New APPS

My own involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle began in the mid 1980s when I was a graduate student at Pitt. It was a formative period for me, a time when I was learning to be an activist and organizer, and taking that on as part of my life and identity. throughout that time, Mandela was a symbol more than a real live figure.  We read his speeches and analysis, studied his life. But locked up in prison, he was not someone we interacted with, even from a distance.  Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, and many others were the ongoing partners in our thinking.  Numerous less well known representatives came to our campuses and engaged with us directly.  Mandela was this figure on "free Nelson Mandela" posters, but nonetheless important for all that.  Of course this change with his release from prison and the transformation of roles that he took on as a result. In this first post, I want to reflect on the importance that this time had for me, by passing on a few little vignettes.  I invite others to do the same in comments. this might seem odd, talking about my own life on the occasion of the passing of one of the world-historical greats. But as I see it, a good measure of the importance of Mandela lies in the changes he brought about in so many thousands of less significant people like me. 

The first is very simple.  I had recently become politically active, after a period of reading and coming to realize that much of what I'd been taught about the US role in the world wasn't true, working with a group led by radical Catholics and Quakers in Pittsburgh.  We were doing Latin American Solidarity work and work around nuclear weapons. Some folks encouraged me to help revive the anti-apartheid movement on campus – there was a flourishing movement in the city – and I was happy to.  So I gathered up a group of students, and we called for a meeting. About half-way into this meeting, a distinguished older man walks in and sits in the back.  We had already done introductions, so it was sometime before anyone asked him to introduce himself.  He said simply "Oh, hello, please carry on. My name is Dennis Brutus, and I'm a poet." 

As some of you no doubt know, Dennis was a bit more than a poet when it came to the anti-apartheid struggle. It was one of the greatest joys and privileges of my life to get to know Dennis, to learn from his mentorship, to sit in our later shanty-town encampment and listen to him read his poetry, and years later to work with him on Palestine-solidarity and global justice work.  He was truly one of the greats, and someone who had a profound effect on my own political development.

Another brush with famous people story: A year or so after that first meeting, we had built an encampment in front of the Student Union at Pitt.  It was our headquarters for teach-ins, for rallies, for concerts.  But such things are very hard to sustain, especially when winter sets in.  I think it was February, and I think it was 1986, though I might have the year off by one either way.  But anyway, we had been out there for a couple months; it was cold; it was late. Also there was a big event going on on campus that night and so only about a dozen of us were at the encampment, and feeling I must say a bit discouraged.  I guess it was around 10 pm when we saw a guy flanked by two obvious security people walking towards us. Suddenly there was speculation that we were finally being shut down by the administration.  But then one of our number suddenly jumped up very excited and said "guys! LOOOOK!"  The event that night was a concert by Peter Gabriel.  It was now intermission, and he had slipped out the back way.  He came over, introduced himself, and played Biko for us with just an accoustic guitar.  Then he thanked us for the work, and went back.  I later heard that he lectured the audience about how they needed to be out supporting us more than they needed to be in seeing him.

In the mid-1990s, shortly after Mandela was elected president and the first government of the new South Africa took office, I was directing the Georgetown Program on Justice and Peace. One of our adjuncts, George Irani, was teaching a conflict resolution course.  In the last days of the struggle, one of the more sad moments came when a young woman, Amy Biehl, who had been actively involved with the ANC and worked for years to support the struggle of the South African people was killed by a gang during the chaotic moments that accompanied the fall of apartheid. (See here) Her parents went to the Truth and Reconciliation commission and argued that Amy would have wanted forgiveness for her killers and for people to continue her work, which they did for many years in retirement, setting up coorperative businesses in the township where Amy worked, a foundation in the US, etc.  Well, Amy's parents were in DC and George invited them to his class.  The day before the class, I was sitting in my office and I get a call. The person says "Hello, I'm the secretary for Sheila Sisulu, do you know who that is?"  I said, well, yes, I did indeed know the activist and current South African ambassador to the US.  "Well, could she attend this class where the Biehl's are speaking?"  So it was that I found myself escorting the South African ambassador through campus to our little JUPS class.  She refused to speak in class, except to say that she was in awe of these people who had demonstrated a strength that she could never have.  After class, the five of us went out.  George took us to a Lebanese restaurant that we closed down.  For 5 hours we talked about activism, revolution, organizing, and the work that remained to be done.  This was the first generation government of South Africa, a government of people forged in democratic revolution, rather than professionalized within the institutions of power.

Finally, I want to recall going to South Africa.  I never went during the struggle – it was never a priority and I had no way to finance the trip.  But in 2004 I was invited to a conference on John McDowell in Cape Town.  The first moment of that trip was exiting the plane for passport control.  There was a black woman asking for my passport.  I had not prepared myself for the impact of that simple moment, and I cried at passport control.  I stammered some apology, saying that I had of been a minor participant in the movement, but that it was so important to me, and that this was just, well, you know, I feel really stupid.  She smiled broadly and said: "don't apologize, it is wonderful.  And we get this more often than you might expect." 

The second moment of that trip came at the start of the conference. She was not on the schedule, but at the beginning a woman was introduced who wanted to say a few words of welcome.  She was the Minister of Education for the country. She spoke of how proud they were of John McDowell, detailed his career, and said what an honor it was to have philosophers from all over the world in South Africa.  

The third came after the conference.  At the same time as our little conference was arguing about things like receptivity, there was a major international conference on Palestine going on.  One of my friends from the US, Josh Ruebner, was at that conference and Josh called me and said that he had gotten to know the ANC commissioner for the Capetown region, Max Ozinsky, someone that I had known of during the days of struggle.  Max was active in Palestine solidarity work at the time – later with fighting corruption in the ANC just as he had fought apartheid for years in exile.  He had offered to take us on a tour.  So for a day, we accompanied Max sharing stories of work in the US along with his own work underground with the armed wing of the revolution.  Later in the day, we arrived at a community development project in one of the poor neighborhood outside Cape Town. People still lived in tiny shacks, and the ANC was working to bring electricity.  Max wanted to introduce us to the young man who was leading the work in that township.  So we got out of the car – this hard Jewish ex-revolutionary fighter come from a Palestine conference, two middle age nerdy white Americans, and met this young black South African.  Max said simply "these are two comrades from the US, my friend." and immediately we were embraced in the warmest full-body hug, and we spent an hour over tea talking and sharing stories.  

For all that has happened since and for all its flaws – more on that in my next post – South Africa was and is a country in which the word 'comrade' can be used without irony, and without being quaint, a country in which people used the word 'we' with great frequency, a country in which solidarity was the normal d
efault position, a country in which peoople cry at passport control, a country in which one could be welcomed immediately across lines of race, class, and nationality because someone trusted called you 'comrade'.

All of these are things that I treasure today as we bid fairwell to the struggle's greatest leader.