A young man came rushing into the auditorium and onto the
podium. He wasn’t expected. Prior to his arrival, the audience was busy
chatting and there was a happy buzz in the room. The man stood tall and
dignified and interrupted our chatter, saying loudly in a heavily accented
voice, “I am Enzokee Naidoo and
I am here to talk to you about my homeland, the apartheid country
of South Africa.” He stopped to make sure he had our attention. He had it.
We were spellbound by the authority this man conveyed. We knew that what he was
about to say was something we had to hear.
It was summer 1965 and I was at a conference in Vapnagaard,
a small town not far from Copenhagen, Denmark. I was 20 years
old and had recently received a small inheritance of $2500. At the same time,
I found a brochure about a conference in Scandinavia, with the purpose of
fostering international understanding by bringing together people from many
countries. My $2500 would cover the cost of airfare plus conference tuition. I
decided to go, but this was my first trip out of the U.S. and it took a lot of
courage make this decision. My hopes were modest: to make some friends and to have
some adventures.
We were 35 men and women of all ages, from the U.S., Norway,
Denmark and Sweden, Pakistan, and England, and there was one young man from
Nigeria who was my same age. His name was Jim and like me, he was shy and a bit
star-struck by the others who seemed to be worldly-wise and socially adept. We
both hung back and observed more than we participated.
 |
| Some conference participants posing for pictures In the center: Jim from Nigeria and Mr. Meinke, the Conference Leader |
This evening like all others at the conference, the group had
gathered at 7 p.m. sharp. Previous evenings we had listened to lectures on a
variety of subjects by course participants and a few evenings we heard talks by
our conference leader Mr. Meinke about his special interests: Soren
Kierkegaard, Nordic folk-schools, Danish farm cooperatives, and international
understanding. Other evenings we had recitals by local Danish musicians.
Nothing terribly captivating and we always hoped the lectures or musical
entertainment would end quickly so we could go out into the warm summer
evenings and sing songs and do folkdances from our various countries.
Even Jim and I got into it as we all messed up the words to the songs in the
different languages and clumsily tried to learn the dance steps. It was very
funny and evoked lots of laughter from everyone.
This evening, we never got out into the summer night.
After Enzokee Naidoo got our
full attention, his words spilled out in a
rush. “Dr. Meinke asked that I talk to you. And I agreed though I don’t have
much time. I must talk to you who come from all over the world about the
situation of the Blacks in South Africa.”
We were hypnotized, almost holding our breath
listening to this man, to his words. He continued, “The situation is
horrible and one of these days it will explode into violence. We
Black South Africans are getting better housing and education and rising
materially, but we are strictly limited as to the height to which we can rise.
And this combination of improvements with limitations is too much for us to
endure.” He told us of the measures taken by the Whites to ensure that the
Blacks would stay in their place. Sadly, with anger in his voice he said, “I
cannot return to my homeland of South Africa. If I return, I will be taken
prisoner for my stand against apartheid.”
Enzokee was slowing down and Mr. Smith, a school
teacher from the U.S, took the opportunity to ask, “Why can’t the Blacks in
South Africa attempt non-violence in their struggle against oppression?”
Enzokee was in a hurry to leave but he gave Mr. Smith
a pitying look and replied, “How can you know what the situation is
like? How can you know all the attempts we made that
failed? How can you judge when you sit here nice and secure?”
After our speaker left, it was as if an electrical charge had
run through his audience. Many got out of their seats, talking all at once,
talking over each other, some suggesting solutions to the problems of the
Blacks in South Africa. Some crying, some making angry accusations at others
whom they didn’t agree with. Jim and I sat quietly, observing. This was all new
information to me; I was naïve and uninformed. Shockingly I was only vaguely
aware of racial problems and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and knew
nothing of apartheid in South Africa.
Thinking back, I’m sure that Jim must have had thoughts,
opinions, and reactions to Enzokee’s talk and how it related to life and
politics in the newly independent country of Nigeria. However, no one took any
notice of Jim or asked him to speak. Today I wonder: Was this our version of
White privilege? Did we even know of the concept of White privilege in 1965?
The flurry of conversations continued around Jim and me, and got
louder more out of control until finally Mrs. Johanson, a Dane of about forty,
climbed on a chair and said authoritatively in clear English with her lilting
Danish accent, “Sit down and be quiet. One person talk at a time.”
Mr. Keystone from England took the floor and talked for close to
an hour, telling us about the year he spent in South Africa as a reporter for a
London newspaper. We were quiet. We were listening and we took in, as best we
could, the last sentence of his talk, “The solutions you’re proposing for a
peaceful settlement, or for slow progress, they won’t work. The White apartheid
government is entrenched. It is as Enzokee said, ‘There will be a battle to
bring down apartheid, we just don’t know when’.”
Mr. Keystone had succeeded in calming the group down slightly.
At some point Jim left to go to bed but some of us – me included – stayed
together past midnight. The others were talking, trying to adjust their
thinking. I remained quiet, trying to take it all in. In truth I had no idea
what to do with all the information and opinions and strong emotions swirling
around me.
There was no laughing or dancing or singing outside that night.
In the days that followed, our
normal life at the course continued, touring during the day, lectures or
music at night. My expectations of having an adventure at the conference were
met. As far returning home changed by Enzokee Naidoo or any of the others I met,
sadly or perhaps to be expected, it didn’t
happen. Before my summer adventure in Scandinavia, I was apolitical and back in
the U.S. I returned to my normal
way of being: head in the sand, still apolitical. But I was primed for my
next adventure, which happened in 1966 after college graduation when I moved to
San Francisco. That is another story for another time.
---
The First Republic of Nigeria was formed in October 1963, barely
two years before the conference. In January1966 a military coup deposed the
government of the Nigerian First Republic. In July 1966 there was a
counter-military coup followed by years of unrest and inter-religious wars.
On April 27, 1994 apartheid ended in South Africa after several
years of negotiations between the governing National Party and the African
National Congress.
POSTSCRIPT: This story had been published on the website Kaleidoscopewojo.com which unfortunately no longer has a presence on the web. I am most grateful that the folks who hosted the site accepted my story and I am sad for the loss of access to the many creative and beautiful and meaningful stories that appeared on Kaleidoscopewojo.
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