Purpose Found at the Apartheid Museum

            Today was Saturday and we used our weekend to go to a place that both sobered and enriched us, the Apartheid Museum. Now before you click through to the next post because you don’t want to get depressed, let me stop you, because I think what I have to say about going has a message of hope worth hearing.

When we got to the gates, I realized I still had a pocketknife on me – whoops. So a quick trip back to the Chico and I was set to go. When you visit the Apartheid Museum, your ticket will randomly be determined to be a white or non-white ticket. Your ticket determines which door to the Museum you can enter. Not to worry, this ticket will only shape the first 5 minutes or so of your experience and all other parts of the museum will be open to you. My ticket happened to be a white ticket, so into the prison-style revolving gate it was. Now I must mention at this time I was fairly disappointed knowing that I would not be allowed to take pictures in the museum so I will do my best to describe things so that you can visualize them. The first thing that you note is the caged in pathway that immediately affects your mood and helps you get serious about the information you are about to absorb. In this narrow barred hallway there are blown up plaques of drivers licenses and other ID’s. Each marked in red designating the government’s classification of the owner’s race. During this time, the content of those red words would define your entire life. It would determine where you could walk, what church you could attend, what jobs you would be eligible for and if you were in prison the humaneness of your treatment. As you walk through the white hallway, you are presented with facts that give you an idea of how cruel, seemingly sporadic and senseless the rules of Apartheid were and how you as a white person, would have likely been spared. Unless of course you were seen as a threat, then your racial status would be demoted to mixed. I only use the word demoted because your rights as a citizen related directly to your government assigned race.

            I then walked into a room with Akeem and Matt that had a case of handmade guns. Barrels made from plumbing pipes were crudely welded to pices of highway guardrail bent to make stocks. One weapon was even made from a caulk gun. They looked like the tools mankind would make in a struggle of apocalyptic proportions. In this same room there were three large screen playing old news real footage. The thing that I started to notice immediately is just how vividly all the aspects of Apartheid were able to be captured. Because of the timing with Aparthied’s end in the early 90’s, news media had the epic backlash of freedom against injustice covered in full color. This sets Apartheid apart from the Holocaust and allowed for some aspects of it to be saved for all of humanity in a way the Holocaust could not. Seeing newsreel footage of Apartheid era militants modeled after Hitlers armies marching and putting on displays of military power in my lifetime was startling. To me, seeing the looting, police brutality, and people being killed as news camera rolled was mind blowing. It just goes to show that hearing about something or reading about it in the news is nothing like seeing it.

Along the way to my last stop, it was impressive to see the beauty that had been captured amidst the struggle by photographers. Yes there was blood, but the final years of Apartheid were also a time that people united to fight for what was right. But of course the museum in many ways is a catalog of the life of Nelson Mandela. The most interesting fact about him, in the wake of everything that he accomplished was his name. Not Nelson, the white name he was given after his birth but the one his parents gave to him at birth. His name meant one that upsets the established order of things and indeed he did.

With about half an hour left, I came to a large panel that was titled, “The Effects of Christianity in South Africa” As ashamed as I am to admit this, somehow I had let myself be distracted at the museum until that point and I could have gotten much more out of it up to that point. But as I started to read this sign I felt my eyes well up as feelings of doubt, confusion and intrigue all crossed my mind. For nearly all of my remaining time I read the authors scathing review of what read like something that anyone who calls themselves a Christian would probably prefer to put out of their mind. I read of how the early Christian church divisions in South Africa helped fuel hate and fear as many congregations only opened their doors to people of certain races. I read of how Christianity invaded tribal areas and started telling women that had walked around their whole lives bare breasted that their nudity was an abomination to God. I read a story of a black janitor who was nearly killed for pausing to mop the floor in front of a crucifix in a white church. I read about supposed men of God acquiring massive fortunes and spending it in the most extravagant ways imaginable. I read about a history of poorly thought out missionary ventures had succeeded in turning so many people away from God. My feelings before the last paragraph were hard to describe. I was sad, for a moment I felt partially responsible and I wondered what good had ever been done here in the name of Christ. But thenat the very end, I read something that flipped the entire last half hour on its head and reminded me why I came here in the first place.

                        …the Church only seems concerned about eternity and preparing       soles for heaven. All the while the African man cannot consider         eternity, in fact he can scarcely look beyond his next meal. When his child is sick and he is oppressed to the point he believes he is cursed it is off to the             medicine man he goes.

                        But I have seen a number of Christians out in the township realizing              they must role up their cassock sleeves and work directly to improve the         circumstances of people in this life – and the next.

Word and deed ministry, assimilating into cultures not destroying them, meeting people and loving them exactly where they are, loving with actions that are driven by the deepest love ever known. That is why I am here, to just be how Jesus called me to be and do it in a way that makes sense by tangibly getting involved in a program that is rerouting the lives of kids from prostitution, drug abuse and poverty and into college degrees and promising futures. In that moment I couldn’t even feel bad about the atrocities of the church in South Africa, because I was just too excited to be a part of the story that will read a lot differently.

You better believe that I thanked God for taking a hot mess like myself and bringing me halfway across the globe just to be a part of that positive change and the next chapter of that story.

Please pray that:

God will continue to make the Mamelodi Initiative everything that it needs too to keep being the incredible force of change it has been once again this winter session.

That he would work in the heart of every single volunteer and be the passion in their soles that influences every action, to leave a wake of intentional love on the Mamelodi Township that will ripple on forever.

God bless and all the best,

Dylan Rollins.