iSonto #70

This is our last Sunday living here in the town of Stellenbosch in furnished accommodation. We found it too expensive to buy here so we are moving to a home in a nearby town a bit less than 18 km from Dave's work at the University of Stellenbosch. Our moving day is this Tuesday! It is going to be great to have our own yard and space again with our furniture and possessions. The town we are moving to is also lovely. It is called Somerset West and is close to both the beaches and the mountains. 

Here are some pictures we have taken on a few recent weekend outings. 

Here we are in Franschhoek, a sweet town about 37 km from Stellenbosch. We had a delightful afternoon here looking at the river, having a picnic, walking around the museums, and learning more about the Huguenot Christians who fled persecution and founded the town.

We loved the Huguenot memorial which expresses the trinity in the three arches and the sun and cross emblem of the Huguenots on the top.

Another week we went to the beautiful Paarl Mountain Reserve. We happened upon this by accident and it quickly became a favourite. One little boy loved paddling in the stream . . .

It is free and has spectacular views.

The children were very excited to learn that this mountain once had a lava flow coming from it. Dave told them it was now an extinct volcano. Nate responded to this with disbelief because he wanted there to be a chance it was dormant and would erupt! Mercy also responded with disbelief but for the opposite reason. She thought it was dormant and was terrified that it would erupt! Mercy wanted to go home after hearing that it used to be a volcano.

Another fun outing (on a colder and windier day) was to the Giraffe House. We saw lots of fun animals. My favourites were the cats. Mercy loved the flamingos.

This is the serval cat in the background, a truly spectacular animal with both spots and stripes. There were also caracals.

Mercy loved feeding the goats and spent a lot of time doing that.

This trip was for our "family celebration" where we celebrate our wedding anniversary with the children. Here we are opening small gifts on that morning. We celebrated with them on the 15th of August.

Dave and I also went out alone on the 18th, our anniversary, for a lovely dinner.

Moving overseas with a family is in some ways easier than alone because you have some of your best friends moving with you!

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God is at work in Zimbabwe

During our trip to South Africa it was encouraging to speak with a pastor who has been involved with taking food over the border to Zimbabwe. We also spoke with a Zimbabwean refugee who said things were improving somewhat and he hopes to go home in the near future. 

A friend recently sent me a link to the article "God is Working!" about the way some Christians are responding in faith to the difficulties in Zimbabwe. We can learn much from Christians who face extreme hardship. 

I love this quote:

"Optimism is being able to acknowledge brutal realities and to paint an even greater reality." 

Christians in Africa need that type of optimism! Dave and I hope to have this type of attitude toward South Africa's "brutal realities". Yes, the crime and poverty and corruption (and really bad driving!) are real. Yes, God is real too and we have hope that the church will thrive and do great things in the midst of suffering. The kingdom of God is the "greater reality".

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Shackled Continent

Memorable

Tear-jerking

Depressing

Hopeful

Condemning

Compelling

Somehow incomplete

If you, like me, have an Africa-obsession then this book is for you. It will make you wonder if there is any hope for a continent of people so good at tolerating poor (and sometimes appalling leadership), so divided, and so intent upon blaming the West (or, as Robert Guest puts it, "Whitey") for African problems. It will remind you of what Europe once was, and help you believe that Africa could someday improve. After finishing it you may, like me, want to retreat into an entirely different world. For me that is Anne of Green Gables (approximately the 11th reading), where the only murders are those Anne imagines.

Despite the excellent information and analysis Shackled Continent provides, it remains somehow incomplete. Why? Having tasted something of the reality of Africa, I feel like you can't transfer that through a book about wars and really bad roads and angry leaders and poor, sick people. My experience is very limited. South Africa has very good roads and no wars. Some people even argue that it is not "Africa" because of the many differences between it and other countries on the continent. Still, I didn't find beauty and joy in this book and I was looking for it.

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Zimbabwe's election: Take 2

In a previous post I mentioned my thought that a positive outcome in Zimbabwe could give us hope for other African countries. Well, obviously there has not been a positive outcome. The African community is also failing to strongly address the many failings of the electoral process and Mr Mugabe's regime. Read African Union treads softly to find out more. The response of South Africa's president has been particularly disappointing.

I know next-to-nothing about Africa yet, but I am quickly learning that my hope for Africa is only in God. Zimbabewe's opposition leader Mr Tsvangirai seems fantastic, but he is not the "answer". God is. Mr Mugabe has stated that only God will remove him from office. He's right, so we'd better keep praying!

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The horror of racism

Sadly, just weeks after I wrote fear in context, Zimbabwean refugees are fleeing back to their country. South Africa's unexpected racism, which I wrote about in Africa-as-everything-bad, has led to South African blacks attacking refugees from ofther African nations. You can read about the current crisis in this BBC news article. You can also read some commentry at Inside South Africa blog. Meanwhile things are hardly growing better in Zimbabwe, with many opposition supporters in hospital.

This latest flare up of violence will, of course, do nothing for the image of South Africa. I've already had a number of people ask me about it. They generally seem to have no understanding of the context, but it reinforces their perceptions of South Africa as a highly dangerous place. One person suggested that there was little difference between Zimbabwe and South Africa. While this is untrue, it natural that people arrive at this conclusion if they only listen to news snippets. The huge differences between the countries are not "newsworthy" in terms of radio or TV news.

I know enough about Africa to realise just how little I do know. Often, TV news and the radio gives us the false impression that they know what is going on in certain countries. I'm sure I've made this mistake many times in the past. Now, after being married to a South African for just a short while, I realise just how simplistic and/or distorted impressions of a country can become. I'm trying to be more wary, and more informed, in my comments about the world. I know next to nothing. Even though I'm constantly learning, that will probably be the case for a long time.

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In April, Noel Piper write about what she learnt about caring for the environment from a trip to Kenya. The article, "Behold , It was Very Good." But Now? , details some of the environmental problems in Kenya and a possible Christian response to them.

It is very encouraging to hear of the work Christians are doing in Kenya:

Care of Creation is introducing “Farming God’s Way.” Model farms demonstrate the increased yields through sustainably replenishing the soil and retaining moisture. Over time, the method requires less strenuous hand-tilling than the usual farming method.

But what makes this a Christian mission and ministry? The practical help and methods could be demonstrated by anyone who cares about people.

The difference is that Care of Creation’s first priority is God. Then, like God, they care for people by making God and his ways more clear. This truth was the foundation of two daylong workshops presented by Craig Sorley and his coworker Francis Maina. One focused on farming. The other, for community and church leaders, focused on the problems of deforestation. During both, there was significant teaching from Scripture, looking at the earth through God’s eyes and seeking his purposes and desires for his handiwork.

As Christians we are in a unique position to understand the importance of caring for creation. Read Noel's article and find out more!

I am thankful to my friend Felicity for sending me the link to this article.

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Fear in context

The fears of the South Africans and visitors who are rich enough to afford security are put into context when one considers what life can be like outside the gates. The situation in South Africa is not as bad as that in Uganda. However, the poem I've linked to does draws our attention to the fact that the plight of those outside the gates is often much worse than the plight of those who are rich enough to build them.


There are also many people for whom South Africa is seen as a land of great hope, not of fear and violence. These refugees from Zimbabwe are trying to get into Limpopo province in South Africa.

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South-Africa-as-fear-and-violence

Recently I posted on Africa-as-everything-bad, which got me thinking about some of the most common perceptions of South Africa as an individual country. When Australians think of South Africa, they think of crime. When I was first considering visiting there with Dave, one relative informed me that I’d be “raped and murdered”.

About a week ago, someone told me of a conversation they’d had with a South African ex-pat who’d recently gone back for a holiday. This person, I was told, “didn’t bring back your glowing reports” but instead had tales of relatives being hijacked, fences with barbed wire on the top, and gates that block off the area of the house where the bedrooms are.


I suddenly felt like my “glowing reports” were embarrassingly naïve. Apparently it is suspicious even to enjoy South Africa, and appreciate its beauty and its people, on a holiday. I’d stayed behind barbed wire fences with people who’d been hijacked and tied up in their own home. I’d seen the security signs everywhere, and the “car guards” at the end of every parking place.

Yet somehow I’d failed. I’d still managed to feel positive about being in South Africa. The crime stories weren’t at the top of my list of perceptions of the place. I remembered a beautiful garden and a happy dinner behind the fence and the laser beams. I remembered a spectacular view from the well-secured apartment complex. I remembered how much fun it was to see my husband’s old home and school, even though every house in the street had a security sign on the fence.



I think ex-pat South Africans also have mainly positive memories of their homeland. Most would readily admit that the lived a reasonably good life in South Africa, but envisaged a better future somewhere else. Some, like my husband, came here for reasons completely unrelated to the social problems in the land of their birth. They came to pursue study or work, and never intended to remain indefinitely. Dave and I still hope to spend substantial amounts of time in South Africa, perhaps even years.

It is probably Australians, not South African ex-pats, who are at fault in the creation of the mental phenomenon of South-Africa-as-fear-and-violence. The crime stories are so much juicier than the tales ex-pats could tell of the jobs they enjoyed, their trips to other countries in Africa, the people they loved and still love, the opportunities for service to the community, and the cultural aspects they miss? Who wants to hear about those when you can hear about the time Uncle Bob woke up to find a masked man at the end of his bed?

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60,000 men weep & sing together

Dave received an amazing article via email today. The news was featured in the Sunday Independent on 27 April, but is only accessible online to subscribers.

Here are some excerpts . . .

To draw more than 60 000 men to a non-sporting, Christian event is not just an achievement, it could be deemed a miracle.

From all parts of South Africa and various corners of the globe, they came to the Mighty Men's conference in the small KwaZulu-Natal town of Greytown last weekend.

In three Boeings from Cape Town, 17 buses from Nelspruit, with cars backed up for nearly 30km on the road from Pietermaritzburg to Greytown, men converged on the farm Shalom. There was even a contingent of 140 farmers from Queensland, Australia.

Lawyers, doctors, businessmen, farmers, an army general - from Ireland, America, England, Australia, Swaziland, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa - were there for one purpose: to hear farmer-turned-evangelist Angus Buchan, of Faith Like Potatoes fame, speak, and hopefully turn their lives around.

About 80 percent of those present were Afrikaner men - and many of these Mighty Men were soon weeping as they listened to the powerful message that they "should take back the family unit".

For Buchan, 60, what was particularly staggering was that men responded in such numbers.

While even a mixed gathering of such proportions, including women and children, would have been difficult to comprehend in a small rural town, for men to feel the call and make the pilgrimage was literally earth-shaking.

As businessman Myles Buxton of Durban put it: "They were shaking the ground with the power of their voices as they sang."

Buxton said many of the participants had not really been sure why they were there. "But we knew we were there for a reason, and boy, did it arrive. There were these big, strong men crying like little babies. So did I."

Clive McMurray of Kloof said he had been to several Mighty Men conferences and had watched the numbers grow each year. "Angus's messages don't change dramatically from year to year, but are always based on telling men they must get their act together."

McMurray said the emphasis was on committing and recommitting, on going back home and loving the people around you. The focus was also on repentance and praying for South Africa and on loving one another in the way Jesus had loved.

If people were harbouring prejudices against other races, they should get it out of their systems. "He [Buchan] cries 70 percent of the time on stage," said McMurray.

For Buchan, what brought all these men together is easily explained. "God gave me a directive to turn fathers back to sons and sons back to fathers, to take back the family unit," he explained, saying he was still pinching himself to see whether it had not all been a dream.

Although he has been asked why there was no conference for women, he said his directive had been to challenge men to stand up and be counted: "To be prophet, priest and king. They must be the breadwinners, protect their wives and discipline their children."

At the first Mighty Men gathering five years ago 240 men turned up; 600 the next; then 1 060. Last year the figure rose to 7 400. Then came this year's mind-blowing 60 000 to 65 000.

Buchan believes that with this kind of support, South Africa can flourish; that it will not start with the politicians, but with people learning respect for each other. To this end, he has booked the 50 000-seater Loftus Versveld stadium for July 19 - and tickets are already sold out.

I've ended up including most of the article, because it is so amazing! Who knows what God will do across Africa, and even the world, as a result of this gathering.

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Africa-as-everything-bad

In "Is black SA turning old friends into foes?" Nigerian Pius Adesarmi wrote of the perceptions Americans have of Africa, and the perceptions black South Africans have of non-SA blacks.

I needed the return to Africa badly. I had been away from the continent for an uncomfortable stretch, carrying out my scholarly labour in the minefield of North American academe, writing Africa "from a rift", as Achille Mbembe would put it. I also needed a reprieve from the oppression of the North American media image of Africa.

The African living here is in constant danger of accepting whatever image of Africa he or she is presented by the media as gospel truth.

In North America, I have been consistently assailed, assaulted, and oppressed with images of Africa traceable to the colonial library: Africa-as-Aids, Africa-as-hunger, Africa-as-civil war, Africa-as-corruption, Africa-as-the-antithesis-of-democracy, Africa-as-everything-we-are-glad-not-to-be.

You get tired of the ritual of explaining to charmingly ignorant interlocutors that there is a fundamental distinction between the Africa they see on CNN and the real Africa.

I am not "African", but I have a great interest in the continent since visiting last year and marrying a white South African eight months afterwards. I too grate against the images presented as Africa-as-everything-bad, and Africa-as-the-place-you-would-never-want-to-be.

We have to be realistic about the challenges South Africa and other countries in the continent face. Yet the caricatures are not realistic, and that is one of the problems.

The author goes on to describe his experiences in South Africa, and the racism he encountered there: of an unexpected sort.

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