http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4zOT-lTz2E

District Six was named in 1867 and refers to the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town. The district was made up of former slaves, artisans, immigrants and Malay people who were brought to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company. District Six was the residence of approximately one tenth of the city’s population. On February 11, 1966, the government declared District Six to be a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act. The government began removing residents in 1968, and by 1982 more than 60,000 people had bee relocated to the Cape Flats township complex 25 kilometers away. Their homes in District Six were then bulldozed. In this video, Tahir Levy, a Cape Town community activist who grew up in the former District Six neighborhood, talks about life under apartheid.

The post Apartheid
A Cape Town Resident On Life Under Apartheid appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGpjLX1BeHM

Colleagues such as Mary Burton of Archbishop Desmond Tutu discuss how he got involved with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) assembled in South Africa after the end of apartheid. The TRC reviewed thousands of statements from witnesses and victims of human rights violations during the apartheid as a method of catharsis. TRC commissioners describe Tutu’s mission to hear the “stories of the little people,” whose sufferings had been previously ignored and how within the second day, he broke down from all the deeply heartbreaking stories he heard. But a colleague says that Tutu recovered and said, “‘This shouldn’t be about me. This should be about the victims…I can learn to control my emotions.’ There after, you would see him biting his hand when he was getting emotional to ensure the focus remained on the victims.” The TRC was set up in 1995 and the hearings began in 1996.

The post Apartheid
Desmond Tutu’s Key Role in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Okavango Delta

“Everyone’s face was streaked from crying, creased with giant smiles…We left as current and former South Africans, equal in the eyes of the law and humanity.”

I say “My Nelson Mandela” because we all have an intellectual, emotional, political relationship with Nelson Mandela and all that he stood for: as a man, as a leader, as an icon.

Mandela. 1918-2013.

Former South Africans have a complicated relationship with their homeland and heroes, especially if they left  for political reasons during what can now be called apartheid’s middle years. At the bottom of that relationship is raw emotion and it never goes away.

My parents had been active in the anti-apartheid community from at least the early 1950s: refusing to testify on “the pencil test” and related inanities after enaction of the anti-miscegenation laws; doing free medical rounds in the locations when Whites were banned from entering; standing with the Black Sash; signing the Freedom Charter; voting for Helen Suzman and the Progressive Party; arousing suspicion because of research on early humans; continuing to teach coloured university students at University of Cape Town after the government banned them from being educated with Whites. They finally left after being threatened with house arrest.

I had two personal encounters with Mandela, one symbolic, one experiential. In 1994, the first free election in South Africa took place. All ex-patriots were allowed a one-time, once in a lifetime opportunity to vote, regardless of where they now lived or what country’s citizenship they now held. I discussed this with my parents who now lived in Chicago, where there was to be a polling station. My father had always said that he would never return to South Africa until Nelson Mandela was President. I could not believe or understand my father’s response to this opportunity: He felt he could not legally vote in this remarkable election because he was now an American citizen! My entreaties to him to do this because it was a healing event, a closure to the pain of having to leave the physical country he had loved, a closure to the pain of being deprived of the life he would like to have lived there, were for naught. Clearly, being able to vote for his hero could not erase all that emotional turmoil.

The King County Courthouse in Seattle, Washington was the designated location of the polling station in our region of the country for this remarkable event. We, current and ex-South Africans, Whites, Blacks, Coloured, were to bring our birth certificates and our passports.

It was a rainy, cold day that April. As I approached the Courthouse, I just could not enter as I was so overcome with emotion. After walking around the building several times in tears, shaking with excitement and trepidation (of what, I could not say), I walked in. What an amazing sight! There were ANC poll watchers. There were hundreds of South Africans. Everyone’s face was streaked from crying, creased with giant smiles. It was such a cathartic experience.

We all left that building, no longer unequals because of an artificial racial designation determined by a minority of small-minded individuals who created a monstrous machine to control the lives of millions. We left as current and former South Africans, equal in the eyes of the law and humanity.

In 1999, Seattle University hosted a breakfast for Nelson Mandela. A Boeing colleague of my husband was also a Regent at that university and provided us with tickets to attend. I can only say that watching Nelson Mandela walk into that room was goose-bumps inducing. There was silence before a roar of applause. To be seated, not only in the same room, but within 50 feet of this man who embodied the ideals of my parents, a man of such principle and conviction and understanding of what doing the right thing meant, was truly awe inspiring and overwhelming.

Many people died and suffered on South Africa’s long road to freedom. People trying to live their lives with dignity. People wanting what we so often take for granted: freedom of self-determination, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom of opinion and thought, freedom to choose where to live, freedom to be a decent human being.

Nelson Mandela is dead. Long live Nelson Mandela.

Source: Blackpast.org

The post Apartheid
Recalling Nelson Mandela appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja8fxGgjC94

Nelson Mandela’s wife, Winnie, describes the final moments of her beloved husband’s life. She gives an emotional account of the event and says she considers herself “blessed to have been there when he drew his last breath.”

The post Apartheid
The Woman Who Knew Mandela Best appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wt1Bwm767I

Nelson Mandela’s close friend, Ebrahim Moolla, reacts to Mandela’s death on December 5, 2013 and reflects on their meaningful friendship. Mandela used Moolla’s apartment as the secret headquarters for his early revolutionary activities defying racial segregation in South Africa. Moolla explains why defying Apartheid was a cause that he and Mandela were both willing to die for. Moolla also shares what he would say to Mandela if he could have one last moment with him.

The post Apartheid
On Mandela’s Death: ‘I Cried Myself to Sleep’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHgU1Jw6oyw

Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the man responsible for conceiving and implementing the South African Group Areas Act that led to the apartheid on April 26, 1950, explains why he wants to separate the races.

The post Apartheid
Prime Minister of South Africa on Implementing the Apartheid appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMtLtNk2dHc

Two young citizens of South Africa discuss what they think will happen after the first democratic elections held on April 26, 1994.

The post 1994 South African General Election
Young Voters on Post Apartheid Expectations appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0icKn3SKRWc

A voting official remembers watching Nelson Mandela cast his first vote in the democratic election of South Africa on April 26, 1994.

The post 1994 South African General Election
Watching Nelson Mandela Vote For the First Time appeared first on Witnify.