After visiting South Africa for the first time this month, I have come back believing the trip is one of the most important for African Americans to make in their lifetime. Before Europe, Asia or any island blacks should visit Africa. During my stay in South Africa I had the chance to see both Cape Town, and Johannesburg. The lasting effects of apartheid were apparent as we rode through Soweto aka the South Western township toward the Orlando Towers. A racial divide hidden in America under a decadent veil of black progress, is readily apparent in the heart of South Africa. The grip of colonialism, and the lasting impact of its global imprint seen in shantytowns, where aluminum serves as walls, and porta-pottys are shared as bathrooms. In this other world of South Africa, KFC has emblazoned itself with Colonel Sanders as a visual of our life here in the states, a image of the old south. A representation of American black life that should not exist today in the states, is a reminder half way across the globe of a yesterday filled with confederate flags, and discrimination. This is the great irony of the trip, that the reach of our dark American history stretches so far that it chases you across the globe. Yet, it is in South Africa that blackness felt like it was real again. No longer covered in false hope to simply entertain, but rather driven by a desire to own resources.
“In 1994, as a result of colonial dispossession and apartheid, 87% of the land was owned by whites and only 13% by blacks. By 2012 post-apartheid land reform had transferred 7.95 million hectares into black ownership (Nkwinti 2012), which is equivalent, at best, to 7.5% of formerly white-owned land.”
To give that context, in America black rural landowners own less than 1% of all privately owned rural land in the United States, that totals approximately 7.7 million acres of land …The Census shows that at least 94.6 percent of the United States is made up of this rural open space… Media mogul Ted Turner alone owns 2 million acres of land. One man owns a 1/3 of what all of black America in land.
“I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.” Nelson Mandela
In Africa blackness is shucked of its American shell of hip-hop and sports, its scars left to be uncovered and shown blatantly. It is truly another world, a place where our families have not been divided by gender through mass incarceration. In Africa we were all black again in its truest form, and forced to confront its devastating impact together. The kind of black that made Dr. King say “I have a Dream”, and Nelson Mandela follow it with a mission to end apartheid thousands of miles away. Our struggles seen as connected through a diaspora woven and hardened with struggle and disrespect.
I’ve been to several countries, but no place felt more grounding as a black man than Africa. It is my hope that every person lost to a legacy of enslavement gets to make that trek once in their life and touch the land of their forefathers.
