The head teacher of a high school near Johannesburg took a look at my book’s cover, which features a quote by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu: ``Forgiveness is not for sissies.’’
``That's so true,’’ mused the teacher, who is white and Afrikaans speaking, meaning she is from the Afrikaner minority some might blame for the brutal apartheid policies that once denied economic, educational and political opportunities to most South Africans.
``I sometimes have trouble forgiving myself,'' she added.
As I traveled in South Africa promoting my book, ``It’s a black white thing,’’ I come to see such encounters as gifts. The book is about race relations among young South Africans and among their American counterparts. It seemed some people didn’t even have to read past the cover to be moved.
The teacher headed a school reserved for Afrikaners during the apartheid era. Twenty years after South Africa’s first all-race elections, most of the school’s students were black, some traveling to classes from Soweto, once a cauldron of anti-racist protests.
The Soweto protests included the 1976 demonstrations against the imposition of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in black schools. Police opened fire on peaceful marchers in Soweto on June 16, 1976. The protests and violence spread across the country, and scores of young people were killed. The white minority government found itself confronted by young South Africans who would lend energy to the struggle at a time when anti-apartheid leaders like Nelson Mandela had already been imprisoned for years.
Some young protesters declared ``no education before liberation,’’ and left the country to learn to use guns and bombs. Years later, I would meet others who took up words as weapons, writing protest plays, poetry and songs and heading into exile to study not guerrilla tactics, but the economics and politics they would need in a dreamed-of future South Africa.
The 21st century Sowetans I met on my book tour were engaged in a new struggle. Their parents wanted their children to be taught by those who got the best training and resources the apartheid government had to offer.
The students were dedicated, and told me they were hopeful and thankful to be ``born free'' of apartheid, which ended with the historic all-race elections that ushered Mandela into the presidency.
The students understood that their parents wanted them to make the most of their moment in history. But that didn't make the pressure of those expectations easier to bear.
The teachers were just as dedicated. One listened and smiled as a student complained that she was pushing her to get near-perfect scores on her English exams. I told the student that if the teacher expected anything less, it would have been an insult.
In lessons offered and accepted, perhaps forgiveness was asked and granted.
As I left, the head teacher hugged me farewell.