Dance South Africa!

I assume that most college kids know the meaning of apartheid by now, but for those who don’t know, apartheid was the form of government that was enacted in South Africa in the late 1940’s that formally separated whites from blacks and other “colored” people such as those of Asian and Indian heritage. It was a harsh system where people who were not considered white were treated as a “lower” race. This form of government did not die out until the nineties, after many years of struggle and violence.

image from the common wealth

Personally, the idea of civil rights and oppression towards other races seems like it all happened a long time ago. I always understood the situation when I learned about things like Martin Luther King Jr., apartheid and Jim Crowe laws in school, but being from the Midwest and being born in the nineties, I felt very removed and didn’t know anyone who had personally suffered from these events. This past week, Eckerd College brought a man named Johannes “Jomo” Xulu to the school for a presentation about apartheid and South African Dance.

When I went, I expected Jomo to be an elderly man who had experienced these things many years ago. Jomo turned out to be a man who seemed to be in his forties or fifties, which really surprised me. It put into perspective that racial separation and racism was not so far removed as I had thought. Jomo talked about how he had been a teenager in the 70’s who experienced this suppression, but that he still believed that there was good in people.

He told a story about how when he was riding his bicycle down a hill and it broke suddenly so that he could not slow down, and he collided with two cars at the bottom of the hill. The only reason that he survived was because two of the very soldiers that his race was being suppressed by took it upon themselves to take him to the hospital, because the ambulance would have taken too long to get there. Jomo said that he then realized that skin color didn’t matter and politics didn’t matter; it was the individuals and what was in their heart that mattered.

The biggest aspect of his presentation was not talking about his life, but rather teaching the people in the audience to dance one of the traditional dances of his Zulu tribe that they use for celebrations. It was a great experience because he didn’t lecture us to boredom the entire time, and showed us through dance his happiness and emotion. If he ever happens to come to your school, or back to Eckerd, I highly recommend going. It was enlightening and a different take on talking about racism that I had never seen before.

Further Information

Jomo is part of the Umdabu Dance Company whose Facebook page you can see here

Here is a video of the Umdabu Dance Company performing