Ways of Staying...

As we have come back to South Africa, hoping to be a part of building a better nation, what we have discovered is that the divisions are still strong between black and white, rich and poor. We have discovered that the distance between these groups has for the most part not got closer in the "Rainbow Nation" but in fact grown further from each other, relationally and financially. This has been perpetuated by a desire to pretend that everything is now ok, to forgive without reconciliation and without being able to have healthy dialougue on the issues that affect our lives in the New South Africa. See article by Steve Khumalo on Rainbow nation mantra obscures racial inequality.
I am reading a book by Kevin Bloom called Ways of Staying. It is a challenging and yet refreshing book on the complexity of South Africa post Apartheid.
This quote jumped out at me. "to live here we have to understand. We have to understand that we kind of rub off on each other...We're living in the hangover of an incredibly violent history, and to make sense of living in this place we have to be able to understand."
This is the central reason why we have to move past our Apartheid lenses, past our language of blaming them, blaming those people, creating them vs us. We have to get together to talk, mostly to listen, to hear the stories and experiences of those who are different than us...to start to understand. That is the only way we are going to be able to stay in this country. We have to cross old boundaries and engage with what is, the reality of the struggle of South Africa, to move beyond our history into a true New South Africa.
On Sunday night we had our regular discussion on how to follow Jesus within the context of the struggles in SA. We studied Acts 1:1-8 and were convicted that the Holy Spirit was given to help us cross boundaries not protect them. Tom blogged on this Boundary Breaking here. We hope that our discussion groups will be the start of understanding.
Let me know what you think.