Day 3: South Africa

(Thursday, March 27, 2014)

Today started early as the team met over breakfast to begin talking about our experience to this point.  After, we went to Constitution Hill, in downtown Johannesburg.  Constitution Hill is actually located at the old number four and five prisons where Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were both incarcerated for a time.  It was where the students arrested in the 1976 Soweto Uprising were kept.  It was a place of torture and humiliation. Interestingly, when you walk up towards Constitution Hill you go up a long incline called the African Steps, on one side you have the prison walls that represent all of the injustice, violence, and repression from the past and on the other side you have the walls of the newly built and designed Constitution Hall.  It is marked by unique artwork and architecture celebrating South Africa’s new future.  

As we toured the prison part, we had the experience of going into one of the solitary confinement cells.  The tour guide asked us each to get in one and close the door and he counted off 23 seconds.  He reminded us that inmates were in these cells for 23 hours a day.  On the walls and doors of the cells you can still see where prisoners scratched their names into the stone and paint.  

From there, the tour was more hopeful as we saw Constitution Hall and went into the room where justices decide constitutional issues.  The walls of the main hall are constructed of bricks that one time made up the holding cells for people awaiting trial during the apartheid era.  As our tour guide said, “the bricks once used to violate people’s rights are now being used to protect people’s rights”.  The most hopeful thing for me, though, was seeing all of the school children there touring the prison and the hall.  As they sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “Wheels on the Bus” it was such a vivid reminder that in the end goodness and love prevail.  In a place of such horror and violence, there was now the voices of children singing.

After lunch, we made our way to Central Methodist Mission in the heart of downtown Johannesburg.  This was surprising to me as this church that was once a mainstay of downtown was falling apart and with spray painting on the walls, broken windows and homeless men women and children sitting on the steps and against the walls.  The story is that around the year 2000, an influx of refugees arrived in downtown Johannesburg.  At first, Pastor Paul Verryn gave refuge to 50 people in the church.  The number grew rapidly until there were over 1,000 people sleeping in the church each night.  There are now about 350 per night that sleep in the church.  There are a few rules that have to be followed, but other than that people can put a blanket or sleeping bag where they find a place.  Pastor Verryn said  the whole church will be covered with people every night.  The sad part is that the church building itself is in great disrepair and there are few funds to fix it.  

This evening we visited another Methodist Church, Parktown North, in Johannesburg.  We had a good conversation with Pastor Vusi Vilakati about how he as a black pastor helped a 100 year old majority white church become a multi-racial congregation.  After our meeting we went to their Thursday Lenten Discussion series.  The topic tonight was health care in South Africa.  It was great to meet and talk to Pastor Vusi, his wife Lindo, and members of the church.  

After a quick dinner and watching the end of my first ever cricket match on a restaurant television (South Africa beat the Netherlands…at least that is what they said, to tell the truth I really didn’t know what was going on in the game) we are back to the lodge.  Tomorrow we visit Northfield Methodist Church and then catch an early afternoon flight for Cape Town.  

God’s Peace,

Brett