Ann Karson
Asheville, NC
In 1963, I was an active member of the Liberal Party of South Africa, a small, multi-racial group, a political party made up of people opposed to apartheid who wanted that opposition to be fully non-racial. We were liberal in that sense, not economically: some of us were capitalists, some socialists. We were horrified at what our government was doing. What it was doing was similar to what was going on in the south of the United States, but with the full force of national legislation behind it.
I say I “listened,” because we had no television. Our government seemingly feared to let the outside world in. But we were attentive. We cheered every civil rights success and mourned every adverse reaction in states or in the United States as a whole. We were inspired by the civil rights movement. We also sang “We shall overcome.” We clung to hope that we too would see a day when we would have majority democratic rule and non-racial policy-making.
Eventually, apartheid fell. Having married an American, I now live in the United States. But I look at what is happening today in my country of origin with serious misgiving. We knew apartheid would leave a bad legacy and that, even after its end, the struggle would continue. That is true here also. But how much more difficult it has to be in a country that went through what South Africa did.
Everywhere, the basic human struggles persist. Whether it is race, gender, poverty, preventable disease, it is important to maintain morale and keep fighting. Let us keep right on singing “We shall overcome!”
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