Date: March 7, 2008 2:29:11 AM HST

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 – Cape Town

Years ago, there was a German language teacher at Punahou who would get upset whenever someone mentioned Hitler or the Nazis during a lunchtime conversation.

It’s not fair – there’s so much more to German history than Hitler, she’d say, yet it’s always “Hitler did this, the Nazis did that.” Not wanting to anger her any more than she already was (she always seemed on the verge of anger), I’d remain uncharacteristically silent. But I remember one time when I decided to not let that comment go unchallenged. I came back at her with the point that like it or not, people are responsible for their country’s history, and if that history is less than flattering, it’s theirs nevertheless; they’re stuck with it. I don’t remember who said it, or if he or she said it this way, but one can’t escape history.

I’m reminded of this as I think of the museums I’ve visited here in South Africa. Yes, I did visit the National Gallery to see its modest art collection, and there are other art museums that I’ve skipped. But the museums that matter here are the ones that illustrate so vividly and painfully the cruelty and outright barbarism practiced by the minority of whites who controlled South Africa. These museums matter also because they show just as vividly the heroism and humanity of those who resisted and suffered and eventually emerged on the right side of history.

This is what the Robben Island Museum is all about. It’s one of the can’t-miss attractions in Cape Town primarily because Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years behind bars on Robben Island (as prisoner #46664). I almost decided to skip the trip because the boat leaves from the V and A Waterfront (see entry of 2/20 – 2/22), but I figured that if Nelson Mandela could tolerate eighteen years on the island, I could tolerate another hour at the V and A.

For a most of the trip, I wondered if my sacrifice had been worth it. Though I was instructed to arrive fifteen minutes early, the boat left a half hour late, which meant that I would have less time on the island. The boat, an old tug, belched oily smoke which the wind blew in my face. Dark, threatening clouds obscured the postcard view of Cape Town and Table Mountain from the island. And the guide on the required forty-five minute bus tour of the island not only could have done her presentation in her sleep, I’m not certain that she was in fact awake.

Then our group disembarked at the prison building, where we changed guides and everything changed. All of the tours through the prison are led by former inmates; our guide was a former political prisoner who had received a life sentence for having blown up a power plant (yes, he said, he did it, but added proudly that no one had been killed or injured). A large man who appeared to be in his fifties (he affectionately referred to Mandela as “the old man”), he spoke without histrionics or emotion, letting his stories and anecdotes stand on their own.

Several of his anecdotes told of how the authorities tried to break the prisoners’ spirits. Prisoners were required to work in the limestone quarry extracting and breaking rocks, though the rocks were never used for anything. Some prisoners would move the rocks from Point A to Point B; then they’d be ordered to move them back to Point A the next day. Moreover, prison authorities deliberately mixed political prisoners in with common criminals, hoping that the criminals would brutalize the political prisoners.

But this didn’t happen, claimed our guide. Instead, the political prisoners politicized the criminals. (When the authorities realized this, they separated them.) And the prisoners educated each other: those who could read were obligated to teach those who couldn’t. Though they were the ones behind bars, they seemed to be on the offense. Though our guide didn’t say it this way, the prisoners at Robben Island acted like they knew that time and history were on their side.

As we approached his six by eight-foot cell, our guide acknowledged Mandela’s indomitable spirit as a major inspiration for this positivity. Housed in a cell similar to all the others, with only a thin mat on which to sleep, he was offered comforts but rejected them because they had not been offered to all the prisoners.

But Mandela didn’t seem like the only hero to me. Our guide didn’t say much about himself unless he was asked, but I asked a few questions. Prisoners were allowed two half-hour visits per year. Three days before one of his visits, his father took eight police bullets and has been in a wheelchair ever since. This led me to ask another question, one which has been of major importance to me in the weeks I’ve been here: Do you forgive white South Africa for what it has done to you and your father?

He didn’t answer me immediately – I could tell that he wanted to choose his words carefully. I won’t put quotation marks around his reply because I’m paraphrasing, but yes, he answered. It’s a long, difficult process and I started working on it when I was here in prison. We were told to keep in mind that we will be the future leaders, and we must set an example. Moreover, I can’t change what happened. My father has not forgiven, he said, but I have.

Thought I’m sure I was not the first person to ask him this question, it seemed to me that he was still working on it – that he was trying to convince himself as well as me. So a few minutes later I got him alone and brought the subject up again, saying (truthfully) that I admired him for his ability to forgive because I didn’t think I’d be able to do it in a similar situation. He again hesitated, and though he never took back what he had said before, he mentioned that the police who shot his father were given amnesty after a hearing in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He attended that hearing, and said that he doesn’t believe that they were truly sorry. Moreover, he added, they are rich men today.

I know I’ll never see this guy again. I regret that I didn’t even ask him his name. If forgiveness is truly good for one’s soul, I hope he gets there.

As I think about forgiveness in light of all the horrors of apartheid, I feel myself arriving at an answer of sorts. I notice that most the heroes of the civil rights struggle in America have also forgiven those who trespassed against them. And maybe it comes down to what I mentioned at the beginning of this entry: maybe (I say “maybe” because I’m guessing here) it’s easier to forgive when you know that you have been on the right side of history and history finally acknowledges it.