By the Way, I'm In South Africa.

It is raining. Thick and heavy drops fall as if previously held in some giant's hands. Maybe Gods. We; 16 students, two adults, and a seven year old, run up the stone stairs of the Cape Town art museum. We've escaped the torrential downpour for now.




"Ja, there can be four seasons in one day in South Africa," We are warned by a tour guide.



June means winter for the residents of Capetown, but that doesn't keep the parks from being full of bright, juicy flowers and big game ducks with bright yellow eyes. The interior of the art museum echos the colors of the park outside, except for one exhibit. This section of the museum is dedicated to the black and white photography of Ranjith Kelly, an 85 year old artist from Durban.



In the last 85 years, Kelly has held a lens to the extreme climates of social, political, and economic change in South Africa. One picture in particular caught my attention. It depicted a man and woman, emerging from a public building. You can easily tell they are a couple - frozen in their walk; they lean towards each other. The man is Colored, the woman is White. The implications of this relationship are spelled out in the caption underneath; A couple exiting jailhouse after breaking Immorality Act: 1960.



Immorality act. When I was young, I was taught that being immoral meant stealing, or maybe hiding my little sister's barbies under her bed. As far as I could tell, these two individuals had commited neither attrocities. Wikipedia had the definition: "The Immorality Act (1950–1985) was one of the first apartheid laws in South Africa. It attempted to forbid all sexual relations between whites and non-whites."



In the museum, I sit down on the bench accross from the photograph. "What is morality?' I wonder. The word itself is an abstraction. Purity. an abstraction. There seems to be a strong link drawn between these two words in apartheid days. To be moral is to be pure, and vica versa. Intrinsicly woven together, these terms slip into the political rhetoric of world leaders seeking justify their ethnic cleansing or segregation policies.



Well, what are the consequences when these abstractions are projected onto people? The "Pure" are celebrated and justified. The "Impure" are de-humanized and repressed.



There is an obvious problem with this catagorizing. Human beings can never be fully contained by legislation. It's like trying to hold the whole ocean in your fist; eventually the moon calls it home. The tide ebbs out and over the crevaces, spilling out below. The whole process is impossible and unretainable.



But through the lens of powerful Purity, this is "defilement." Mixing seen as evil. New creations seen as evil. Reconcilliation seen as evil. These absolutists, these purticans, they are blind to the true implications of Imago Dei; In the image of God, Man was created.



Man; a word that isn't an abstraction. The word man is earth, love, hate, and as coloured as the flowers growing in the gardens of Capetown. What a blending of life! Thus South Africa is seeking to reconcile this human combination. However, they are not revenging the violence put upon the coloureds or the blacks through war or more violence. They are not creating a new enemy abroad. The opposite of an evil king is not a different king. It is an entirely different governance altogether; maybe one we have never heard of.



Maybe soon so much of the ocean will leak out of that blind fist. And when nothing is left for it to hold on to, what will happen? Outside of the fist lovers are reunited, families restored under one roof; A father kneels in the dust and holds his daugther again.