Letting go of Verwoerd, again
A plaque honouring the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, was removed from a building at Stellenbosch University this week. His grandson Wilhelm Verwoerd spoke at the event of his continuing struggle with what true reconciliation really involves
DURING the early ’80s, as a student at Stellenbosch University, I regularly walked past this building. I often looked up and saw — written in large, bold letters in a place of honour above the main entrance — the familiar name, HF Verwoerd. In those years this kind of public exaltation was commonplace.
As a young person I was proud to be associated with this name. After all, for me HF Verwoerd was not only a former prime minister. He was not a lifeless name on a wall. He was also beloved “Oupa Hendrik”.
During those years (and sometimes even today), upon hearing my surname, random Afrikaner ooms and tannies would share their reverential memories of a great volksleier, who “liberated his people from English domination”.
These reminiscences would usually end on a sad note, with a detailed recollection of where they were on that “dark September day of shock and sorrow” in 1966 when “Dr Verwoerd” was assassinated in parliament.
From 1986 to 1990 I studied overseas. This became a tough time of exposure to “separate development” as experienced outside the seductive bubble of white, Afrikaner, middle-class Stellenbosch.
For the first time I was really and repeatedly confronted with heartrending life stories of fellow South Africans, fellow Christians, who happened to have a different skin colour.
I could not recognise “Dr Verwoerd” and “Oupa Hendrik” in their experiences of “Verwoerd the man of granite”, “the one person who would be remembered as the author of our calamity”, in the words of Chief Albert Luthuli.
Yet again my surname elicited spontaneous reactions. But this time I was greeted with stories clothed in anger and profound pain; this time that September day was not a day of sorrow, but a (to me) shocking “day of dancing and liberation”.
A handful of confusing years followed — trying truly to understand the real human story behind that day of dancing, without denying the day of mourning. Gradually I came to the conclusion that the vast gulf between intentions and consequences, between “Oupa Hendrik/Dr Verwoerd” and “The Architect of Apartheid” will most likely remain unbridgeable.
Hesitantly, I realised that, if I wanted to be true tomy faith, tomy self, I needed to give priority to the pain of those who experienced him as the personification of a humiliating, dehumanising political system.
Haunted by the fear of betraying volk and father(s), in the early ’90s I at last accepted that my faith required deep journeying: beyond boundaries of belonging, in the footsteps of genuine reconciliation.
I therefore advocated in the early ’90s that names associated with the pain of apartheid — including HF Verwoerd’s — should no longer be honoured in public spaces. I became convinced that this kind of SYMBOLIC GESTURES: Students attend the removal of the Verwoerd commemorative plaque from a building on the University of Stellenbosch campus. In the foreground is the university’s chief operating officer, Professor Leopold van Huyssteen honouring added insult to injury.
My worst fears came true when this belief was interpreted as betrayal, and contributed to a distressing decade of brokenness in my own family.
Now it is the end of May 2015. In preparing for this symbolic removal event, I was surprised by the intensity of conflicting emotions and inner questioning, even though I trusted that the pitfall of retaliatory humiliation would be avoided.
About two and a half years ago I returned to South Africa after more than a decade of practising reconciliation in, especially, Northern Ireland. Shaped by becoming a facilitator of inclusive dialogue, I find myself struggling again with “reconciliation”: What does true reconciliation, in South Africa, today, really involve for a 51-year-old, white, heterosexual male from a middle-class Afrikaner background, with the surname Verwoerd?
Although it is almost half a century since that September day of separate sorrow and joy, I am grappling, again, with this question: How can I make unifying room for “Verwoerd” (as symbol of apartheid) and Oupa Hendrik within my growing commitment to radical, humanising inclusivity?
Where do my 85-year-old parents and friends fit into this picture? As I get older, my love of family is increasing; my youthful inclination to confident condemnation of the sins of the fathers is lessening; my em- pathy is deepening for their transmitted pain, especially from the distant times of the Anglo-Boer War and the more recent Border War; my understanding is maturing of their generation’s struggle to make sense of contemporary South Africa (including my participation in this ceremony).
What about my children and their fellow members of the post1994 generation? How can I contribute to translating their understandable resistance to paying for the pain of apartheid, into a cre- ative, liberating sense of shared “response-ability”?
And my contemporaries, especially in white, Afrikaner circles — how do I productively distinguish genuine political disillusionment and reasonable blame fatigue from avoidance of responsibility as (ongoing) beneficiaries of systematic, unjust historical privileging?
However, the most daunting question continues to be: How do I listen . . . listen . . . really listen to the heartbeat of untransformed pain behind the clenched fists and the bubbling anger of mostly black fellow citizens?
How can I play a positive role with regard to deeply rooted, unhealed emotional, moral and soul injuries from our apartheid past?
I cannot answer these questions by myself. I’ve come to appreciate that the only road forward is for me to remain committed to sincere, humble, patient, cross-border relational journeying. Still, I am acutely aware of the daily temptation to protect my vulnerability rather than to “take up my cross”— to open myself to the discomfort, the deconditioning, and the “resurrection” of cross-cutting compassion.
Therefore, I want today again to make a choice — in public, as a Verwoerd — for salve instead of salt. Deep listening gave my gut a glimpse of the wounding that those on the receiving end of apartheid associate with the name Verwoerd.
The urgent heartbeat behind those clenched fists brought home to me their profound hunger for sincere acknowledgement by us who share responsibility for their woundedness.
The irony is that black South Africans have been the midwives of my reacceptance of Oupa Hendrik — “in our culture we respect our ancestors”. And Walter Sisulu once warned me not to scapegoat Verwoerd, given the systemic injustices of apartheid and colonialism.
At the same time, reconciliation practitioners and teachers such as Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Themba Lonzi and Naledi Mabeba helped me to understand that to honour HF Verwoerd as a political leader is to rub salt into their wounds; to realise that this “salt” of inadequate acknowledgement is not restricted to a particular place or person or time or generation.
For how long will someone like me be faced with a choice between the salt of silence, indifference or exclusive, ethnic remembrance and the salve of humble, humanising acknowledgement? It is not appropriate for me to answer this, though I find “seventy times seven” to be a wise guideline.
This is why I accepted the invitation to participate in this rather belated ceremony. Of course, ultimately, it is the quality of acknowledgement that really counts — fake salve burns even more than salt. I therefore remain very aware that for a symbolic choice to become salve rather than salt, it requires ongoing, tangible transformation of pain from our past.
This is an edited extract from Verwoerd’s speech. He is a director at Beyond Walls and a research associate in practical theology at Stellenbosch University
How do I listen, really listen, to the heartbeat of pain behind the bubbling anger of mostly black fellow citizens?
Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.timeslive.co.za