It's sometimes hard to believe that less than 60 years ago
this country was a model of intolerance, bigotry, racism, and human rights
abuses that were legend. Whites ruled - everything, everywhere - and blacks were little more than
slaves living in townships rather than on plantations.
Their living and working conditions were abysmal, they had no rights, no
vote, and organized efforts to better their lives (the African National Congress, the African Communist Party, and other rebel movements) resulted in the leaders spending
decades in prison, going into hiding or exile, or being executed. Internationally, South Africa was
embargoed, shunned, and looked upon with disgust and despair.
Then, finally in 1990, Premier De Klerck took the courageous
step of unbanning the ANC and other previously banned groups, and freeing
Nelson Mandela and a host of other leaders from prison. Interestingly, Mandela, when told of de Klerck's decision, argued that it was too soon for him to be released. De Klerck ignored his request and released him anyway. after transferring him to Drakensroot Prison near Franschoek. Both he and Mandela won the Nobel Peace
Prize for their efforts. But that
was just the beginning. Here was a
country that had a hideous legacy and a whole lot of damaged and angry black people.
And a bunch of frightened whites. Many left, some adopted a wait and see attitude but kept
their guns loaded and close at hand, and others actually looked at what they could do
to repair centuries of inequality and abuse. One of those was the family that had occupied this site for 325 years doing business as the Delta winery. Amazingly, the first of that family (Hans Silverbach and his freed slave wife, Angela Van de Caab), when they decided to settle here chose the exact same spot to build their home as the ancient San people had thousands of years before.
They instituted their own sort of mini-Truth and Reconciliation effort. Using their vineyard as a template, they began a process of reconciling their family's history of participating in the apartheid system with an enlightened, egalitarian enterprise. Working conditions improved dramatically, housing was upgraded, education became the norm rather than the exception. Slowly, the vineyard became a model enterprise and is now the site of a modest museum that reflects their efforts to right the wrongs and celebrate the culture of both the blacks as well as the aboriginal peoples. It is jointly managed and run by the workers and the family. Plaques in the museum identify the 200 lives given to the farm during the era of slavery.
It's a modest two rooms, one of which is given over to a history of the aboriginal peoples who were dispossessed by the Boers and then subject to apartheid. A sobering and inspiring place . . .
We've traveled in scores of countries and have never seen a
monument to a language. There is
one here, in Paarl, just outside Franschhoek, to the Africaans language. Known officially as the Taal Monument, it was completed in 1975 and can be
seen long before arriving. It is full of architectural symbolism, most notably the three soaring spires representing the three major linguistic influences on Africaans - Indo-European, Eastern, and Khoi.
Listening to people speaking it, I can certainly hear German, what I think is Dutch, and then something totally unfamiliar. No wonder, when you look at the variety
of languages from Xhosa to Malay and Hindi that have contributed to Africaans. There are a total of something like 500
languages in all of South Africa, thanks to the living tribal languages in the
rural areas. Africaans and English
are still the lingua franca and we've had no difficulty - almost all signs are
in both languages and nearly everyone speaks English.
It's a spectacular setting, complete with cafe and gift shop and loads of places for locals to come and have a picnic or spend the day. Our first ever visit to a monument to a language!
