The Great Debate: Should We Stay or Should We Go Now?

SOUTH AFRICA. A country of extremes. 

Charles Dickens could have been describing present day South Africa in his opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities. Truly, for us, it is "...the best of times, ... the worst of times, .... the age of wisdom, ... the age of foolishness, ... the epoch of belief, ... the epoch of incredulity, ... the season of Light, ... the season of Darkness, ... the spring of hope, ... the winter of despair...". We are extreme in wealth and extreme in poverty, extreme in kindness and extreme in brutality, extreme in faith and extreme in despondency. Sometimes I want to harden my heart to all that I see around me and at other times I want to weep with helplessness. And yet, because there is ALWAYS a 'YET', South Africa beats in my veins. It drums in my ears. It floods my senses. My heart and blood beat with the rhythm of Africa. I am in South Africa and South Africa is in me!

I recently had to humble myself and apologise to a dear friend of mine. We had been talking, last year, about South Africa and decision making around immigrating. I had very strong opinions on this; strong opinions that centred around "never", "don't run" and "make sure you are in the will of God". Basically I took it as a personal affront when anyone, especially a close friend, suggested that they were thinking of leaving South Africa. You see, had you asked me at the time if Sean and I would EVER leave South Africa, my answer would have been a very emphatic NO and NEVER. I am not usually the eternal optimist about things but somehow when it comes to SA, reality goes out the window and it is all rainbows and bluebirds.

So what changed?

Well, nothing but also everything.

About two months ago I was having a conversation with another friend of mine about our country. I will not go into detail (as it is not necessary) but the conversation threw me a little (okay, a lot) and I felt like the world changed colour for me. The conversation had been to inform me of some of the political undercurrents happening around South Africa; this was a good thing, as I see now that I can be pretty naive! It caused me to do some research and have some broader conversations with Sean and other friends. Instead of simply skipping optimistically through the South African cosmos flowers I had to ask myself some hard questions; not only in a South African context but also in a world and Biblical context. It was helpful. It was good. And my world recoloured itself again - not quite back to rainbows and bluebirds but back to an optimistic reality.

It was this same conversation that triggered me to ponder over and to ask myself the BIG question about our (cue Johnny Clegg) "cruel, crazy, beautiful" country: Should We Stay or Should We Go?

The day after my world first changed colour I joked with Sean about moving to Ireland (he has an Irish passport). His answer: "Ireland doesn't need us". That got me thinking. What are Sean and I doing, in South Africa, that is making such a huge difference anyway? We desire to make an impact, we want to be used by God to serve people and to help make a difference, but up to now not everything has worked out as we envisioned. So ultimately we are just living our lives. We could "just be living our lives" anywhere, including Ireland. As one question lead to another, I got to asking myself some fundamental questions about the way we choose to live in this precious but broken country of ours:

Do we really make enough of a difference just by loving the people around us? Is it enough that we treat all people with dignity and respect and that we teach our three children to do the same? Is it enough that we teach our children about the injustices of the past while we try to work through our own biases at the same time (I believe that we are all a work in progress)? I don't know for sure, but I would like to think the answer is yes. Yes, it is enough!

The truth is we count the cost whether we stay or whether we go. If we go, we may always feel like foreigners in another land, our hearts may always yearn for the smell and sound and feel of Africa. If we stay then we had better be prepared to fight. I don't think anyone can deny that, despite how far we have come since 1994, there is still a lot to fight for. But how do I "fight"? I cannot fight for all South Africans, I cannot fight for change in parliament but I can fight for our country in my own small way. Every. Single. Day. I can pray. I can vote! 

I can fight to change someone's perception of me, a white woman, and hope that as others do the same (and I know many friends who are) mindsets will change and perspectives will be challenged. 

I can fight by asking the question: "What do you mean by that"; in this way issuing the challenge to think more carefully about stigmas and biases (my own included!). 

I can fight by teaching myself and my children to speak isiZulu, the language most widely spoken in South Africa. My hope is that, by speaking to people in their language, or at least a language widely spoken and understood, we can indeed speak to the heart (Nelson Mandela).

I can fight by treating the people who help us in our home as extended family (which they are) and by paying them a living wage. 

I can fight by reading and educating myself on how the pain of the past has translated into the pain of the present (yes, white privilege). 

I can fight by letting my heart remain soft, by letting God move my heart to the plight of orphans in this country and by practising the star fish theory - I cannot help everyone, every day, but for every person I can and do help, a difference has been made. 

I can fight by intentionally living around and surrounding myself with people who are different to me; people who I can ask hard questions and who will answer, knowing my heart and intentions. People who my African-Princess daughter can identify with and look up to, people who (if I allow them to) can challenge me to be a better me.

So the bottom line of the great debate is this: we (our family) choose to stay (for now). Because while we still have breath, we can fight in any of the ways mentioned above. And if we can still fight then we still have hope. And if we still have hope then we believe that we can make a small difference and we can trust that a lot of small differences can make all the difference. And faith for this is enough! It would be amiss of me not to add that over and above this faith, we do not feel God has called us to be anywhere else other than South Africa. Yet. I add 'yet' because for the first time I realise that as much as I have never felt we would live anywhere other than here, I also realise I could be wrong and ultimately we will go where the will of God leads us.

For those who have left South Africa, I am sorry if I ever judged you unfairly for it. I honour your decision to do what you feel is best. I absolutely love this piece of writing (above) entitled "Africa Smiled" because it is true. Whether you go or whether you stay, Africa is in you; South Africa is in you. And as much as you can leave in body, can you truly ever leave Africa, South Africa, in spirit?

To end I leave you with a poem by C. Emily-Dibb. I dedicate it to you, whether the Great Debate is a conversation you have had, are having, are yet to have or never need to have. For me this poem captures, in words, some of the spirit of South Africa and everything this beautiful country is. It is just a small, imperfect taste of what can never truly be understood about this country unless it is felt, heard and seen.



Disclaimer:

1. These are my own thoughts, feelings and opinions entirely. I do not expect that everyone reading this will agree with everything I have said. And that is okay. 

2. About a week after starting this blog post, Good Things Guy shared a post with a similar name and of a similar nature. I decided to keep mine as is but the one shared on Good Things Guy is certainly worth a read. Read it here... https://www.goodthingsguy.com/opinion/stay-or-go-south-africa/?fbclid=IwAR2YpXu38d-pxFneB8sm_qYNBprKT2lzEE2RYtztMnyceX1h-EkPUjdHz2U

3. For an excellent (slightly older) blog post on paying a living wage, written by Nigel Branken, please click https://www.neighbours.org.za/blog/how-we-came-to-pay-a-living-wage9498794?fbclid=IwAR1QuoB2QUuS5-3jD92y2Tp0A85RBxrTwJsuqALlUTYb-d0XRMbDW2UOTjc

4. For more food for thought and an excellent blog post by Dalene Reyburn on South Africans and emigrating, read https://dalenereyburn.com/2015/03/09/for-the-south-africans-how-to-know-if-you-should-emigrate/