South Africa is rich. Not just in gold and diamonds – although God knows, in those too – but in everything. There is, in the country, a richness of cultural and ethnic diversity, of languages, of turbulent and joyous history. Of the largest and fiercest animals left on the planet. Of breathtaking sights and majestic tableaus. Of world class wines and remarkable cuisine. Of colors and tastes and sounds and smells and experiences and friendships. And, yes, also in gold and diamonds.
Its richness is significant, for South Africa is also, in a profound way, us. Indeed, aside from its diversity and complexity, South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human-fossil sites in the world, including a series of caves in the country’s north – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – that is branded as “the Cradle of Humankind.” We started there. It’s home.
That hasn’t always been obvious. For a while, in fact, people believed that the United States was “us.” Abraham Lincoln, in his annual address to the American Congress, in 1862, “the last best hope of earth,” and less than a year later, in his Gettysburg Address, he declared that the nation had been “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
But I wonder whether, in fact, the true crucible of democracy, the true test of our ability to overcome our differences once and for all, came not in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1863, but is coming now, some 156 years later and 13,075 kilometers away, in Johannesburg. It is there that, following the end of Apartheid in 1994, the so-called Rainbow Nation was created, full of energy, excitement, and – we all thought at the time – deep significance. I fear that significance may be different than we hoped.
I am lucky enough to be good friends with a good South African woman – is there any other kind? – and one year, not too long ago, we traveled to her home country to spend Christmas and New Years with her family. I was thus given the rare opportunity to see South Africa not only through the TV, and not simply as a tourist, but from the inside out. I loved it.
The energy in the country was remarkable, and unlike anything I had seen in the United States or Europe. I consider myself tremendously fortunate to have been shown this far-away world, at once remarkably familiar and immediately foreign. But I also experienced the crime, witnessed not only the constant sense of danger but also the way people have been forced to adapt themselves to it, and found my once-innocent enthusiasm for the Rainbow Nation curdling into something else.
I’m a positive person, and my introduction to South Africa was thrilling. Still, as I review the interviews and articles that appear in the Foreign Focus of this special issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine, I find myself sensitive to the economic, cultural, and social concerns that drive many of the authors.
But perhaps that’s ok. Perhaps South Africa is us, for good and for ill. Perhaps, like many teenagers, it’s going through unhappy and turbulent times, trying to reach a level of accommodation, of calm, as it finds out who and what it’s going to be. Perhaps, ultimately, people of different ethnicities, colors, and cultures can live together, the dwindling stocks of wild animals on the plains can be preserved, and everyone can be housed and fed. If South Africa can do it, everyone can.
After all, let’s be honest. Europe is hardly the epitome of calm and rational self-government right now – nor has it ever been. Ironically, despite untold centuries of warfare – despite pogroms and inquisitions, defenestrations and assassinations, holocausts and crusades – Europe still considers itself the center of civilization.
Now that’s rich.
This Article was originally published in Issue 6.10 of the CEE Legal Matters Magazine. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, you can subscribe here.
