Reflections on South Africa, by Nick Boraine
“This time of healing has been a prettypicture that we have drawn across theland, and every day the dry wind comesfrom the north to wipe it out.But we’ve made this image of what we canbe and that is what we have to celebrate;and we have to draw those lines againwhile our hands remember. Then maybe wewill step back one day and stare withwonder at what we have done, what we havebecome”
– From The Play, “Truth In Translation“
And the dry wind came.47 all told.Not Iraq or Syria, not Pakistan, not Nigeria.South Africa – my country. 47 dead. 34 shot and killed by police, 10 killed by striking miners, 78 more badly injured.
South Africa – the same country heralded for being the pinnacle of negotiated settlement after protracted conflict. South Africa – with the most progressive constitution on the planet. South Africa – a shining light of hope and possibility in the world.
A massive wake up call to all South Africans, the Marikana massacre of August 16th, 2012 sent a jolt through our society that had not been felt since the height of Apartheid in the late 1980s.
As a founder and seasoned veteran of the Global Arts Corps with tours of duty as an actor, writer and director in post-conflict regions like Northern Ireland, Rwanda and the Balkans, I had no idea that the situation had shifted so fundamentally in my own country. Like frogs in slowly heating water, we were unaware that all around us it had actually began to boil over. Politicians were enriching themselves at the expense of their people. Ordinary South Africans, so proud of our transition and ability to create change, had abdicated civic responsibility. A cavernous power vacuum had opened up, sucking in those without the will, the imagination, or the courage to lead effectively. In one day at Marikana, the rotten core of South Africa was revealed for all to see.
After touring the world for more than four years with the play “Truth in Translation” and then as a part of Michael Lessac’s Global Arts Corps, I should not have been surprised, I guess. I had listened to countless stories of the horrors of violence and conflict around the globe. I had worked with actors wrestling with their own countries’ ancestral demons – trying to make sense of where the violence started and how to break the cycle that only leads to more violence. As a South African, it was easy to relate – we had been through our own conflict and we had somehow come through alive. However, we allowed ourselves to be seduced into thinking that we had some kind of answer. We didn’t – the pretty picture that we drew in the sand was merely a possibility. But possibility demands vigilance, and Marikana shows how far we still have to go.
Marikana for me was a call to arms. Not to take to the streets but to remember to listen. Not to fight but to remember that non-violence needs to be practised, rehearsed again and again. I had to learn to be vigilant once more.
We marvelled at how people could watch our play, “Truth in Translation” and see their own conflicts reflected in that mirror. Now the same held true for me in South Africa. I looked at how we had dropped the baton and how easy it was to slide into violence if we were not responsible for our own country. Marikana started a chain reaction of protest action that continues today. As of yesterday the farming sector is currently experiencing violence and intimidation from underpaid farmworkers. A violent truckers strike has just ended, but for how long? Xenophobic murders are a constant threat in many townships. These are not isolated incidents. This speaks to the larger issue that perpetuates the cycle of violence in South Africa, a cycle that we thought we had broken.
The Global Arts Corps was started in South Africa to bring the possibilities learned here to people across the world, but now South Africa needs the Global Arts Corps more than ever.
As a reinvestment into the country that started our organization, the Global Arts Corps is currently reengaging with youth groups as well as looking at restaging the play “Truth in Translation” with young students at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. We are also engaged partnering with other NGOs in the town of Pearston in the Eastern Cape as part of ongoing project to give a voice to “at risk” young people in South Africa.
This is just a beginning but all of us in South Africa must draw those lines again… while our hands remember.