My World

The Cost of Hatred

Last night I was awake and decided that the only thing that I could do, without turning on the lights, was to watch a movie. It is a favorite of mine and I have seen it many times. It is called, “Cry Freedom” and it is the story of apartheid and how it was ended. It is about Steve Biko and the newspaper editor that finally introduced him to the world. Now the history of apartheid is not all that different from what we have done here. If it is possible it is worse than what our Native Americans experienced at our hands. If you add that, to the mix, the 300 years of slavery that the African Americans experienced at the hands of our forefathers, what we have done is scary In the case of African natives they were not only moved from the homes that they had established, but the were prohibited from being in the white mans land with out a pass. By 6:00 P.M. they had to be off the streets. Some of them began to agitate for freedom. Thousands were killed by the army.

The newspapers editor, Donald Woods, considered himself a liberal but he had the same blinders on that many of us have, regardless of what we like to think about ourselves. One day there was an uprising in one of the townships and hundreds were killed. Well Mr. Woods, put it on the front page of his newspaper. However he also put an editorial, on the front page about Steve Biko, accusing him of being a racist or as he called a counter racist. The next day a young woman came into his office and just let him have it. She told him that if he would meet Mr. Biko, he might get a better view of him. That person was,Dr. Mamphela Ramphele.  She made the introduction. They met outside of an old church in Mr. Biko’s township. By this point Steve Biko had been banned, by the South African Government. Under this law a person that was banned could not move farther then two miles from his or her home and could not meet with more then one person at a time. So the two of them sat there and began a friendship that lasted until Mr. Biko’s death. The first thing that Mr. Biko asked was, “have you ever been to an African Township?” The more time they spent together the more Mr. Woods learned about the real effects of apartheid on any human being. In 1962, a law was passed that, made it possible to put someone in jail without a trial. It took America until 2001 to pass such a law. I suppose that this law was intended, to be used against Africans, but some white men were also caught in this net. Now if they were burglars or rapists, or murderers they would get a trial, but if the were involved in the black consciousness movement, off they went to jail.

Many of the things that were said to justify this view of the world were things that I heard growing up. The blacks were lazy and they just didn’t work. There are a lot of phrases used to justify racism, but when you think them through, they just don’t hold water. The Europeans came to South Africa in the middle 1600’s. They took more and more land. They made it impossible for the African to find work. They couldn’t be farmers because there was no land to farm. Besides they had to stay in their own territories called townships. The women that the white population hired to be live in house keepers were supposed to be off of the streets by 6 P.M. That meant that they couldn’t travel to see their children in the townships. At one point Mr. Biko and Mr. Woods were walking in the street of a township. The kids were running around. Mr. Biko observed. If you are born into a township and even if you are smart or dumb you will will die here.

Mr. Biko was finally arrested for traveling outside of his township. He was taken to jail and by that evening he was nearly beaten to death. A doctor was called and after the examination, the prison officials asked only one question. Is it possible that he is faking? The doctor replied that a human couldn’t fake what Mr. Biko was experiencing. There was bad internal damage, brain damage, and his spinal fluid had too much blood in it. He said this man should be in a hospital. The told the doctor that they would take Mr. Biko to a prison hospital in Cape Town, over 700 miles away. They put him on the bed of a small pickup truck and started to go to Cape Town. By the time they got there he was dead. He was brought back to a mortuary in his township to be prepared for burial. Mr. Woods got Mrs. Biko and his photographer and off they went to the mortuary. While they were viewing the body they took pictures of the wounds. The in a few days Mr. Woods was banned. There was a formal inquisition into the death of Mr. Biko, the answer was that he died of natural causes and they could find no reason that anyone employed by the government could have caused the death. Donald Woods was trying to fly to England to show the pictures and publish the book he had been writing. Before he could board the plane the banning was in place. The police would show up to search for the book. They couldn’t find it because he hid the pages in a biography he had written on Winston Churchill. The book would be called, “Biko” and it is a biography of Steven Biko. A few weeks later he and his wife decided to get out of South Africa. The escape was incredible. But they got out and went to England. There he published his book, “Biko.” He had already sent 14 copies of the photographs to many people in Europe. Mr. Woods died in 2001.

What amazed me this time as I watched the movie was the incredible amount of work that the state had to go through to keep the races separated. It must have cost a fortune. It made me realize that legal hatred is so very expensive both monetarily and in the destruction of the hearts of the haters. For me, the other thing that came through this story is that the hatred comes out of fear.

We in America cannot take credit for the advances we have made in the area of civil rights, because civil rights are not human rights. Even if the law says you must be treated equally, your human rights demand it. In many parts of this country we continue to discriminate. Peoples lives are ruined. We don’t confine our hatred to just the African American community. We hate so many segments of the population. If you aren’t like, or don’t think like, the majority of the population you most likely be in trouble.

Peace, howie