tl19900301_000 "Vol. 85 No. 5 ""Required Reading"" March 1, 1990 %am %MEP Published weekly by the students of Towson State University, Towson MD 21204 SGA speaker series: South African native shares story of oppression by Tracey Brown News Editor For many Americans ""apart-heid"" is merely a foreign concept with little grounding in reality; it is a term with no real human pain attached to it. Mark Matha-bane brought the reality of the injustices inherent in such a system home to his 500-plus audience Sunday evening. Mathabane, author of the best-selling autobiography Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apart-heid South Africa, spoke as part of the Student Government's Speaker Series. In a hushed yet expressive voice, Mathabane re-lated the poignant story of his upbringing in apartheid South Africa. Mathabane spoke with the elo-quence of a poet telling an epic tale as he took his listeners on an odyssey from the squalor and degradation of life as a black in South Africa, to break-ing through the confines of op-pression to find spiritual re-newal and hope. Mathabane grew up in an im-overished enclave within one of the richest portions of South Africa. This ghetto, without paved roads or running water� where tiny shacks made of card-board and bits of plastic, or huts of crumbling adobe brick housed a dozen people or more�stood in stark contrast to the opulence of the white suburbs surround-ing it. Mathabane's memories of starving children with distend-ed bellies, and of the halluc-inations and violent impulses hunger induced, were among the most piercing moments of his speech. He spoke of nightly treks across the ghetto with his moth-er to scavenge for half-eaten sandwiches and scraps of food in the white garbage dumps: ""...clutching each other, cross-ing the river, waiting with a throng of black mothers and their children under the blazing sun until the trucks came to dump the garbage from the white world,"" said Mathabane. Even greater than the gnaw-i..,; how-ever, were the conditions of hu-man degradation the people liv-ed under. In Alexandra, the ghet-to where Mathabane lived, police raids aimed at humiliating and undermining family structures were launched nightly. ""They sought to demolish this eyesore, to erradicate black life,"" said Mathabane, ""These raids would come usually around midnight, doors would be broken, windows shattered."" The raids instilled the children with a tremendous sense of fear and vulnerability. Although these conditions strongly im-pacted the entire family, they placed particular stress on Math-abane's relationship with his father. ""He would be marched naked out of bed, stood in the ""It isn't just an issue of black and white; it is a struggle be-tween those who per-petrate systems of oppression and those who resist them."" �Mark Mathabane middle of the room and inter-rogated in front of his children who looked on bewildered, per-plexed, unable to understand why father looked so helpless so humiliated."" This humiliation ate away at the traditional patriarchal struc-ture of the family. ""Here was a proud, responsible man dedi-cated to the well-being of his family. All he needed was an opportunity, a chance to fulfill that responsibility as a father� particularly because the trad-ition under which he grew saw him as the provider, the pro-tector,"" said Mathabane, ""But of course this juggernaut of op-pression was heedless to that."" Eventually Mathabane's fa-ther, in an attempt to escape the intense oppression of his spirit, became an alcoholic taking out his aggressions on his children as well as his wife. So the op-pression Mathabane grew up under became twofold: he was both oppressed by an apartheid system of government that deni-ed him access to any advance-ment, and he was oppresed by the infrastructure of his family which fought to accommodate the burden of the emasculation of his father. Desp;te the desperation of their living conditions, the family clung together tenacious-ly. Much of Mathabane's child-hood energies were expended in the attempt to reconcile the bru-talities of his existence, to some-how make peace with a world that seemed to offer nothing but injustice and cruelty. His mother however, had a profound effect upon his psyche. Risking her life to see that her son got an education, Matha-bane's mother sought to instill a sense of morality in her children; she tried to help them to see the world as a place where promise was not completely absent. ""In many ways I felt that she groaned and languished under a more terrible oppression, and yet somehow managed to keep her soul intact,"" said Matha-bane, ""The reason why I believe my mother's oppression was probably greater was because it was a triple yoke: she was a woman in a partriarchal culture, she was a black in a white dominated and racist society, third, she was illiterate in a world that was rapidly becom-ing modern."" In spite of her many hard-ships, Mathabane's mother maintained a ""saintly serenity"" and he considers her his greatest teacher because she taught him one of the most important les-sons of all: survival. Her goal as a parent became keeping hope alive in her children in a society that sought to stifle any sense of true selfhood, a society which denied them any sense of pride. The one thing that kept Mathabane from giving in to complete despair was his pas-sion for learning. Books became the instruments that allowed him to transcend the mental slavery that oppression inspires. Two books had a tremendous impact on his young mind: Trea-sure Island and David Copper-field. According to Mathabane, see APARTHEID page 5 The Stephens Hall tower, emblem of the University, is slowly being restored to its former glory. The tower, boasting a clock face on each its four sides, tops the 75 year old building. Although the refurbished clock received minor repairs its authentic character remains intact. The clock should be in working order soon. INSIDE BSU event undaunted by The masks of Comedial waterbombs. SGA election Arrival reviewed. Page 16 preview. Page 2 Lower administration lot Basketball whips Lehigh, to dose. Ortega and the captures ist seed. Page 6 Supreme Court. Page 26 "
