It could well be the ones I love

It is a simple black and white photograph circa 1938 of a black man and a “colored” woman celebrating their marriage at a church in District 6, Cape Town. Flanking the happy two is another, already married, white couple. The four are friends. In this particular district, people of all colors and creeds live together, in one of the most culturally vibrant areas of the city. It is a happy picture. Yet, for the first time I can no longer stay composed. I give just a few sniffles and a tear or two to the loss that will become evident in 1948…and will legally separate all four of these people in the 60’s. Everything we have seen, the horrors of political prison, images of violence and justified revolution, memorials to the fallen of the most noble cause, the greatest beauty my two eyes have ever seen, the ugliest side of man, the desperate face of poverty, and the glory of the human spirit….what is it about this picture?

Mixed marriages – especially between blacks, Asians and coloreds, were not uncommon before they were officially banned with the Immorality act. Imagine being told that loving a person is immoral—that finding beauty and glory in another’s soul is only possible if your skin has a matching shade. And not white that fill s a smile, the passionate red that fills veins, the pink and purple of the pulsing heart, the firing grey of the brain, the calm blue or earthy brown of the eye—but the biological contrast to the freckle. Tell me, who can morally make such a claim?

And what happened to these families after the Land Areas Act? To their children? To friends? People, by "God's" almighty account of morality, could only live with their own race. Husbands and wives were forcibly separated, friends made to say goodbye, and children…if they looked like the father, went with the father and vice a versa.

This is what happened in district 6. This is what became of the four people in the photograph. An entire integrated culture destroyed so that a few homes on a hill would have a better view of the cape.

I think I see now why I was so moved by this image. I had only seen pain and struggle driven by a hope for a brighter future. I had seen ghastly images that made my conviction for freedom more indelible. I heard the word Ubuntu-I am because you are, and felt hope. I know there is so much truth to be sought, respect and understanding still to be yearned for, and reconciliation to continue for generations. Yet, I was proud to believe in it. Never again. Educate the masses. Individuals may not all be equally talented, but the world might finally be seeing that this is not a product of color or creed. So that equal opportunity to pursue those inalienable rights might someday happen. Yet, this picture stopped me.

The four friends…smiling…young…who could have been in any country of the world… who could very well be me and my brothers…had the same hope. These kids just wanted the world. They loved each other. They wanted a vote for each other, and a place to grow old side by side with dignity. But all they ended up having, was that hope. The two whites in one area. The colored woman and one child in another. Her black husband and two other children in another area still. The brothers and sisters would have an education so awfully unequal that they would barely be recognizable when reunited. Not to see each other. Not to hope and pray and live together. Not to love each other. What is the world, in all its majesty, sitting by the grand oceans, below the Table Mountain, on the green veld…but a place where just a few can say that these four young people had the wrong dream? A pretty prison is still a prison. These young people, wanted a better world. I want a better world. For them, and for me, it is on the horizon. But their future world became a worse world. I cannot imagine the pain to die with a withering vision of the future. Perhaps in seeing them, I am confronted with the fear that my dreams for the world, will not bloom but dry up in my too brief chance. I cry again for those who conquered oppression if just for a moment, who chose love over despair, who sought truth and never settled for less, and who still died in a jail cell. Not just in South Africa, but any time any person and her beliefs were deemed anything less than gloriously human.

Father, Forgive Us. That is the line outside the district 6 museum.

I have not the power to condemn nor forgive man and his folly. But I can pray, not to a God, but to my brothers and sisters, that we seek to understand and respect one another’s differences as beautiful and complementing. Let us seek truth together. Let us reconcile as a collage and not a uniform canvas. Let us dream. Let us hope. Let us learn, not in definitions of what things are not—but of what they are. Let us sing. Let us play. Let us cry—grieve and triumph. Let us remember. Let us move forward. Let us love.

Amen.