My daughter, Jill, has been reading a book about the story of Nelson Mandela. After she the read the stories from Botswana posted in another blog entry, she commented on how much fun it must have been recalling memories of ministry from 25 years ago, and then asked me if our time in Southern Africa had any connection to the story of Apartheid and Nelson Mandela. What follows is my response to her. She was 2 years old when we went to Botswana.
Hi Jill,
Yeah, it was fun calling up those stories again.
Yes, you did say something about reading the story of Nelson Mandela. The reality of it was that he was still in prison when we were there and Apartheid was in full swing. Because MCC workers had advocated for black people in legal matters, Mennonite workers were not allowed a multiple entry visa to South Africa. (We were fine with that because we agreed with the actions of the MCC workers.) What this meant is that we could get a single entry visa, which meant that we could go into South Africa for, I believe, 48 hours, and then we had to leave.
Now, South Africa had created a number of Homelands. Each tribal group was given a homeland, so there was: Siskei, Transkei, Bophutatswana, Kwazulu, etc. South Africa considered each of these to be an independent country, although no place else in the world recognized them as independent countries - every other country in the world recognized them for what they were, i.e. provinces of South Africa. The purpose of these, as we understand it, was to divide and conquer. If the apartheid government could cause each tribal group to develop a national pride in themselves, then they had no unified voice to stand against apartheid.
So, we played by South Africa's rules. We could go to Johannesburg and stay at the Baptist Guesthouse for night. Then we could continue on the next day to any one of the homelands and we were then in another country. We had a lovely vacation in the Transkei one time. There was a beautiful resort on the Indian Ocean that we stayed at for a week. Then we could go back the same way. By the world's standards, we were in South Africa for more than a week, but not by South Africa's standards. The downside of the single entry visa is that we never got to see Capetown because we couldn't go that far in a day.
My greatest memory regarding Nelson Mandela was listening to the drama of his release - live. It was February 11th, 1990. We had come back from Botswana in August of 1988, so we (or I) were going around speaking in churches about our work there. I was still doing this a full 1½ years after returning to Canada. The Sunday that Nelson Mandela was released I was going to do a mission presentation and preach in a little country church at Superb, SK. It was a 2 or 3 hour drive from Langham, Saskatchewan, where I was pasturing at the Zoar Mennonite Church. CBC radio broadcast the whole event. I listened to the lead up to his release as I was driving out. I preached, we had lunch together, and then I continued to listen to the drama of his release on the drive back. I think it happened mid-afternoon Saskatchewan time. Wow, what a moving event to take in, even on the radio.
Love,
Dad
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