What I am referring to is best understood as a tourists plight. We visit destinations we have heard of to try and experience them, but by-and-large, to see them. This is my journey … I am wanting to be exposed to and see what I was shielded from as I was growing up and that which was not taught to me about events prior to my birth.

I agree with both of you, Dragon and Simone, that the feelings and significance of the apartheid years will move on, change, or dwindle. This is a truism of history. However, how will we as South Africans choose to remember the past? It is the ac tof remembering that holds the greatest promise fo rthe way in which we integrate the past into our current realities. Remembering can also be danerous in that people might not let the past just be the past (this is the origin of the struggle in the Gaza I see at the moment).

So, Simone, when I speak of getting in touch and you speak of acknowledging the past, I think we are sayign the same thing.

I don’t believe thinking of it that way is deserving of guilt nor should it be considered a traitorous attitude. Being born white definately has given you an advantage. Your attitude towards others, no matter what color they are, is admirable. I think Simone had a point, though. Can you really get in touch with the pain of those born under different and more difficult circumstances? After consideration of the above thoughts, is it really necessary?

I’m just thinking of those 10 year old school children at the Pieterson Museum. Possibly when they reach their teens or 20’s the significance of their history will dawn on them. But the “pain” of that past is probably not going to be as real for them as say for their parents.

Personally – I don’t think it has to be about getting in touch with the pain of the past, more about acknowledging that past and the pain and stuffering that those people went through. And learning something from it.

In the South African context, it is a controversial stance to take becuase we have pockets of resistance in some white circles who suggest exactly the same thing as an escape from taking responsibility for the past.

For me, I have wrestled with the feeling that I did not actively contirbute to the injustices of the past. The reality though is that depsite the fact that I never did anything overtly to contribute to the system (at least knowingly) I have benefited from the system in being a white. This advantage makes me culpable and leaves me in a position where I really need ot get in touch with the past so that I can understand how I have come to where I am.

This is especially true if we embrace ubuntu, which in this case would mean “an injury to one is an injury to all.”

I’m not sure I agree with the idea that they should get in touch with the pain of the past, though like all other citizens, they should learn not to take their freedoms for granted.