Author: matt.kelemen

Besides being committed to the beautiful game, we’re committed to learning more about daily life in South Africa for people unlikely to ever attend a match. Our recent connections through IDEX with the Whole World Women Association in Cape Town illuminated the troubling and heart-braking circumstances of women and families struggling to re-establish their lives in South Africa.

Historically Cape Town has been an international crossroads, with a permanent Dutch settlement in 1652 pushing the indigenous Khoina (originally from Botswana) from their ancestral land. The slaves brought to the Cape were from Malaysia and other parts of southern and eastern Africa (e.g. modern day Madagascar, Somalia). A more recent wave of immigrants to Cape Town, as we learned from WWWA project coordinator Mary Tal, includes African immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Uganda, Cameroon and Zimbabwe, displaced by war, economic hardship, the threat of female circumcision and political conflict. The WWWA, founded in 2002 as a self-help and support group to refugee women and their families, provides women with knowledge, resources and referrals to alleviate their struggle to establish themselves in new circumstances. It is an advocacy organization seeking to develop a more tolerant society through various means, including writing workshops. Several of the women have published their poetry and autobiographies. We met Epiphanie Mukasano, a former teacher who fled Rwanda in 1994 with her husband and three children seeking a place where human rights were respected. Recent xenophobic attacks and less blatant discrimination have made the transition to South Africa painfully difficult for many women, as the following poem by Ephiphanie Mukasano reveals:

I am the woman

you despised the other day

throwing out wicked words

which cut like a sharp knife

I am that woman

at whom you threw burning pots

and whose clothes you scornfully tore away

chasing me with a broom out of your house

I am the woman

who wandered naked

in the dark street

wondering where to go

I am the woman

full of scars, but

I do not hold a grudge

Today I am stretching out my hand

Will you take it?

Published in Living on the Fence: Poems by Women Who are Refugees from Various Countries in Africa, compiled and edited by Mary Magdalene Yuin Tal and Anne Schuster.

Out of the struggle comes fortitude and at times an astonishing capacity for forgiveness. Adela and I attended part of a half-day workshop sponsored by WWWA and a partner NGO, Magnet Theatre Productions, where a talented group of women planned and choreographed an event for World Refugee Day to foster awareness of refugee issues through spoken word, dance and song. As we sang and danced with them, as we read their poems, we are honored to be a small part of the community and collective spirit nurtured by WWWA for the betterment of us all.

At times, a tie can feel like a win. And so it was for us walking out of the Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg after the US held off England’s late barrage and secured a 1-1 draw in its opening match of the World Cup. For me, it was far and away the best World Cup match I have ever attended. We sat amidst chanting and cheering American fans. Across the stadium, a banner said, simply, “1776, 1812, 1950, 2010.” 1950 was the last time the US beat England in a World Cup match; the other dates you’ll have to figure out for yourself. We may have been outnumbered by English flags, but we felt mighty.

Then the players arrived on the field. For England, a veritable all-star team. Rooney. Lampard. Gerrard. Cole. Stars for their respective top flight teams. For Dylan and me, having watched them on TV week in, week out, it was daunting to see them next to the US players. Donovan. Dempsey. Altidore. Howard. No slouches, to be sure. But could they keep up with the top players in the game?

The match started brightly and when England opened up the American defense for an early goal right in front of us, it looked to be a long night. But the defense tightened up, the offense got dangerous, and England’s keeper made a horror show of a Clint Dempsey shot; the ball squeaked under him and rolled quietly across the goal line. The Joburg paper called it a “galactic clanger.” 1-1, in any case. All square.

The second half brought more chances for England than for the U.S. but we held our breath as Jozy Altidore muscled off England defender Jamie Carragher and rifled a shot off the keeper’s hand and the crossbar. A collective groan went up from our section, quickly followed by cheers of anticipation and appreciation. Most among the American faithful were begging for a win, expecting nothing less. But I knew what a draw would mean – a valuable point toward the second round and bragging rights against one of the top teams in the world – and was quietly hoping for the clock to reach 90 minutes. As the end neared, I found myself screaming at the referee to blow his whistle. When he finally did, my cheer was the loudest. And even with the weight of a tired girl on my back, the long walk back to the car felt like floating on air. ¡Olé!

When Jeannette and I traveled to Cuba, we left with the distinct impression that things are much more complex than they might originally appear. I now think that this is just an axiom of travel, indeed of life. Case in point: Cape Town. On our last day in the Mother City, we visited the District Six Museum, a memorial to a neighborhood that thrived as a cultural melting pot until the Apartheid government declared it a “Whites only” area. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the neighborhood was bulldozed and residents evicted and separated by race. Since the return of democracy in 1994, the new government has offered restitution to over 70,000 former residents, with the choice of cash or land. One of the 15,000 or so people who have chosen to return and rebuild is Noor Ephraim, an Indian-born Muslim who regales visitors to the museum with personal tales of District Six’s golden age. Much of what Noor told us was inspirational and unsurprising, but one thing struck me. When talk turned to the World Cup, as it inevitably does, he said, “I cannot support the Bafana,” referring to the South African team. The reason? According to Noor, the black sporting leadership has excluded non-black players, re-creating the kind of separation that dominated under Apartheid. He ticked off several qualified White and “colored” players, and concluded, “I will support the Bafana when they choose players on merit.” And this from someone who also expressed a profound ability to follow Mandela’s example and forgive those who had taken his home from him. A younger museum colleague, Clayton, expressed his support for Bafana and suggested a generational divide at work. Perhaps. But, to me, it was a reminder of the complex social system that exists in South Africa and has been made ever more complex by the coming of democracy.