February 24, 2006
E-newsletter # 22
Dear Friends,
At a gathering in Johannesburg last month, we had the opportunity
to listen to South Africans talk about the meaning of land in
their cultures. We were struck by the contrast with our own cultural
backgrounds.
It’s 11 o’clock in the morning. Do you know where
your umbilical cord is? As strange as this question sounds to
North Americans, Xhosa people would immediately know the answer.
We learned from Ray Magida that the place where one’s umbilical
cord is buried is home, in the most profound sense. Twelve-year-old
Siyabonga Mkungo, who lives with his parents in Soweto, keeps
pestering Mom and Dad to take a trip back to Zwelitsha in the
Eastern Cape where he was born. When they ask him why this is
so important to him, he says, “That’s where my umbilical
cord is buried.”
Both of us have lived on three different continents during our
lifetime and have felt more at less “at home” on each.
Recently we have noticed that we use the word “home”
in a peculiar way, often having to specify what we mean. “Home”
in our personal usage seems to relate to the other familiar place(s)
where we currently are not. When in South Africa, “home”
is Cleveland, Ohio, (or Bavaria). When we visited the United States
last October, we found ourselves referring to East London as “home.”
Welile Sigabi, pinching the skin on his forearm, says, “This
is land.” He argues against cremation. “It deprives
the ground of nutrients. We are made from earth, we need to give
back to the earth when we die.”
Despite the biblical insight that “you are dust, and to
dust you shall return," most Americans are embalmed and buried
in concrete vaults. Our remains will not feed the ground.
Mati Mathabatha insists, “Land is food. Land is water.
Land is life.” And Christopher Saaiman adds, “Land
is security and dignity. Land is family identity for generations.
We cannot be human without land.”
In Cleveland, Ohio, food comes from the supermarket, water out
of the faucet, security from bank accounts and insurance policies.
The pieces of property on which we live are sold to new owners
after an average of seven years.
Given the meaning of land in African cultures, North Americans
can hardly begin to understand the deep emotional and spiritual
dimensions of the struggle for land justice on this continent. |
