (Enoch)’s first time ever seeing the ocean. I told her I wanted to do a radio piece on it, recording the first time Enoch saw the ocean, but unfortunately for me, Enoch got to Natal and saw the ocean before he arrived in Cape Town. This past weekend, I joined Fabienne, her daughter, and her nephew Byron – all White South Africans, and Enoch – a Black South African – at a restaurant in Hout Bay. We sat right next to the ocean, and I learned that Enoch was still in shock about the amount of water he had already seen in Cape Town – how could there be so much? Enoch was born in Limpopo, and was working in Johannesburg. The whole natural landscape of Cape Town was entirely new to him, and very enticing. Enoch was experiencing much that was new and was traveling outside his comfort zone. He took his first plane trip that morning, and though we encouraged him to take a small boat trip from the dock in Hout Bay, he made it clear that he wasn’t ready for that. Seeing the water and putting his feet in the ocean was enough for him that day.

Enoch, Byron and Fabienne will be blogging here about this past weekend, about Enoch’s first time seeing the ocean, about why Byron wanted to take Enoch on this trip, and what they learned, experienced and encountered. They’ll post some photos and we’ll try to get deeper into what they learned about themselves and South Africa through spending the weekend in this way…

Byron will type for Enoch word for word so we can hear Enoch in his own voice. To get the conversation started, I’ll ask Byron to tell us about your relationship with Enoch – how long have you known him, describe your relationship, and what were the events that led you up to the trip this past weekend?