Byrnesys Blabberings

An easy trap to fall into is to see an evil dominating white South Africa on the black south African victims, fortunately Rian Malan does not allow us to indulge ourselves in simplification. Through the many stories Malan tells he weaves stories in a way which gives you both perspectives, make you understand both points of view and then leaves you to draw your own conclusions. One particular shocking story described Dr Melville Edelstein, a white sociologist, who refused to leave Soweto (a black suburb ) when the riots started up. Edelstein claimed he was not scared, he knew which side he was on. When the mob came he went out to greet them, they trampled him to death. You see he was white, and nothing else mattered.

Another easy trap is to wonder whether the answer to the problem of race which although crystallized in the South African Apartheid, is a problem faced in every society is, colourblindness. We think that Justice can be done if we just think that colour is only skindeep, if we can follow Martin Luther Kings great commitment that we should be judging people according to the content of their character instead of their race. But the problem is that colourblindness denies so much to gain so little. Colourblindness towards the issue of race does mean that you can’t hold a persons skin colour against them, but then it also goes on to strip them of their own identity, cultural and personal. But then at an inarticulate level colourblindness is also entirely racist because it slowly incorporates non-whites into a culture that has white-bias built into it from the beginning.

Malan’s book ends with the enthralling story of Neil and Creina, its not one I can explain in full in this post, but it seems at the outset to be a story of hope, even utopia, as racial divides disappear and genuine synthesis of cultures appear. Unfortunately like the many before it, this story ends with death and despair, Malan’s bleak prophetic vision of South Africa from his 1980’s writers chair.

I don’t want to patronise the real experience in which the book is rooted, the stories are indeed bleak, for Christians they are a shocking display of depravity in all, but I would like to suggest that Christians can hope for more than where Rian Malan leaves us on the closing pages, but that it will not be a swift or easy process. As I mentioned earlier South Africa has a DNA which it will most likely rehearse in small and large ways, the healing of South Africa wont be through affirmative action, it wont be through an adoption of a colourblind mentality, if Im honest I really don’t know how it will be fully healed apart from through the coming of a Kingdom.

I am very aware that I have boisterously commented on these complex and diverse issues from what is the reading of one book, and little under 2 weeks experience of the country as a tourist, but I had to think about it somehow, and this, for now at least is my best attempt. I am quite happy for you to gently correct and disagree with me in the comments.