(5-minute read) – Piet stood on the boy’s neck so hard with his size-twelve army-issue boot that he thought for sure he’d killed him. But he knew what they say about blacks… no brain, no pain. So he stood even harder. The boy’s struggling stopped. There was no reason for more force, but Piet was carried away by his indoctrination of hate. He felt no connection to this boy – as if he was not human at all. So he pumped one last hard kick into his neck before standing off.
The boy lay motionless, face down on the concrete pavement in some arbitrary Soweto street. Piet could see his back rising and falling with each breath. He grabbed his arm just above a gross tattoo of Nelson Mandela, and yanked him off the floor. He must have weighed nearly twice as much as the boy.
‘It’s cool how I can flick him around like a rag doll,’ he thought, as he bundled him into the blue and white Apartheid police van.
“I love my job,” he bragged to his buddies later.
But it wasn’t really Piet talking. It was the beer and the sense of bravado surrounded by white supremacist brethren. Deep down, he had a good heart. He had so long since felt it, that he had no idea it existed. Apartheid had done a good job on him. Nothing much was left of his humanity.
And so he was for many years.
Piet loved sport. He especially loved rugby and cricket – the sports his white South African schooling taught him to love. The world was pre-ordained. Whites and blacks were separate. Whites were superior. They played cricket and rugby. And blacks liked soccer. A whole world that he thought was true, was actually false. He had no idea… but his enlightenment was about to begin.
In the early nineties one day, he sat motionless watching Nelson Mandela walking out of prison on his TV screen. The scenes didn’t move his wounded soul much.
The first time he felt an inkling of his stolen humanity returning was the day Nelson Mandela held the Webb Ellis trophy up with one of his heroes, South African rugby captain, Francois Pienaar. He was marginally moved by Mr Mandela standing there against the backdrop of a packed Ellis Park stadium. But he didn’t relate his stirring of emotion to his gruesome Apartheid past. He put it down solely to the joy of watching his team win the rugby world cup.
Piet’s humanity gradually returned over the years after the dismantling of Apartheid. He had black people at work with him. He sat next to them in church and at the movie theatre. They seemed similar to him now. His minister at church said they were equal, and that Apartheid had been a sin. So he was happy to go along with the change. Mostly. But something was still missing. He still felt a barrier between him and blacks, and actually between him and most people. And he didn’t want that barrier to break.
But break it did, despite Piet.
It happened in Soweto, not far from the street where he had nearly killed the small-boned black boy decades earlier. Piet’s favourite rugby team, The Bulls, were playing the New Zealand Crusaders. But this time he knew the emotions were not about their imminent victory. He was experiencing something far more profound.
His emotions were brought on by the oneness of forty thousand South Africans of all races crammed into Orlando Stadium, cheering on The Bulls. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was a black stadium in a black township. Soccer belonged here, not rugby. The Bulls’ sacred rugby ground was Loftus Versveld, fifty kilometres away in Pretoria. Yet here he was, watching rugby with thousands of blacks in the township where he’d fought as a white soldier against Apartheid resistance.
He wondered, was it love that overwhelmed him?
A black man seated next to him cheered and clapped. He turned to Piet, and noticing him staring blankly into space, he asked, “What’s wrong, brother?”
Piet half-smiled at the stranger over his quivering chin and replied, “I was a soldier during Apartheid and I came here to Soweto to kill blacks.”
The man just stared at him.
Piet cast his eyes downward and continued, “I’m here now with a beer, enjoying watching a game… and today I can’t forgive myself.”
Despite the deafening noise in the stadium, the two men shared a moment of silence – a connection that transcended arbitrary skin colour and cultural differences.
The stranger broke their silence.
He said, “Forget about that, man. Let’s enjoy ourselves.”
Without looking up from his silent space, Piet felt warmth running through his veins and tears streaming down his cheeks.
He had never relived that day when his boot nearly crushed a man’s neck. Now it replayed itself spontaneously in his mind. And the barrier broke. It broke with a torrent of tears bringing suppressed hatred to his consciousness. And it broke as the torrent washed over him and cleansed him of that hatred, and replaced it with total love for this man seated next to him.
As he wept quietly, the stranger put his hand on his shoulder. Piet glanced up in surprise. There it was. The tattoo… Nelson Mandela staring back at him, forgiving him, like he’d forgiven so many.
Piet was never the same after that day. He was healed. There were no barriers to his enlightenment. He knew existentially now that all people are equal at a deeper level. All people give love and are loved.
And all of us are worthy of dignity in the presence of one another.
Time passed and still there was racism in the world, in the newspapers and on social media. There was still hatred on a little blue planet jam-packed with wounded souls. It was deeply saddening to Piet – more so than he could ever have imagined. He felt deeply for the victims and the perpetrators. They both suffered indignity and loss of humanity. He was moved to do something… to make a difference.
Piet meditated.
He would lie on his back on his bed twice a day, arms stretched out by his side, with hands open. He would repeat, “Here I am.”
Forgiveness washed over him and ushered in oneness as he lay there. This was his daily routine. The routine that kept him centred and in contact with the reality of life – the reality that we are all connected and equal at a profound level. The routine that helped him cope with the pain of hatred that was all so clear now to his enlightened heart.
He knew there was no more he could do. There was no more he needed to do. His meditations filled a reservoir of love in him, so that he radiated love in the interfaces with people around him. Each day he dispelled hatred and racism through his connections. Each day he changed the world.
Although he never saw the black man from Orlando Stadium again, he always remembered him. It was his connection – his forgiveness – that changed the world first.
Inspired by an article in The Star on May 28, 2010.
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