DISMANTLING DIVISIONS

                               OF THE HEART

 

     

                                                                   by Steve Stockman

 

 

Mandisa is 57 years old. When I met her in the summer of 2004 in the KTC township of Cape Town she was living in a blue shack with her four-year-old grand daughter, the cute and shy Zi Zi Bo. Zi Zi Bo became a friend to my daughters and Mandisa shared her story.

 

With one son stabbed to death in Cape Town violence, her other son and father of Zi Zi Bo, who was rarely around, had innocently got her into a little bit of trouble quite recently. A taxi had driven into him at a chaotic township crossroads. In a world without insurance, and even though he was not in the wrong, the vigilante insurers arrived. In the dead of night the taxi drivers kicked down Mandisa's door, bundled her into the back of a taxi to pay for all the damage done - township life is tough. Where Zi Zi Bo's mother is we never really asked. In a world rife with HIV/AIDS the less you know the better.

 

The day I met Mandisa I was with a bunch of my students who had come to build her a house. How did she feel? "I am so excited I haven't slept for weeks and it's only going to get worse!" she said with a laughter and joy that did the heart good. She had prayed for this house, and now that God had answered, she was praying for us. Of course, another reason she wasn't sleeping was that she spent most nights watching in case the bricks or shovels we were building with were stolen, but she had a dream of a key and a lock, a safe place for Zi Zi Bo, protection not only from crime but from the cold wet winters on the damp ground with rain falling in at every angle.

 

A week's hard graft, carrying blocks, mixing cement, bagging walls, puttying windows, putting rafters on the roof, and we handed

Mandisa the key to her dreams. As we hand over keys at the ceremony our new friend Sebonge reads from the Xhosa Bible before we present it to Mandisa too.

 

 

 

 

Sebonge represents the builders we laboured for, black builders who ten years ago would never have dreamed of white people helping them. We're here with Habitat for Humanity, a worldwide Christian based charity with the mission of ridding the world of poverty housing.

It's never houses in a vacuum though, and in Cape Town as well as building walls we are ripping down divisions in the heart of post apartheid South Africa.

 

For those of us involved in Capetownship 2004, a project of the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Queens University Belfast, the sixteen-day trip takes in a whole gamut of issues. Reconciliation is one of them, and last year we met Alex Boraine, former Methodist minister and more recently fighter for peace. We sat in his office with cement all over our boots and his six inch carpet as he told us from the vice chairman's perspective how the Truth And Reconciliation Commission helped to build the miraculous peace that is obvious all around us - and makes us think of our own unique little contribution to conflict.

Similarly, Presbyterian minister Spiwo Xapile will show us Guguletu and how apartheid affected his people and what they're doing about building a new inclusive South Africa. "Everyday I thank God that I'm Black, South African and a Christian, because everyday I get a chance to forgive my enemies," he tells us in a matter of fact way.

 

We will visit an HIV/AIDS clinic sponsored by Christian Aid as well as another Christian Aid funded development, Zenzele, where we watched people learn trades and start businesses to not only change the circumstances of their lives but their brother's and sister's and children's lives. The thing about Cape Town is it's a microcosm of the world; the rich have to drive past the poor who work the sweat-shops and suffer poverty to allow their excesses. The only difference for those of us who live in the north and west is that our poor, our townships are in far away places like Malaysia or Thailand or China.

 

In 2004 we took more than 60 students to Cape Town. It's not a summer building project. It's not even a mission trip. This is the central thrust of our discipleship programme. It's about getting from giving. It's about learning the Scriptures in context. We're told, a generation that is 'image dominated' will favour the subjective side of the brain, which means that if you're under 40 you're more likely to need to experience truth to learn it. During our studies in the Sermon on the Mount, we found such teaching. There was always a seamless move from the feelings about the day in poverty or disease or injustice, into what it means to love your enemies, be the salt of the earth or what it means to bring God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

 

In 2006 we'll be back. I'll be keen to have a cup of Roibos tea with Mandisa. I'll also be eager to get this year's and next year's students into a place that offers hope in conflict, hope in disease, hope in poverty.

 

We looked at Fair Trade.

 

We went to a Vineyard whose owner took a courageous decision to change the entire way his employees worked and lived. He created a brand called Winds Of Change, the profits of which would be invested in his staff!

 

They would be able to buy their own houses on their own land and their children would be educated right through to University. A pre-school was even built in the village where his staff lived.

It was there that the stark challenge of shopper's choice stared our souls down. We found ourselves at the wire fence between vineyards. The little worker villages were side by side on either side of that fence. On our side beautifully painted houses with neat green grass and well kept gardens. On the other, dirty run down houses that haven't seen paint in years, dry dusty brown dirt tracks.

What we buy in our shops has serious consequences on those who work for our decadence. It certainly changed our shopping habits.