An era of brutality

Written and edited by Julian Strohbecke

Despite being known as one of the more joyful members of staff, Catherine Jones grew up in and experienced the most brutal period in South African history. Consequently, she became an advocate for social justice in a nation polluted with racial inequality.

Catherine Jones was born in England where she was raised by conservative parents and led a relatively peaceful, upper-middle-class life where she was unaware of racism and segregation. Unfortunately, that all changed when she was 10 years old and her father’s work life brought the whole family to South Africa which was experiencing one of the most notorious periods in their history known as Apartheid.

A sign outside a Cape town Beach labelling the beach as a “white-only” area

Apartheid, meaning “separateness” in Afrikaans, was an age of racial segregation, oppression, censorship, and violence. During this period, non-whites such as Blacks, Indians and Asians were considered inferior and the nation was governed by Nationalist Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch settlers) who promoted white supremacy.

According to The Economist, around 50,000 children died every year during apartheid from the effects of malnutrition, while South Africa exported over $1 billion worth of food annually. During Apartheid, the Infant mortality rate for Black children was 282 per 1000 (due to poor sanitation, healthcare, and living conditions) while among whites it was 12 per 1000. From 1960 to 1965, an estimated 3.5 million Black South Africans were forcibly evicted from their homes by the government and relocated to barren, unsanitary tribal reserves known as “Homelands”.

Despite being caught in the middle of such a violent era, Catherine was relatively safe and far from the danger since she resided in an all-white community.  She also attended an all-white girls school where the education system was heavily controlled by the government to ensure that students weren’t educated about the racial segregation and kept as docile as possible.

At first, she was not aware of the brutality that occurs outside the walls of her gated community. But her first taste of reality occurred in school when her history teacher broke the rules and openly ridiculed the government because of their racist ideologies. This consequently opened Catherine’s eyes to the real South Africa, a nation brimming with racial segregation.

A visit to a Black only school shocked her even more as she witnessed the horrendous conditions in which Black children have to learn. Each classroom contained 90 students (as compared to 17 in her school) who all sat on uncomfortable wooden benches and studied in a room without proper lighting or electricity. These conditions appalled her and compelled her to take a stand against racial segregation. Despite her parents being conservatives who didn’t oppose segregation and have grown familiar with the racial inequality, she still developed an extremely liberal view towards the South African government.

American students protesting against apartheid, April 1985

Black South Africans protesting against oppression and Apartheid, 1976

Catherine continued to give examples of how terrible living in South Africa was in the 1970s. She recalled moments where peaceful protesters were being shot by police, public facilities, and housing being separated by race, political opponents were arrested unfairly, being surveilled by the South African Police Security Branch (which was notorious for their imprisonment and torture of anti-apartheid supporters) and jobs being exclusive for white people only.  Catherine described the ‘Black-only’ toilets, parks and markets as run-down and in bad condition compared to their ‘White-only’ counterparts. Any political parties who dared oppose the South African government were quickly banned or driven underground.

Catherine’s descriptions made South Africa feel like an Orwellian state where all forms of media are controlled by the government and people are tasked with quelling rebellions. The government’s ban of certain TV shows, songs, books that didn’t align with their beliefs/ideologies affected Catherine Jones as she wasn’t able to further educate her mind on the issue. She also said that her isolation from popular culture due to the government’s heavy censorship affected her social life when she got older and wasn’t able to discuss popular culture with other people.

South African Police violently subduing a group of Anti-Apartheid protests, March 1960

Nelson Mandela, the leader of the Anti-apartheid political party “African National Congress” during his trial where he was accused of treason, 1963

As soon as she grew old enough, she became a part of several organisations that protested against apartheid and supported several black rights movements/parties such as the African National Congress which eventually became the governing party of South Africa. Her active involvement in several protests made her fearful of the South African Police but despite her fears of becoming a target, she persevered in her fight for equality.

Eventually the UN realised the tyranny that South Africans faced on a daily basis and begun to take action in ways such as attempting to eject South Africa from the UN, placing economic sanctions on South African exports, encouraging member nations to split political, fiscal and transportation connections with South Africa and publicly condemning of South Africa’s decisions/actions. Several other organisations also ceased communications or cooperation with the South African government. Eventually, South Africa succumbed to all of this international pressure and hosted their first democratic election in 1994 in which the newly elected government put an end to the racial segregation that plagued South Africa for more than 40 years.

A poster written by an Anti-apartheid British movement (known as the boycott movement) promoting the boycott of South African goods to combat apartheid, 1959

“the times that you grow up in really shape our values”

After the fall of Apartheid in 1994, Catherine decided to become a teacher. She said that her experience in South Africa where children were being lied to about the state of the country and not made aware of racial segregation compelled her to become a teacher. As a teacher, she felt that she could actively fight for and teach about justice and equality. Her experience in South Africa turned her into a person who values equality above all else.

She feels that teachers have a big role in shaping the minds of the future generation and she wants to ensure that her students are taught to be aware of the outside world and treat people fairly instead of blindly believing everything that they are told. She also believed that one reason Apartheid existed for so long was that students were not educated about national issues and they also weren’t informed about said issues due to heavy media censorship. Student activism was mostly prevented by the government because of this. Her dedication to these values and beliefs led her to work at UWCSEA where both of them shared a goal to use education as a force to shape a better future for all.

Works Cited

“Against Apartheid. Boycott South African Goods | Mountain and Molehill.” V&A Search the Collections, collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O113060/against-apartheid-boycott-South-African-poster-mountain-and-molehill/.

“Apartheid in statistics by Helena Rigotto – Infogram.” Create Infographics, Reports and Maps – Infogram, infogram.com/apartheid-in-statistics-1g57pr4vnndq21.

“Apartheid in statistics by Lauren Taylor – Infogram.” Create Infographics, Reports and Maps – Infogram, infogram.com/apartheid-in-statistics-1h7z2lwr7xe6ow.

Deutsch Welle. “Opposing Apartheid from behind the Berlin Wall | DW | 15.12.2013.” DW.COM, www.dw.com/en/opposing-apartheid-from-behind-the-berlin-wall/a-17297407.

“IB: Rights and protest, Apartheid.” Scoop.it, www.scoop.it/topic/ib-history-paper-1.

Mkhabela, Sabelo. “12 essential Anti-Apartheid Struggle Songs from South Africa & Around the World.” OkayAfrica, OkayAfrica, 4 Apr. 2018, www.okayafrica.com/anti-apartheid-songs-south-africa/.

Pinkerton, Dallas. “The end of Apartheid in South Africa and Its Implications.” The Swamp, 9 Jan. 2018, theswamp.media/the-end-of-apartheid-in-south-Africa-and-its-implications.

“Reflections Of Black History In Images: The Crime of Holland And Britain In Apartheid South Africa (Part 1).” A Mixture Of Periodicals, 23 July 2018, joelsavage1.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/the-reflections-of-black-history-in-images-the-crime-of-holland-and-britain-in-the-apartheid-era/.

The final Writer’s Fortnight Talk that I attended was held by a British social worker who consults and educates people around the world about therapy, recovery and how to detect symptoms of trauma. Her journey to become a therapist was long and difficult since she had to obtain 3 master’s degrees before she was given a certificate of qualification. While her first job was helping abused and neglected children in England, she felt like she was needed elsewhere since England was a first world country where most of the children are extremely privileged. Luckily, she found her calling in Kenya where her job consisted of healing trauma patients and building stronger connections between different agencies all operating in Kenya. She felt like the more important job was connecting the different agencies. This was because when she heard a story about a rape victim that had to constantly repeat her story to different agencies. This was psychologically damaging since she has to constantly relive a traumatic experience.

This person seemed like a person whose most important values are caring for others, being compassionate and never turning your back on others. She actually told us a story of finding a unwanted baby in a trash bag on the side of the road and she constantly asked herself “What if I didn’t notice the slight movement coming from the bag?”. The most important lesson that I learnt from this discussion was that we should all be aware of our surroundings and never turn our backs when bad things are happening right us.

I recently attended a talk hosted by a Science teacher named Mr. Suarez who previously worked in a maximum security prison where he met 2 exceptional prisoners. The main focus of his talk was about connection, redemption and helping others.

Mr Suarez’s first experience in the Argentinian prison system was when he was 16 years old during a field trip. At first scared and worried about the carnage and hardships he may encounter, he was pleasantly surprised when he saw a classroom filled with murderers who were politely and respectfully listening to a young female teacher. This was what motivated him to teach in prison where he felt he could make a difference since 80% of inmates were illiterate. Unfortunately his first teaching job was not at all how he imagined since he worked as a teacher in one of Argentina’s most notorious juvenile prisons where a lot of his students were rapists, drug addicts, rude and not willing to learn. Eventually he got a job at a maximum security prison where the students were murderers and robbers but still polite. The 2 inmates who stood out the most were Gaby and German. Gaby was a murderer and a robber notorious for stealing large amounts of cash and killing policemen in the process. His upbringing was filled with abuse, violence and poverty since he hit his father to save his mother and lived on the streets before being incarcerated. German on the other hand grew up in a loving middle-class home and imprisoned for the lesser crime of possession of a stolen vehicle and having gang affiliations. While both inmates are imprisoned for radically different reasons they both share similar traits, namely strength, intelligence, leadership, loyalty, free spirit and resilience. Both inmates also showed signs of compassion such as Gaby who eventually taught other inmates and German who helped a injured cellmate to his classroom.

With popular culture depicting prisons as hell and inmates as irredeemable animals, the stories that Mr Suarez told were a surprising twist on how the media normally depicts prisons. What I really took away from this talk is that deep down, everybody has a compassionate, intelligent and polite person desperately trying to dig itself up after being buried in years of abuse and neglect. Prisoners just need a time to flourish and nurture their soul. Mr Suarez’s story kinda resembles a cooking method called blanching where you boil bones in water which extracts their delicious flavour and removes any impurities. In this situation the bones are the prisoners, the flavour are traits such as compassion and caring and the impurities are neglect, abuse and violence.

Moral of the story: Compassion is a trait that everybody possesses, criminal or not.

I recently attended a talk hosted by Mr. Huntington where he described his job working behind bars as a teacher for inmates. He actually worked at the same medium security prison where Mike Tyson was incarcerated. Before working behind bars, he was a teacher at a prestigious and bilingual international school in France. But he said that the job was not very fulfilling as he felt like he didn’t make any difference to the extremely privileged student’s lives. So he decided to teach less fortunate inmates. Most of the students in his class only have a 10th grade education and when they do finish their sentence they have the burden of a prison record on their resume which makes it even more difficult to find a job. I think that Inmates are often dehumanised like how they are given inmate numbers and often relapse due to how bad the American justice system is. Mr Huntington believes in the good of people and rehabilitation instead of punishment. This caused him to write a book called “Mike Tyson slept here” which is about a young teacher’s journey in prison. He joined UWC so he can make a difference in people’s lives, like how he educated inmates in a terrible prison system.

Mr Huntington’s talk about rehabilitation and prison really taught me to see the good in people and educate instead of arguing or berating.

Today, I had the privilege to attend a talk about growing up in a racially segregated South Africa, where blacks and whites had different buses, schools, toilets, restaurants and more with White people often having better facilities than coloured people. The speaker was Mrs. Jones, who moved to South Africa at the age of 10 and attended a prestigious white girls school. Despite all school’s being forced to obey the government and not oppose any of it’s decisions, it was only the effort and the teachings of a Liberal history teacher that opened Mrs Jones’s eyes to the real South Africa, one of brutality and mistreatment. Back then, South Africa partly resembled an Orwellian State where Media and news was controlled by the government, what the public saw and even had a Secret Police that was responsible for tracking down and silencing anybody that dared to oppose the regime. This was news to me since I didn’t see the full extent of how brutal and unfair South Africa was. Despite how controlling the former South African government was, It didn’t stop Mrs. Jones from seeing past the lies and being a part of several organisations that supported the anti-apartheid movement. The inequality and unfairness that she witnessed actually convinced her to become a educator so she can personally ensure that Bias and fake news will never be prevalent in schools. She said that being bullied in class made her empathise withe people suffering because of Apartheid and that made her a advocate for social justice.

What really stayed with me was how faithful Mrs. Jones was to her values and beliefs despite growing up in a country that tried it’s best to quell any rebels. Listening to Mrs. Jones really gave me a lot to think about and has made me appreciate how much humanity has moved on since them.

The word “Autistic” has a very negative connotation and is misused in today’s society, with the word often being thrown around as a insult meant to demean or berate people. I think that autism is severely misunderstood in modern society which is why I found it important to pay attention to a talk about a Autistic child.

Omar’s cousin is a 7-year old boy who suffers from sever autism who struggles in social environments and often likes being left alone in the comfort of his own room. Attention is always rejected by him and he requires therapy sessions to help him cope with and overcome Autism. But what truly amazed me, was how despite all these difficulties he is still able to create and maintain a healthy relationship with Omar who is often regarded as the person he is the most comfortable with. I previously thought that people with severe autism had difficulties or found it impossible interacting with anybody, but I realised how wrong I was when Omar described his open and happy relationship with his cousin. What really touched me is how Omer is a continuous and large presence in his cousin’s life and is the only person that his cousin is comfortable being around. Omer is able to put aside his own needs and time just to accompany his Autistic cousin to places such as his therapy sessions.

I think the reason that people often perceive Autistic people as stupid is because of how socially isolated they make themselves and how difficult it is for them to communicate their feelings and their true selves. I often thought that Autistic people struggled in school but it seems that Omar’s cousin is extremely creative and good at maths.

Omer explaining his Autistic cousin’s struggles has really given me a lot to think about and convinced me that humanity should be more tolerant and understanding towards people with physical and mental disabilities.