Voices lifted
Woman takes part in Black History Month Mandela tribute.
Emily Khalema was 15i n 1989 when her family moved from South Africa to Alberta.
Settling in Lac La Biche, where her father was posted as a United Church minister, posed a few challenges.
“We arrived on Sept. 10,” Khalema says, sitting in her living room in St. Albert and cradling her two-year-old daughter, Natal. “I needed a winter coat.”
She spoke no English and had grown up under apartheid, where the races were segregated and blacks were forced to attend their own schools, see their own doctors and use separate facilities.
“I didn’t know it would be different in Lac La Biche,” Khalema says.
“I came home from school and told my mother, ‘Mom, all of the bathrooms are the same!’”
Now a psychiatric nurse, Khalema will sing the South African national anthem Saturday at the Citadel Theatre during a multimedia presentation that kicks off Black History Month.
The three-hour program, which showcases the talents of black artists, musicians and poets from Edmonton, begins at 4 p.m. and will include a testimonial to Nelson Mandela.
“Black History Month or not, I think it is imperative to reflect on what (Mandela) did for people all around the world,” says Darren Jordan, an Edmonton artist who has staged shows in conjunction with Black History Month for eight years. “It is not just black rights, it is human rights.”
A shy, soft-spoken woman, Khalema approached Jordan several months ago and asked to participate in 5 Artists 1 Love as a tribute to her late grandmother — after whom she was named — and Mandela, who died Dec. 5 at age 95.
“I’m not Beyonce, but if I can participate for even 30 seconds to pay tribute to the legacy I have lived I will do it,” Khalema says.
“The theme of this year’s show is ‘Get Lifted’ and if I can lift a stranger with my story, I will step out of the box.
“I wouldn’t be here if people like Mandela and my grandmother hadn’t struggled.”
Imprisoned for 27 years as a conspirator who attempted to overthrow government, Mandela was freed shortly after Khalema’s family immigrated to Canada. He later negotiated an agreement that abolished apartheid, and in 1994 became South Africa’s first black president.
“Sitting and watching it on TV was like a dream,” Khalema says. “It was something you never thought attainable.”
Heartbroken, Khalema was unable to return to her native country for Mandela’s funeral, or to attend her grandmother’s memorial after she died in 2012 at 93.
“When Mandela died, I stayed up and watched the whole funeral on TV,” she says. “For me, it was almost like putting both of them to rest.”
A strong woman, Khalema’s grandmother went to school at a time when most girls weren’t allowed to in South Africa, and went on to become a teacher and a principal. Both she and Khalema’s father, who earned three master’s degrees, understood the importance of education.
“I was taught that it was the only way to freedom,” Khalema says.
Growing up in South Africa, she says, she never felt oppressed because apartheid was all she knew. But her father knew better.
“He went to school (abroad), and knew tolerance and equality existed,” she says.
Asking for help from the United Church, he was able to secure a position at Lac La Biche, and moved his family to a land with more opportunity.
The family came to Edmonton after Emily graduated high school, at which point she pursued a nursing diploma through a program at the Alberta HospitalPonoka, and then accepted a job as an RN in Brandon, Man.
It was there in 1996 that she met her husband Don Phillips, a tall Texan who came to Manitoba to play college basketball for the Brandon Bobcats.
He has since gone on to serve as head coach at NAIT, Paul Kane High School and, now, Bellerose Composite High in St. Albert. Together, they have three daughters — little Natal, six-year Dineo, and Thandi, who is 11 and tall like her dad.
Khalema will sing the South African anthem Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika (Lord, Bless Africa) Saturday accompanied by a chorus made up of other local residents who emigrated from southern Africa.
Other performers participating in the program include gospel singer Timothy Noel and rhythm and blues vocalist Jeff Hendrick, poets Ahmed Ali, Effluence, Titilope Sonuga and Megdine, and painter Judy Robinson.
“It is a smorgasbord for the senses,” Jordan says. “It’s like a party at the UN.”
Robinson, who has an installation of works on exhibit at Scotia Place, moved to Fort McMurray from Grenada in the summer of 1977.
“Even in July, it was shivering,” she says, “but it grows on you.”
A former gallery owner in Edmonton, she has painted for only a little more than three years — always on a canvas that she first colours black.
“I am far away from my culture and roots, so it is important to me to maintain that connection,” she says.
For weeks now, Khalema has been practising the South African anthem at home with her daughters.
She has taught them the song and now they cheerfully sing along.
“I consider myself a Canadian citizen, but I am proud of where I came from,” Khalema says. “I still practise the same morals I was brought up with.
“Apartheid wasn’t right, but I wouldn’t be the woman I am today if I didn’t experience it. I can appreciate that we can coexist and make a community grow without legal discrimination.
“To be here and part
I consider myself a Canadian citizen, but I am proud of where I came from. … Apartheid wasn’t right, but I wouldn’t be the woman I am today if I didn’t experience it.”
EMILY KHALEMA
of t he com mu n ity is empowering.”