History

South Africa is drenched in history. Ruggedness and wildness roll through the earth. Highways twist through bubbling, babbling port towns. Crushed spirits lay low beneath vast sprawls of rambled shacks. It's a land of contrasts – mountains and savannas, townships and suburbs, blacks and whites – as if apartheid shook the earth, and half of it crumbled.

From 1700-1800, the Dutch and English settled in South Africa, fighting with the natives and with one another. As a general trend, the English bullied the Dutch, who bullied the indigenous blacks. By the 1900’s, the English controlled the port locations, the Dutch settled in the northeast, and the blacks were pushed into tribal reservations.

Flash forward a century to 1948. The Afrikaans (originally Dutch) take the political majority, and create apartheid laws to increase their power and status to equal that of the British. They separate the country into white, black, and colored, citing Hitler’s ideology and theology of racial superiority. Blacks are relocated to their “homelands,” stripped of citizenship, required to carry a “pass book” at all times.

The African National Congress (NAC) contests the apartheid, but the government brutally deals with activists, opens fire on public protests, and imprisons many NAC leaders on Robben Island. These political prisoners study and conspire from there, and one of them – Nelson Mandela – becomes president of the NAC and an icon of freedom. 

South Africa finally cracks in 1990, after a worldwide trade embargo. President Klerk announces that he is in favor of democratic elections and drafts a new South African constitution. Nelson Mandela is elected as South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

In 1999, Robben Island is set apart as a World Heritage Site. 

We went there last Wednesday. 

 Robben Island

 Prison Hallway

 Prison Corridor

 South African Coast

Pray for:

-Safety in the townships tomorrow

-The Lord to speak clearly to me and to the BOH staff about whether I should return in January.