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Thurs, Feb 25 8:35am SA time / 12:35am IA time
Our tour guide for today is Kim Maruping – a fabulous young woman with a wheelhouse of talent: in addition to running her own tour company (Maruping Agency) she is a writer, playwright, historian and community leader. Outside the Kimberley Club, we climb into a minibus with her and her drivers, and head out for a day full of touring. As we drive, Kim speaks about her town with both eloquence and humor. “The weather in Kimberley is ridiculous” she jokes, “You know, you we can have four seasons in one day.”
We start at the Sol Plaatje Museum. South African writer Sol Plaatje– a journalist, linguist and translator – is renown in this town: he was a founder member and first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which eventually became the ANC. His legend is alive here, in the same way that Vonnegut is revered in Iowa City, Fitzgerald in New York, Dickinson in Amherst. People speak of him personally, with a sense of intimacy that seems familial, like extended family.
Leaving the museum, we pull up beside the Big Hole. “There are still diamonds in the Big Hole,” Kim tells us. “There are a lot of bodies inside the Big Hole as well” she waxes, solidifying once again the dual nature of the glittering yet tarnished history of this town.
Stoplights are called “robots” in South Africa, but I don’t know that yet, so when she urges us (on way to our next stop) to look back, and says “Back there were the first robots in Kimberley” I turn with such expectant anticipation that my head vibrates. “Where, where?!?” I say. Later, when someone mentions that they “have a real problem with robots here,” I don’t remember what that means right away, so instead I imagine silver metallic machines, with digital voices, walking slowly through the streets at dawn. No Lauren. Robots = Stoplights.
At the McGregor Museum, we are privy to an actual artifact, unwrapped from its protective storage – a hand axe made of banded ironstone that dates back to 800,000 years ago. It was found in a sinkhole at Kathu Pan and was produced by a process known as acheulian, and used in a masterful way by homo ergaster. An equally effective tool could have been made with less precision and beauty in undoubtedly less time, but someone wanted to make this tool a work of art as well. We are also shown a book, handed down from the archeologist’s grandfather, signed to the family by Sol Plaatje. These two objects seem in some strange and perfect relation to each other. The museum is quiet with our looking.
The McGregor Museum houses the Duggan-Cronin Gallery, and we head there next, to see the Thandabantu photography collection of Alfred Duggan-Cronin. Between 1919 and 1939, he recorded large aspects of traditional life of South African tribes on film and the respect he showed his subjects was reflected in the name he was given, Thandabantu, a Matabele word meaning one who loves people.
Next stop is the township, and on our way there, we pass the Hospice in Kimberley. Kim points it out and says “On your right is the Five-To.” She stops herself mid-explanation and says “OK you know now I’m going to teach you some Kimberley slang. A ‘Five-To’ is what we call the Hospice. Because, well, you know, people go in there when they are five minutes to death.” There is a beat of silence and then the whole minibus erupts in laughter.
We enter Galeshewe Township, a neighborhood where the Mayibuye Uprising occurred in 1952. Kim leads us to the monument erected for the fallen of that conflict, and to the former office and house of Robert Sobukwe. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, a South African political activist, intellectual and professor, was banished, sickly, to house arrest in Galeshewe township after his imprisonment at Robben Island for political dissent. (“We thought he was Five-To,” says Kim with a smile. “But he was really just a Quarter-To.”) Even under house arrest, though, he was able to communicate with fellow anti-apartheid activists using sign language and signals during his closely surveilled meetings. He finished his law degree as well, and began his own law firm under house arrest.
We are viewing the monument and the destroyed office building when a group of boys from the township school start singing for our attention. “Take a picture, take a picture!” they say, and I start clicking. They move like models, posing and mugging for the camera, each instant making a new face. These kids live in the age of selfies and snapchat just like any other teenagers around the world. This township is a very impoverished part of Kimberley, and taking it all in is heartbreaking, but watching these boys do what all the teenagers do makes my mother-heart happy.