An army of unsung heroes:

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m deeply passionate about racial reconciliation in South-Africa. We have a tainted past, but I believe that by the grace of God we have a bright future. But we must once again see and work towards that beautiful vision of a new South-Africa that Nelson Mandela showed us. And as much as we need a leader like him, full of humility and grace, we need the people of our country to believe again. We need an army of unsung heroes, people who will cross the racial divide with respect and care for the other.

Maybe I’m calling us to something that sounds impossible, but I still believe. I have two very good reasons to believe. Firstly I believe because I know such a leader. I have been following him for 13 years. He gave up a position of high privilege to live with filthy, undeserving people, to love and serve them. He healed the sick, gave wise council and mended broken hearts. But people still had hardened hearts towards him. They ended up conspiring against him and killing him. His name is Jesus and thankfully He rose from the dead, proving that He is God and now He offers forgiveness and He reconciles us with our Creator. I want to make it clear that my hope for our nation is deeply rooted in Christ.

Secondly I believe because I have seen the common people of our country working towards reconciliation. One of the most surprising but significant ways that this has happened in our country has been through domestic workers. My life has been deeply impacted by Sannie, our family’s domestic worker. Here is why... 

Every South-African is born into a world scarred by racism and we are handed a choice to walk towards reconciliation, or away from it on a daily basis. Many times this decision is strongly based on the representatives of other cultures in our immediate circles. For me this was our domestic worker, Sannie.

Pretoria, the city where I grew up, is still one of the least racially integrated cities in our country. In my younger years I didn’t know any black people except for Sannie. 

I was born in 1986 into a world at war. I was 7 years old when South-Africa had its first democratic election and its first black president, Nelson Mandela. During my formative years the atmosphere in our country between black and white was very tense. I remember some of my parents’ friends gathering non-perishables and growing increasingly tense as the April 1994 elections approached. I remember the fear in their eyes, bordering on paranoia, as they said “you never know what will happen”, implying that if black people were to take power of our country the white minority will have to “run for cover”. Because of the heroic leadership of Nelson Mandela these fears never became a reality, he himself setting the example of reconciliation. 

This was the world I was very familiar with growing up - it felt like racial tension was the undercurrent of my upbringing. So how did I end up in Mamelodi, a township with a 99,1% black population?

If the former was the world I knew, God in His wisdom placed a person in my life to show me a glimpse into the world that I didn’t know.My big counter argument to racism was never an ideology, but rather a person:  our domestic worker, Sannie.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Sannie, like Jesus, is the absolute personification of these words. Sannie is hard-working, loyal, honest, friendly, kind-hearted and selfless. She is a woman of incredible character, the type of character that you could gladly imitate. Growing up, whatever accusation or racist remark someone would make would always simply be defeated by the response, “But Sannie is not like that.” 

Over the years Sannie has shared in my family’ struggles and we have shared in hers, well at least to an extent. I remember when I was young, her husband would come home drunk and beat her until she gave him the money that she earned to take care of their two children, so that he could buy alcohol. My parents helped her to get a restraining order against him. 

Through knowing Sannie I got to see a glimpse into the world I know much better now - a world of poverty, domestic abuse, political oppression and social injustice. I got to see a glimpse into the world of the marginalized. Despite all of this I never felt the slightest bit of resentment or entitlement from her. I just saw an honorable woman, who lived her life simply and gratefully. Having Sannie in my life was God’s grace.

Today I realize the impact that she had on my life and I want to honor her and all the domestic workers who gave up the best years of their lives to serve white families. Most of you have learnt our language while we might have gone as far as to learn how to greet you in your language. Many of you, like Sannie, have gone way beyond the call of duty to serve us. You have held our best interest at heart and prayed for us, sometimes being pseudo-mothers in our households, working for minimum wage, while being disconnected from your own families and culture.

I want to say thank you and I want to honor you. You have been and are some of the most powerful yet unnoticed agents of reconciliation between black and white in our country. To me you are an army of unsung heroes, those that history might not speak of but whose names are known in heaven. 

If you have a similar story or want to honor your domestic worker, in the spirit of gratitude tell them how much you appreciate them and please post in the comments section below.

Love. Umlungu in Mamelodi.

The Umlungu has a name:

I've decided to write a blog about my experiences living in Mamelodi (a township east of Pretoria) as a white Afrikaans male. I'm want to humbly submit my voice to the ongoing racial discussion in our country and hopefully bring some understanding and perspective.

Firstly a bit of background about me. My name is Gerhard Jacobs, I'm an thirty-one year old Afrikaans white male. I grew up just outside of Pretoria, approximately 15kms from where I stay now. Despite the Geographical proximity my life growing up had almost nothing in common with Mamelodi, the way of life here or it's people.

My only experience growing up with a person of a different race was with our stay-in domestic worker, Sannie, and her family. I went to an white Primary school, white Secondary school, played on white sports teams, went to a white church, I think you get the picture. And even though there would be a person of another race in some of these circles, I've never had a meaningful friendship with a person of a different skin color until the age of thirty. And I know this to be true for most of my peers.

Let me clarify a few things. The reason why I didn't have any friends of a different race is not because I didn't want to. I just didn't have enough contact to people of other races. This didn't have anything to do with me or my parents being racist, well at least not consciously. I just realised that I have to be intentional about crossing the racial divide that our country's history implies. The problem is that Apartheid was never just a political system, but a social construct that is still alive and well in the people of our nation.

I'm more and more convinced that we as South-Africans don't understand each other. We don't see each other as people.

What if we could stop arguing about whether there is or is not a genocide on white farmers. And have compassion for the family that lost a father, a brother, a son because of one of these crimes. And bring the criminal to justice. What if we could stop feeling guilty or trying to justify what happened during Apartheid. And respond to the needs of a mother that is desperately trying to provide for her children but because of generations of poverty she is failing and it is making her hopeless.

What if we became people again. Better yet, friends. It's easy to respond with pride on social media. Its easy to throw accusations at a computer screen or a cellphone camera. But I believe we are better than that. I believe we are wiser than that. 

So here is my challenge to you. Make a friend, not an acquaintance, of another race and listen to their story, listen to what happened to them and how it made them feel, how it formed them. Try to understand their struggles and their hurts. Leave your ideologies at the door, leave your opinions and listen.

Here is what will happen. You will learn something, you will learn that your current perspective might be very warped. You will learn that your responses and replies might have been very prideful and presumptuous in the past. You will learn that you can not respond to a friend like you respond to a Facebook status. You will by God's grace learn to be humble.

I beg you, please be brave our nation and its people need you to learn these lessons now. We can not wait for a political party or a system to save us. We need to take responsibility for our hearts, our actions and our words. We need to humble ourselves before God and be intentional about building these bridges between races and cultures.

This entry turned out a bit different than I planned but I feel like this is a critical mind shift that we need to make to walk the road of reconciliation. In the rest of my entries I will be sharing about my friends and some of my experiences here in Mamelodi.

God bless.

Umlungu in Mamelodi.