Urdang - Mapping my way home activism, nostalgia, and the downfall of apartheid South Africa

Mapping My Way Home

MAPPING MY WAY HOME

Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa

by STEPHANIE J. URDANG

MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
New York

Copyright 2017 by Stephanie J. Urdang

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

available from the publisher

ISBN paper: 978-1-58367-667-7

ISBN cloth: 978-1-58367-668-4

Typeset in Minion Pro and Bliss

MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS, NEW YORK

monthlyreview.org

5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

THIS MEMOIR WAS CONCEIVED and reconceived over many years. During that time I have benefited from the support of friends. I cant express my gratitude enough for the input of Gloria Jacobs and Jane Rosenman, whose superior editing skills were critical to the reshaping of Mapping My Way Home. Special thanks, too, to Jennifer Davis, Alcinda Honwana, Gail Hovey, Karen Judd, and Teresa Smart, who read the manuscript at different stages and whose insights and comments were invaluable. I am also grateful to the many others who encouraged and supported me through the long process of bringing this memoir to fruition, among whom are my womens group of forty-five yearsSuzette Abbott, Jennifer Davis, Janet Hoope,r and Gail Hoveyas well as Michelle Fine, Pippa Green, Hanaa Hamdi, Hermione Harris, Richard Knight, Judith Marshall, Ann McClintock, Margaret Marshall, Barbara Reisman, and Janis Zadel.

And most especially, there are my stalwart cheerleaders, husband John Woodburn and daughter Kendra Urdang, who lived with this book through good times and bad, with my moods to match. Their support means the world to me.

Martha Cameron, through her scrupulous editing, spotted a number of inaccuracies that saved me embarrassment. On that note, I am the only one responsible for all remaining errors and inaccuracies. Thanks as well go to Martin Paddio and Michael Yates at Monthly Review Press for their enthusiasm for the project. It was a pleasure to work with all three.

There are those who I need to thank posthumously. A number of my friends and family who were part of my story, even if not included in my book, died while I was writing it. Some, like my parents and my sister Leonie, feature in my memoir, as do Becky Reiss and Lina Magaia. Others, even though an important part of my story, were not included. Among the latter are Danish anthropologist Jette Bukh, with whom I stayed in Guinea-Bissau after independence and who became a close friend; David Emanuel, fellow southern African, whose wisdom and support saw me through my cancer and Kendras birth; and Anthony Lewis, whose friendship, humor, and generosity meant a lot to me. Particular memories are for Eve and Tony Hall. The fleeting idea for a memoir became grounded through discussions with Tony at Matumi, their home outside of Nelspruit, after they returned to South Africa. His enthusiasm for my book was infectious. I first met Eve and Tony in Nairobi in 1973 on my travels in Africa. Introduced through a mutual friend, I arrived at their house for tea one Saturday afternoon and stayed for six weeks. They had gone into exile in the early 1960s with their three young sons, after Eve had served a six-month sentence for promoting the banned ANC with a leaflet and poster campaign, and Tony, a journalist, was no longer allowed to practice his craft. I slipped into their lives and we remained close friends until their untimely deaths: Eve from breast cancer in 2007 at age seventy; Tony at age seventy-one from a heart attack a few months later, in 2008. All are sorely missed.

Friends provided beautiful writing retreats. I returned often to idyllic Matumi, my computer on a small table in front of my bedroom, a view of the stunning valley below; Margaret Marshall and Anthony Lewiss house overlooking a pond on Marthas Vineyard was a yearly treat; Pippa Greens house in Cape Town gave me a magnificent view of Table Mountain as I worked; Hermione Harriss house in London was home from home after my parents died. In addition, I had the opportunity to spend time at the indescribably wonderful Blue Mountain Center for writers, artists, and activists on a lake in the Adirondacks.

My grateful thanks to Alice Brown, director of the Ford Foundation regional office in southern Africa, which provided a grant for research and travel to South Africa and Mozambique in 2011.

Note: A few of the names of people who appear in this book have been changed.

PROLOGUE

Mother Mountain

T able Mountain shimmers in the heat this late summers day in March 1991. Even from the distance of the Cape Town airport, the magnificence of the flat-topped mountain takes hold of me. Its image, a constant symbol of my city and of the country I left behind in 1967, continued to occupy a corner of my being throughout the decades of my absence, sometimes in hibernation, sometimes vigorously alive as I succumbed to bouts of yearning and nostalgia.

By twenty-three, I could no longer tolerate apartheids tyranny. Neither could my parents, who emigrated that same year. While their destination was London, mine was New York. My decision to return to South Africa for a visit took hold when, a year earlier, I celebrated my now widowed mothers eightieth birthday. On February 11, 1990, my family sat glued to the small TV in the living room of her cozy semidetached house in north London, awaiting Nelson Mandelas release after twenty-seven years in prison. Outside the windows the weather was listless and bleak, a typical winters day where perpetually gray skies appear to hover just above ones head. In South Africa it was summer, the colors bright, the African sky high and blue.

There was a limit to how much a camera could show crowds waiting. To build tension for the viewers, reporters prattled on with endless commentary on what might be expected from the release of the worlds most prominent and revered political prisoner, while cameras scanned the scene. Pundits and commentators speculated and analyzed and then re-speculated and re-analyzed. Artists sketches projected what he might look like. It had been illegal to publish any photos of him while he was in prison.

Kendra, my four-year-old daughter, couldnt fathom why we were staring at a TV screen for so many hours. We played games with her, her grandmother read her book after book, but the time dragged on along with her boredom. Then the moment arrived and Mandela walked into view. Dignified, thin, tall, graceful: nothing like the artists sketches. I could hardly see him through the blur of my tears. The bond with my past stretched taut as I delved into a hidden space where I am still the child of Africa, of South Africa, of Cape Town.

I looked at John, my husband, who had never been to AfricaJohn, forever the good listener, who had heard my tales of growing up South African and tolerated my passion for my country beyond endurance, had tears running down his face as freely as mine, while my mother quietly wept. At that moment, I vowed to take him to my South Africa, and soon.

Kendra looked at one parent, then the other, puzzled. I explained again, a simpler task now that I could point to Mandela before us on the screen, that this was a truly great man that bad people had put in prison many, many years ago, long before she was born.

Were crying because were happy that he is free, I explained.

Will they put the bad people in jail now, Mummy? she asked. Oh, that it were so simple.

AND SO HERE WE ARE at the airport, waiting in limbo between landing and being met by our friend Pippa. She and her husband, Alan, had returned to South Africa two years earlier after studying at Columbia University. Pippa Green was working as a journalist and Alan was teaching at the University of Cape Town. We had become close during their time in New York, Kendra having adopted Pippa, full of affection and fun, as a special aunt.