Date: January 31, 2008 10:52:57 AM HST
Subject: South Africa
Monday, January 28, 2008 – Port Shepstone

Pauline Duncan is a 63-year old white South African. A former elementary school principal, she also served as mayor of Port Shepstone during the final years of apartheid, from 1988 until 1991 or 1992 (apartheid ended in 1994). Currently, she spends her time working with all races, trying get them to work together to improve the lives of the poorest people in Nyandazulu, the rural area which surrounds Port Shepstone. She is also the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and she gave me what I’m pretty sure is the most intense day of my life. I hope what follows will do small justice to her; I know I will never be able to convey the true intensity and meaning of all that I saw and heard.

I wrote the above paragraph late at night, then went to bed, deciding that before I continue writing, I had better allow those two claims (most amazing person, most intense day) to percolate a bit in my mind before I send them off. Days later, having pondered other impressive people I’ve known and intense experiences I’ve had, I see no reason to alter what I said.

But how do I begin to untangle the threads of this incredible tapestry of unbelievable poverty, beauty, ugliness, corruption, joy, sadness, brutality, and gentleness that made up my day in Nyandazulu? A linear chronology doesn’t seem adequate to the task, but I’m not sure how else to proceed, so I’ll at least begin that way…

Yunus and I met Pauline in front of her home in Port Shepstone. I think Yunus wanted me to experience this day on my own, so he dropped me off and went off to do errands.

Pauline drives a stick-shift VW Golf old enough to have hand-cranked windows and manual door locks. The car’s perfect, she says, for the rural dirt “roads” she frequently travels (this proved to be entirely accurate). Less than a minute after I got into her car, we encountered someone she knew: Sifiso Dlawini, a Zulu with a metal leg brace who walked with some difficulty using a cane. He was returning to his home in Nyandazulu, and since we were headed in the same direction, she offered him a ride, which he gladly accepted. When we arrived, we saw that he was lucky enough to have secured new, low-cost housing. The house, identical to all the others in the closely spaced development, is a clean, one-room, two-windowed concrete structure about twelve by sixteen feet. In front is a small, neatly tended garden of which Sifiso is proud. The only problem, he said, is that the place has no water, and being disabled, he must pay a neighbor five rand (about 75 cents) to haul his water from the pump to his house. The house does not have electricity, but probably because no one in the development has electricity, he did not mention that as a problem (Pauline had to ask). He posed for a picture in front of the house; then we left him to see other parts of the area.

Difiso’s development was one of the tidier ones we saw. The poorest ones are those inhabited by squatters, whose homes are made of odd pieces of wood, tin, and other discarded materials they can find. Some squatters pay the landowners a small rent for the privilege of calling a few square feet home. Needless to say, water and electricity are seldom included in the rent, or even available.

Other dwellings may be smaller or larger than Difiso’s, and some appeared to be comfortable by Nyandazulu standards, but what most of them have in common, aside from a lack of electricity and clean water, are often crumbling walls, doorways with no doors, window openings without panes of glass, disintegrating tin or thatch roofs, and a general aura of poverty the likes of which I have never seen. The rotting housetrailers on cinder blocks that so shocked Deb and me on our trip through the Mississippi Delta region seem like upper middle class housing by comparison.

At one point we came to the top of a hill where we stopped to admire a scenic vista of rolling green hills bisected by a thin dirt road. Pauline pointed out that the lands to the left of the road, planted with sugarcane waving softly in the breeze, were separated by an electrified fence from the lands to the right of the road, which were just as beautiful but contained scattered shanties instead of sugar cane. This division, she explained, was the result of the hated Group Areas Act, instituted during apartheid, under which blacks who had occupied the fertile farmlands for generations, were uprooted and their land sold to whites, who set up plantations which they still hold today. The fact that Zulu tradition requires that they worship at the site of the bones of their ancestors, which lie buried in the seized ground, made no difference to the government, hence the electrified fence to keep them out. Some blacks have petitioned the government to get portions of their land returned to them, but with little money to buy out the current owners (who bought the land from the government), chances of success are slim. Instead, they remain housed in what they call – for obvious reasons – “Tin Town.” I thought, as I heard Pauline explain the Group Areas Act, and still hope today, that there is a special place in hell reserved for those who instituted such a devastatingly heartless policy.

Pauline pointed out two other houses during our drive, both of which are impressive compared to those that surround them. One belongs to the most powerful person in Nyandazulu. Just past his house, the pavement ends and the dirt road begins. As we approached the other, Pauline said, “Do you see that house? That belongs to a killer.” She then explained that during the last years of apartheid, violence was so widespread that not only were whites killing blacks and vice versa, there was a great deal of black-on-black killing as well, often for personal or economic reasons or to assert and consolidate power.

The owner of the house had killed several persons, maybe many people. Pauline was criticized for attending his funeral when he was killed, but she explained that the dead man’s supporters were influential in the community and could be of help to her; thus it was necessary for her to put aside her personal feelings for the sake of those she was trying to help. Shortly after telling me this anecdote, she stopped and gave what appeared to be a warm greeting to a man who was walking on the side of the road. She extended her hand in greeting, the man grasped it, and they exchanged pleasantries in Zulu for a few seconds. After we moved on, she turned to me and said, “That’s the killer’s brother. He’s probably killed a few people too.”

Primitive as they are, the dirt roads which wander through Nyandazulu are a blessing to those whose homes they reach, because at least the residents can come and go via taxis (small vans which carry up to about a dozen people at a time). Pauline mentioned that it is not unusual for someone who, say, buys a mattress, to have it dropped off at a point on the road closest to his or her house, then enlist neighbors to help carry it the rest of the way, which may be more than a mile from the road.

Eventually, we met up with the beaders and sewers, who do their crafts in a government-built community center. I know several women back in the U.S. who do beadwork, and, in order to save their eyesight, they all do their work with the aid of a large rectangular magnifier. These women, of course, had no such help. I am hoping to place an order with the woman we met at the office supply store for 1 1/2″ x 2″ patches with “Puns” embroidered in buff against a blue background, which students can pin to their clothing on football game days. The profit on such a sale would be of great help to her.

We visited two schools in the area, one a community college, and the other a local school for children aged five to fourteen. The college, perched dramatically on a hill overlooking a beautiful expanse of territory, is modest by western standards but stands out like a gem in this area. The trunk of our car was searched both on entering and leaving the college.

The other school, the condition of which reflects the economic level of the community it serves, was the scene of the emotional highlight of this most emotional day. As we walked towards the administration “building,” we passed overcrowded classrooms bursting with the cutest young faces imaginable. Many of these beautiful faces were those of orphans – AIDS has taken an appalling toll in this country. All the children are poor, some desperately so. The principal explained that some of the girls could not romp around or climb trees during recess because they wore no underwear – they could not afford any. Others had no shoes, or bookbags, or any of the most basic personal items which might provide a measure of dignity or enable them to at least fit in with their peers.

At this point, Pauline began to explain the reason for her visit, but she first asked for written assurance from the principal that the donation she was about to give would be used not to buy books, or supplies for teachers, but to help the neediest of the children satisfy the needs just mentioned. The principal wrote a pledge of assurance in the school log book, and called in three women from her office to sign the book as witnesses to the pledge. Explaining that the donors wished to remain anonymous, Pauline then handed the principal 2000 rand (about $300).

The reaction of the four women was unrestrained joy. Someone walking into the room at that moment might have guessed that the women had just received word that they had won fifty million dollars in the California lottery. I had been wiping away tears all day; now it took everything I had to keep from breaking into uncontrollable sobs. I managed to keep my composure, but I did wipe away tears as unobtrusively as I could (something I am unconcerned with now as I type this).

The women could not thank Pauline and the donors enough. After we left, Pauline, also grateful for the donation, said with a sigh, “We are so tired of having to say thank you.” A few minutes later, she revealed to me the names of the anonymous donors: Yunus Peer and his brother Gora.

I saw hundreds of students as we toured Nyandazulu – in classrooms, at recess, walking along dusty roads – and they all were dressed in perfectly clean uniforms, their white shirts so spotless that they almost appeared to be starched. I mention this because at one point in the drive, as the road was about to cross a stream, Pauline pointed out a place where the stream widened into a calm but rather murky pool. “That’s where the women do their laundry,” she said.

We spent five hours in Nyandazulu and did not see a single haole face. Although every person save one among the hundreds we met, encountered or made eye contact with smiled, waved, or greeted us warmly, Pauline mentioned that her haole friends fear for her safety every time she makes one of her frequent trips through these all-black rural areas. Afterword, when I asked Yunus about this, he confirmed that very few whites might have been able to safely make the journey that we did, not because of the color of their skin, but because those with nothing would likely want to take whatever they could from those with something. Yet Pauline said that she feels safer in these all-black areas than she does in Port Shepstone, and to me, her actions and demeanor supported that statement beyond any doubt. She didn’t know everyone we encountered; it only seemed that way as she smiled, called out greetings, and stopped to talk (in Zulu) with dozens of people. At one point, gazing at a beautiful scene of distant green hills with tiny, ramshackle houses scattered about, she said with great feeling, “I love this place.”