Date: February 6, 2008 10:09:30 PM HST

Thursday, January 31, 2008 – Mthatha

Mthatha is a dusty city in the Eastern Cape, one of the most beautiful but poorest provinces in South Africa. The city has three or four high-rise buildings of fewer than ten stories, and Trinset Teacher Training College occupies several acres just outside town, but Mthatha’s claim to fame comes from the fact that Nelson Mandela was born and raised nearby. The Nelson Mandela Museum, located in town, celebrates Mandela’s life and achievements through photos, a few artifacts, and quotations from his autobiography, “A Long Road to Freedom.” Mandela, while an inmate at the infamous Robbin Island Prison off Capetown, wrote his autobiography on scraps of paper, the text of which was then copied in minute script by another inmate onto a single sheet of paper, smuggled out, and delivered to a sympathetic publisher.

The museum also has a wing on either side of the main room, each of which contains gifts and letters presented to Mandela after he became president. During most of his twenty-seven years on Robbin Island, it was illegal to display a picture or icon of Mandela – it was even illegal to mention his name or talk about him in conversation. In attempting to erase his name from the public consciousness, the law resulted in the opposite effect.

The dated computers which present the interactive parts of the exhibit no longer function, and of the three television screens which present brief filmed accounts, only one works, but the visitor who spends an hour reading the text and looking at the photos cannot help but be impressed with Mandela’s courage and his dedication to the cause of overthrowing the brutal white domination of South Africa. By the time I came to the final phase of the exhibit, video footage (on the only television which works) of Mandela’s inauguration as president in 1994, with background music sung by an African chorus, there was not a dry eye in the house (as I was the only person in the exhibit at the time, Mthatha not being much of a tourist destination). A large photo nearby of Bishop Desmond Tutu clapping his hands with joy (one can see the joy in his face) while watching Mandela receive the Nobel Prize adds to the final emotional wallop.

Like the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, this museum’s contents serve as a reminder that a few committed, courageous individuals can change history. And just as the exhibit on Freedom Summer, 1964, at the Civil Rights Museum served to remind me of my own lack of real commitment to the great moral battle of Twentieth Century America, the exhibit here serves as an uncomfortable reminder of how I was able to put the horrors of apartheid on my emotional back burner. Yes, I was sympathetic to the anti-apartheid struggle – I even signed a few petitions supporting the divestment movement (how courageous of me!) – but I never really took up the cause.

I could say that part of the reason for my lack of real interest and commitment was due to what I have recently come to see as the terrible coverage that the American press gave to the situation. With a few occasional exceptions, our print and television media never even came close to conveying the horror and brutality of apartheid and the way the white government enforced it.

But that’s not enough of an excuse, especially in my case. Here comes a confession, one that I feel must make, given all that I have seen and experienced here so far. And it doesn’t come easy: in the late 1970s, I purchased $2000 worth of South African kruggerands. The anti-apartheid movement was not in the forefront of my political consciousness at the time, and I managed to sweep what was then a minor discomfort aside. But I should have known better – in fact, I did know better – and the trip to the museum today has made that disturbingly clear. My only consolation is that I not only managed to lose $1000 on the investment, but that I was delighted to have paid a tangible price for my ethical failure.

There’s another incident associated with my visit to the museum that I want to remember. Inside the museum, near the entrance, stands a water cooler. It was hot, so I approached it to get a drink. I didn’t see any paper cups, so I asked the guard, a black man, if there were some. He pointed to a plastic coffee cup and indicated that I should use that. I was reluctant in the extreme to use a cup that I knew had been used by dozens of people, so I begged off by explaining to him that I had a cold and didn’t want to transmit my germs to others. There was some truth to my excuse: I did think I had a cold (I was sneezing, but it turned out to be due to an allergy). I think he believed me; at least he didn’t appear to be insulted. But I can’t deny that I did not want to drink from that cup, and I was happy that I was able to come up with an acceptable excuse so quickly and smoothly.

Later that day, as I was reading, “My Traitor’s Heart,” an excellent book on the “problem” of being white in South Africa, I came to the following paragraph: “Someone would press a bowl of bitter tshwala beer into my hands. Then the hut would fall silent, all the men watching to see whether this uninvited white visitor was willing to drink from the communal vessel. When I lifted it to my lips, they murmured approvingly.”

South Africa has made me question values and assumptions that I didn’t think needed questioning.