Redemption

In the spring of 2004, I had the privilege of spending 2 1/2 weeks in South Africa and Bostwana scouting study abroad programs for the college I was working for at the time.

South Africa was a revelation for me. I knew a bit about the history of South Africa as divestment in the apartheid regime was a hot topic as I was graduating high school and entering college. The injustice I read about and saw on television was a psychic link to the battle for Civil Rights in the American South. Here, I was living through what seemed confined to the black and white films of an earlier time. My senior year in high school, Victor, a young black activist from South Africa, came to our high school as part of an international peace program. The police had imprisioned Victor in South Africa and my friends and I spoke late into the night with him about the situation in South Africa and about Bishop Desmond Tutu, who he knew and looked up to as a leader.

So, I knew a bit about South Africa when I got off the plane in Cape Town. What I wasn't prepared for was the spirit of transformation that permeated the country. South Africa is in many ways still a desperate place. Life is still far too cheap. Violence is still far too common. When I was there South Africa had the highest rate of sexual assault in the world. And yet, around every corner it seemed was a country that was consciously trying to re-invent itself, a country trying to find redemption by looking the pain of the past in the eye, by bearing it all.

It's difficult to visit South Africa and not come away hopeful about the capacity of human beings, both as individuals and as a species, to turn a corner. There is a story in today's Los Angeles Times about Amy Biehl, an American student killed by a mob outside Cape Town and how her parents dealt with this tragedy. The story is remarkable and the article doesn't do it justice.

When I was in South Africa I visited the township where this happened. I spent a night there and played checkers with a young girl for over an hour as her family fed me dinner. Outside the smoke of the township was thick and sooty. What the Amy Biehl Foundation represents should never be forgotten -- a courageous and compassionate heart can cut through the smoke and open up the sky.