Liz: Count 40 seconds

40 Seconds

Count 40 seconds. Go. Look at clock, count it, do whatever you have to do to understand what 40 seconds is. Did you do it? Good. Now on 21^st March 1960 69 people died in those 40 seconds. 40 seconds was all it took to shoot and kill 69 people in the back as they were running away from the police. All 69 people were shot in the back. 69 people gone in 40 seconds.

This is what happened to the people of South Africa that tried to stand up for their right. Their right to be treated like a human by other humans. These people didn’t want special treatment or anything they just wanted to be equal and not judged based on the colour of their skin. Crazy, right? Now ask yourself what was happening in the United States during 1960s? How were people of different colored skin being treated? How were people in the United States that looked different treated during WWII, a mere 20 years earlier? Internment camps ring a bell?  

Students listen to the story of Sharpeville from Alice who was a young girl at the time of the massacre. 

Jabu

Today, in Sharpeville, South Africa, as I learned more about the horrible Sharpeville massacre I met Jabu. Jabu’s grandfather was one of the 69 people shot in the back and killed. His grandmother was one of the 108 people injured and she still lives with a bullet in her leg. His grandfather, died at the age of 30 on 21 March 1960. Every year, for the past three years, Jabu waits for Marita, his “mom” as he affectionately referred to her as, and her students. He watches for the big embarrassingly glamorous coach buses. As I sat next to Marita who had Jabu’s arm draped around her he said one of the most touching things I have ever heard; he told Marita “you are the medicine that this country needs.”

I started crying. Here is a boy in torn up sneakers a stretched out shirt whose grandfather died fighting for equality, whose grandmother lives with a bullet in her leg that was shot from the same gun that killed her husband, who’s raised by his grandmother, whose situation, though changed, has not improved much more than his grandfather’s conditions, who calls Marita and the work she is doing the “medicine” that South Africa needs.      

After our a long day in Sharpeville we went to a play. After the play we had a Q&A with the actors, all South African, where one of the actresses said how now South Africa is just as bad as the other countries in that South African’s racism is no longer legislated and yet just as bad as racism is in other parts of the world. This actress even mentioned how when she leaves the country, as someone with darker skin, and sees how white people treat other white people that she would rather stay in her hotel room. Interesting perspective. Now explain to me how this was so different from the US. South Africa is racist, South Africa is dangerous and yet, while I sit here and listen to these actors’ stories about their lives during the apartheid and towards the “end” of the apartheid you could easily change around a few words and cut out the legislation talk and have it be a story from my own childhood or my own friends right there in the fabulous USA that is considered a first world country and a progressive country and one that should be an example to other countries.