The Slave Lodge….

If Friday was the perfect winter’s day in Cape Town, Saturday was destined to show us winter’s other face. The day was dark, wet, and grey, a most fitting backdrop for our journey today. Cape Town is known as one of the most culturally diverse, beautiful cities in the world; this beauty was built on the backs and by the hands of thousands of Slaves. We started the morning at the Cape Town Slavery Museum, known as the Slave Lodge, and explored their permanent exhibition Human Wrongs to Human Rights. The tour begins with a 16 minute video that tracks the abridged version of thee South African {Cape Town most specifically} slave trade. The Khoi people were the most prominent indigenous culture in Cape Town when the Dutch reached the shores in mass in the late 17th early 18th century. The Dutch brought a special gift to the Khoi, Small Pox, which wiped out a significant portion of the population, as their immune systems had no way to fight off the foreign disease. The land was primarily undeveloped and the Dutch, in need of laborers, called for slaves to be brought forward to Cape Town. The museum holds documents from the Dutch East India Company (or the VOC), making such a request for skilled artisans, welders, and laborers as slaves. Slaves were shipped to Cape Town from West Africa, East Africa, South Asia, and Indonesia. Much like the transatlantic slave trade, thousands of people perished in the middle passage, under obscene conditions, more slaves died on the shores of Cape Town from disease. While many people of color were sold to private owners for farm work, the vast majority were owned by the Dutch government and used to build this beautiful city. The VOC ordered the building The Slave Lodge, one of the oldest 17th century buildings in the city; to house the government owned slaves. At the height the slave lodge held over 1000 slaves under a single roof. The overseerers, and slave catchers were all slaves as well. There was one holiday a year for slaves, known as parade day, where the slaves would quite literally parade down the street singing and dancing. The images of parade day remind me of mardi gras, brightly colored scarves waving in the air. Thousands of slaves from suburban farms, and the city came together to celebrate their survival. The salve lodge is part of the ethnic history of the Cape. East African, West African, Indonesian, and Asians intermarried {Islamic marriage ceremonies were some of the few that were allowed for slaves} and created a true rainbow nation. The descendants of these artisans, welders, architects, and laborers are the majority of the current Cape Town population. The slave lodge burned to the ground in 1679, and was rebuilt in its current footprint, as a fortress to prevent escape. There are no windows in the main section of this two-story rectangle structure with a hollow middle; the center of the building is a courtyard, with a well as the courtyard centerpiece. The well was a gathering place for the slaves housed in the lodge. In the early nineteenth century slave trade was outlawed, but "Prize” slaves, were still imported at higher prices. Free blacks and freed blacks often bought their family members out of white bondage. In 2000, during renovations, the excavators found many slave artifacts that now line walls and cases of the museum. As you move through the rooms, the light boxes on the wall glow to reveal the painful images of the lives of the slaves that once roamed these same halls. There are several voiceovers that read from Dutch journals as you pass from room to room. It is impossible to remain ambivalent and detached as you travel through time and the space of these triumphant spirits. The final room of the slavery exhibit tracks the cultural connections of the current clans of people in the Cape. The wall is marked with metals of valor and excellence awarded to prominent figures from the slave community.

It is too little too late.

The most inspiring room of the exhibit is a small room with a huge glass cylinder, lit from below. The entire cylinder is covered in the names of the slaves recovered from accounting and shipping journals. The cylinder is divided into several two to three feet sections that swivel. I swung the cylinders and watched the names of hundreds of men and women make revolutions around the glowing glass…

No one truly dies who is remembered.

Today was a painful day. It is hard to accept the macivallen nature of systematic degradation. The edicts of slavery were not happenstance or accidental. Someone decided to psychologically handicap these people, robbing them of their names, families, and faith. The ramifications of which are still painful wounds just below the surface. My chest aches in this museum.

Never Again…

Never Again. They said after the Holocaust, but it has happened again and again…Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia. It is happening now in the Sudan, The janjaweed slaughtering Black Muslim men, women, and children. In the Congo, women and children being destroyed as the spoils of war. Nine-year-old girls physically destroyed after being gang raped by adult and child soldiers. Mutilated girls destined to bring forward the next generation of Congolese people. The “colonized” were psychologically decimated and left with land raped of resources and no clear path to clarity and freedom. When does it end? Whose job is it to trumpet the cause of Humanity? How else can we serve God? How will we answer for the world that our ancestors and we have created? When do we take a stand against human degradation? This world is large enough. We are large enough.

We are large enough to ensure that never again means just that…

NEVER
AGAIN.



Side note: When you leave the Slavery exhibit you enter an exhibit on the civil rights movement in America. It is a profound juxtaposition – and I walked away clear that our civil rights movement is a blueprint for South Africa. Ten years or so out of apartheid, it is a nation still struggling to find its identity and footprint.