72: Trek

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, the story of two Americans who went to South Africa. One's white, one's black. And they went there because there's something about South Africa for them and for many Americans, something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time in a way that makes it mesmerizing.

Robert Kennedy described this congruence of nations as well as anybody. In 1966, he was visiting South Africa. And he began a speech at the University of Cape Town this way--

Ira Glass

That stunned pause before the audience begins applauding, I think that's so beautiful. More than England or France or Israel, more than Canada or Japan, when we think of South Africa, it is a more interesting mirror of the United States than nearly any country. I think because we glimpse a distant echo of the most frightening parts of our own country and the most inspiring parts.

In the 1950s and '60s, black South Africans looked to the US for inspiration. Lewis Nkosi lived in Sophiatown. He remembers reading American literature like Langston Hughes' Simple Speaks His Mind.

Ira Glass

"Harlem was like our neighborhood," Lewis Nkosi says. Black South Africans in Sophiatown listened to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, tried to dress and talk like Lena Horne and Cab Calloway. In Sophiatown, gang members modeled themselves after Hollywood movies, dressed in zoot suits, picked up phrases from tough guy films like Street with No Name.

Ira Glass

Now, of course, the situation is reversed. Once Nelson Mandela got out of prison, and especially after he entered the president's office, it's been black Americans who look to South Africa for inspiration. A few years ago, I did a series of stories for National Public Radio with a South African reporter, comparing race relations in the US with race relations in South Africa. And one of the most striking differences between the way that blacks in the two countries saw things was blacks in South Africa, they said they had hope.

Of course, it isn't just black Americans who look to South Africa to see a place where things are changing, where things are getting better in small ways. Today, we've devoted our entire program to the story of two guys who look to South Africa that way. Their names are Josh Seftel and Rich Robinson. Both of them grew up in the normal morass of post-civil rights race relations in this country, went to schools that were integrated but where blacks and whites usually stayed separate, rarely mixed.

So they headed to the new South Africa for a few weeks. And it turns out they did not agree on what they saw there. What we bring you today is partly a story of the emerging multiracial society over there and partly a story about the one here at home to contemplate this 4th of July weekend. Rich starts our story.

Rich Robinson

It was my idea to go to South Africa. I'd met this South African guy at work. He told me that South Africa is the most beautiful country in the world and that everything you see on TV about it is wrong. I asked Josh to go with me.

Josh Seftel

I had another reason for wanting to visit South Africa. I had just gotten a letter from some South African guy named Benzion Seftel asking if we might be related. My family's very small. Besides my parents and two sisters, there's only a few Seftels in all of North America. I guess I was simultaneously excited and scared. I mean, it's not every day that the size of your family suddenly doubles.

But when they're white South Africans, all these questions pop into your head, the first and most obvious question being, "So do they hate black people?" I mean, what do you do when your family doubles in size but the new half is a bunch of white supremacists? I decided not to share any of these worries with Rich.

Rich Robinson

Josh and I met 10 years ago in college. We ended up living in the same house, and we've lived together off and on since then. Josh is the son of a Jewish doctor in the suburbs. I grew up in the city. My parents are public high school teachers. He's white, I'm black, but none of this has ever been an issue. Before this trip, I don't think we ever had one serious talk about race.

We both wanted to see the new South Africa, to see how much the country had changed since Nelson Mandela took power two years ago. We decided to begin our search in a neighborhood called Yeoville. The free magazine they give you on the plane had an article about it. Lots of glossy pictures of blacks and whites laughing together in the streets, drinking together in bars and clubs, eating together in restaurants.

[CLUB MUSIC]

Josh Seftel

Yeoville's a party. The street is lined with outdoor cafes, people are wearing Nike T-shirts, New York Yankees hats, all kinds of American stuff. The scene is just like the magazine pictures. Blacks and whites talk together and drive by us in BMWs and Mercedes. When Rich and I go into a convenience store to get a drink, there's a tall black man wearing a Public Enemy T-shirt in the corner. He's playing Pac-Man.

Josh Seftel

Standing over by the pay phone, his girlfriend was plump and rosy in an African print jumpsuit and a red cashmere Kangol beret.

Rich Robinson

It was our first day in South Africa, and it seemed like everything you'd want it to be, everything you'd dreamed of for the new multiracial society. Blacks and whites together, Pac-man, and personal pagers. We went to the Pita Palace for a celebratory souvlaki, and there, our celebration was cut short.

Josh Seftel

Dimitri, the owner of the Pita Palace.

Josh Seftel

Over the next few days, we would hear Dimitri's story over and over. Wherever we went, people talked about crime and fear and whites leaving. That night when we walked home through the dark streets of Johannesburg, we found a shiny bullet shell on the pavement. We took a cab the rest of the way home.

[RUNNING WATER]

Josh Seftel

So here we are with my long-lost family. Sitting around a big table piled with lasagna and fresh baked bread, are Harold Seftel, his sisters Dolly and Molly Seftel, Dolly's son Louis, and Rich and I. They reminded me of my relatives back is Schenectady.

Rich Robinson

Josh looks a lot like Louis. It was easy to believe they were related. Nevertheless, we spent several long hours around dinner trying to prove it.

They pulled out some old photos, including that turn-of-the-century photograph that every Jewish family has. It's black and white, ragged at the edges, with a neatly posed family. The father in this picture had a thick, white beard, heavy eyelids, and a black-brimmed hat. He was probably my great uncle.

Josh Seftel

There's something about meeting distant relatives so far from home. There's this immediate bond that's basic and powerful, this feeling like you're all players on the same team, even though you've just met. But at the same time, mainly because Rich was there with me, I was nervous and wanted to know what the people around the dinner table had done during apartheid.

It's embarrassing to think about now, but I asked them repeatedly to talk about those years. At first, they were reluctant to discuss it, but finally they did. I was relieved to find out that Harold, a tall, lean, 60-year-old with squinty eyes, not only knows Nelson Mandela, he's one of his doctors. After Mandela came out of prison, he invited Harold and his kids for lunch. During apartheid, Molly was active in a group called The Black Sash, which picketed outside the court buildings.

Josh Seftel

It turns out, Harold's son David used to drive around giving medical care to black activists who were too scared to go into the state hospitals. Harold's daughter Lisa is a member of Mandela's party, the ANC. She was arrested and imprisoned for several months during the struggle and had to go into hiding underground for years. For a while, Lisa's Aunt Dolly and Dolly's son Louis, who are less political, let her stay at their house.

Josh Seftel

Even though Louis seemed to have some problems with the ANC, Harold knew Mandela, Lisa was in the ANC, Molly was protesting in the streets. As far as I was concerned, my family passed the test. My fear that they would be a bunch of white supremacists was put to rest and I felt relieved.

Rich Robinson

I felt uncomfortable. Dolly and Louis got this nervous, self-congratulatory tone when they talked to me about some of this stuff.

Rich Robinson

It was just one of those situations where you never forget you're the only black person in the room. After eating, Louis took us on a short tour of their estate. We saw their expensive bedrooms, pools, Jacuzzis, and finally, tucked around the back of the house, was the servants' quarters, which consisted of a tiny main room with four beds and a closet-sized bathroom. One worker was in the room at the time watching a dim black-and-white TV. Beside his head on the wall was a photocopy of a game board.

Louis told us that this was a lottery game. If you picked the right square, you won the pot for that week. I asked him who played. He pointed to the servant and said in a patronizing tone, that all of "them" do. The servant shook his head to say that he did not play, but Louis repeated that "all blacks played."

Later, there was this awkward moment-- awkward for me, anyway-- when Dolly and Louis were talking about Harold's daughter, Lisa.

Rich Robinson

Well, I don't know how she meant it, but that sweeping statement about what all blacks are like, all blacks are unfaithful, that did it for me. That let me know who they were.

Josh Seftel

Back at the hotel, we talked about dinner.

Josh Seftel

Rich needed a break from my family. So when Molly came to pick us up for breakfast, I went alone. She gave me a driving tour of the neighborhood.

Josh Seftel

We drove through peaceful, leafy neighborhoods with big houses. But almost every house was surrounded by a high fence and barbed wire. One neighborhood had a manned checkpoint to keep people out who didn't belong. Another had armed security guards patrolling the tree-lined streets on bicycle. We drove past an area that looked like a golf course with a neatly manicured lawn. And right by the curb, half-hidden by the shrubbery, were maybe half a dozen black people, sitting and laying on the ground.

Josh Seftel

We were back at her house. She pulled her car up to the big gates and punched in a code. Metal doors slowly parted and we drove in.

Rich Robinson

Crime has gotten worse since the end of apartheid, but it's not as big an increase as most people think. Since 1994, the murder has actually dropped 14%. Car thefts have dropped. Home burglaries have increased only 11%. The biggest increase in crime is non-residential robberies, which is up 50%, and rape, which is up 36%. What's happening is that crime in the white areas is now becoming the same as it's always been in the black townships.

Josh and I weren't getting along so well since the fight in the hotel room. In the 10 years we have known each other, we had never really fought before. So we decided the best thing for our friendship would be to get away from his family and out of Johannesburg.

Josh Seftel

We rented a tiny Volkswagen and set out to see more of the new South Africa. We drove for hours over green, rolling hills. The deeper we got into the country, the fewer and fewer white faces we saw. Every so often, we'd see a cluster of pink and aquamarine huts on a hillside, a village. Finally, we stopped at one.

Rich Robinson

There's a group of guys about our age sitting in an old car seat next to one of the huts. They looked like they were waiting for something to happen. They didn't seem happy with the new South Africa.

Rich Robinson

All three men were unemployed. For Wayne, a tall, thin man who covered his shaved head with a black fedora, told us that the new government had finally brought electricity to the village just that week.

Rich Robinson

They invited us into their shebeen for beers. They asked us questions about America, about our girlfriends, about the federal system, how we liked people at the office. They told us a story about why black men's noses are flat and white men's noses are long. They asked me if I was a relative of Michael Jackson. And they complained about the new South Africa. Wayne said if he were president, he'd enact a much more radical redistribution than Nelson Mandela has.

Rich Robinson

Sitting in the shebeen, Josh and I were more relaxed with each other. There's nothing like a little talk about apartheid to make you forget your personal problems.

Josh Seftel

One of the guys had an old accordion out on the car seat. I asked him to play a song and he did. "A Roman hymn," he told us.

Rich Robinson

For these guys, the new South Africa was a lot like the old South Africa. They were still without water and work, and they still felt powerless. Apartheid had done more than just separate the races. It had created a lasting sense of black inferiority.

Josh Seftel

On the way out of the village, we ran into three teenage village girls. One of them wore a thick layer of white face paint, like a mask. She said it was for pimples. We were talking, and they were teaching us how to say hello in Xhosa. And then the girl with face paint turned and looked us over. She looked at Rich's skin, which was a few shades later than her own. Then see looked at mine, which was a few shades lighter still. Then she looked at both of us. "Are you brothers?" She asked us.

Ira Glass

Our trip to South Africa continues with the South African Woodstock and an organization that's half Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" and half terrorist group. That's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme. Usually we bring you a variety of different stories on that theme. But today, we're devoting our whole show to just one story about South Africa's emerging multiracial society and about America's.

If you just tuned in, Rich Robinson and Josh Seftel are best friends. One's black, one's white. Rich is a New Yorker. Josh is from Boston. They traveled together to the new South Africa not long after Nelson Mandela took the president's office to meet some people who Josh thinks might be distant relatives of his and to see what's changed since Nelson Mandela began his experiment at creating a multiracial society, and what hasn't changed.

Boers are the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa. And the stereotype is they're farmers, they're racists, they're African rednecks. They're the group of whites who actually voted for apartheid and built the apartheid state. And Rich had become obsessed with them. Every white person was suspect, especially in the countryside.

Rich Robinson

The fact is, I came to South Africa hoping to confront real racists. In America now, racism is like this cloud that's still surrounding us, but you can't touch it or see it. You just feel it when you go to a party or when you go into a store. But in South Africa, white oppression officially just ended two years ago. I came here thinking it would be like seeing what it was like during the bus boycotts in the '60s or during the Civil War. I came here looking for the enemy.

Josh Seftel

Which didn't bother me, as long as Rich wasn't looking for my family to be that enemy.

Josh Seftel

We had read about a place called Rustler's Valley in our guidebook. It said that Rustler's was one of the most progressive places in the country, maybe on the continent, a kind of ongoing South African Woodstock. When we got there, there were lots of hippie-looking people with long beards, toting aboriginal instruments and bongos. The horticulture there looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. On one hillside, it looked like someone was holding a VW van convention. On another hillside, we joined a group of people who were in the middle of experiencing "a sound journey."

They all sat in a circle with their eyes closed and their legs crossed. In the middle of the circle was a man with a bunch of instruments. He was blowing on a didgeridoo. When he stopped, they went around the circle talking about how the sound journey had made them feel.

Josh Seftel

Down by the river, it was like Eden. There were people swimming naked and horses drinking from water and running wild. A group of two women and two men were passing around reefers the size of small cigars. But most of the action at Rustler's took place around a giant, flaming globe. At night, hundreds of kids danced to techno music in the firelight. Next to the dance floor was a pool where nude swimming was encouraged. There was a room called The Passion Pit, with low couches, dim lighting, and intertwined bodies. There was the tepee village. Rich and I went down there and ran into this guy wearing moccasins, knickers, and a feather headdress. He rolled a joint and talked to us about Rustler's philosophy.

Rich Robinson

We had somehow wandered into a techno version of America in the '60s. But if America's '60s were about rebellion, it wasn't clear from anyone we talked to who or what, exactly, Rustler's meant to be rebelling against. In the smoky bar near the dance floor, we met the founder of Rustler's. He's 40-something with a pony tail, beard, and an African wrap that covered his hairy legs to the knees. His name was Frick. He explained the enemy.

Rich Robinson

So the American government was the enemy, and the solution was the ethnic peoples. The only problem was, there were no ethnic peoples there. In a country made up of Zulus, Ndebele, Sotho, and Xhosa, a country with 12 official native languages, besides the kitchen workers and occasional gardener, I was the only black person at Rustler's. Josh and I did a little informal survey. Why no black people?

Rich Robinson

Rustler's Valley wasn't really a part of the new South Africa. It was more like a theme park for recreational drug users, a summer camp escape for young, white South Africans where they didn't have to think about the crime rates or the futures in this country. After two hazy days, when we finally got back into our room, we found a young, blond-haired woman sprawled across one of our beds rolling a joint in the bedspread. It was 5:00 in the morning. We'd had enough. We asked her to leave.

Josh Seftel

Back in the States, I almost never notice race. But since I'd been in South Africa, I found myself noticing it whenever Rich and I walked into a room. I'd look around and think, are there any black people here? I worried he'd be uncomfortable.

Josh Seftel

In the morning, the sound journey people were at it again. They sat cross-legged in a tight circle with their eyes closed. And when the man in the middle swirled his didgeridoo around the head of an entranced, red-haired woman, a steady stream of spit splattered onto her forehead and her eyelids. She didn't seem to notice. As we were driving out of Rustler's, someone approached the car and gave us a bulging sandwich bag full of marijuana and a bumper sticker. It said, "Pot will save the world."

Rich Robinson

In a mosque in Cape Town, we met a group called PAGAD, short for People Against Gangsterism And Drugs. They're a little like that group DARE that we have back in the States, except instead of soccer moms, these guys are Islamic fundamentalists.

[PRAYING]

While hundreds of Muslims pray in a huge main hall, we're in a small classroom off to the side. Sitting across from Josh and I are three PAGAD spokesmen, crammed into tiny desks meant for elementary students. Despite the 80-degree weather, they're wearing heavy ski jackets. They each have their own cellular phones, which interrupt us constantly throughout the interview. Their leader is As-Salaam [? Tohfi ?], a giant Indian man with enormous hands. He dabs his brow with a light blue terrycloth hanky.

Josh Seftel

PAGAD is famous for their method of getting people to just say no. They go to a drug dealer's house, pull him into the street, and set him on fire. There had been an incident like this six month earlier. A drug dealer had been burned to death in the street. And PAGAD felt their part in the incident had been misrepresented in the press. Their legal adviser, who had been quiet until then, explained PAGAD's side.

Josh Seftel

5,000 people. As I sat there imagining what I would do if 5,000 people showed up at my doorstep, the legal adviser turned to us.

Josh Seftel

As I fumbled for an answer, [? Tohfi ?] explained how drinking, naked dancing, nightclubs, and abortions are all destroying the new South Africa.

[PRAYING]

Outside the mosque, there was a wall of graffiti-- "Kill Jews," "Kill Americans," "Hezbollah." Everywhere we turned in South Africa, people seemed to be looking for quick and easy solutions to massive and complex problems. Whether that meant belonging to an alternative community or being an anti-drug crusader, killing Americans and burning drug dealers or smoking dope.

Rich Robinson

It was time to return to Johannesburg to say goodbye to Josh's family and then escape from South Africa. We had been getting along fine since we left the Seftels two weeks earlier. No fighting. But now, with only four hours of highway between us and them, the tension returned. I was driving. Josh and the microphone were facing me. They had me cornered.

This was one of those arguments where you just go over the same tiny points over and over again. I didn't catch on at first. They all seemed like reasonable questions. But then I realized what he was looking for. Josh didn't want my opinion on racism or the innocence of whites. Josh wanted me, as a black person, to admit that his white South African family were the good guys.

Josh Seftel

Back in Johannesburg, my cousin Louis took us on a tour of his latest masterpiece. Louis is an architect.

Rich Robinson

It's a two-story house still under construction. It doesn't really look like a huge breast. It's just got lots of curved walls and curved ceilings and a lot of breasty ornamentation.

Rich Robinson

It was hard to dislike Louis. He was such an entertainer, I don't even think he took himself seriously. In our time in Johannesburg, he took us out, offered to lend us his car, invited friends of his over so we'd have people to meet. The more I spent in South Africa, the harder and harder it was for me to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

But there were still times I didn't know what to make of people like Louis. For instance, camped out in the middle of a half-built house in the rain were at least a half dozen black men who had built a fire in the middle of the living room.

Rich Robinson

He showed us the kitchen and the bedrooms and the living room and a small servants' quarters attached to the side of the house.

Josh Seftel

On this last visit to Johannesburg, we stayed with my family at Dolly's house. And this time, they really felt like family. Late one night after Rich went to sleep, I talked with Dolly in the kitchen about the ups and downs of my love life. She urged me to marry a Jewish girl. It was just like talking to any of my relatives.

When I first got to South Africa, I had been more willing to judge Dolly and the others. But now that I had seen more of the country, I didn't feel that way anymore. I guess at some level, it just didn't feel right to judge family in the same way that judging your parents harshly for having different opinions than you do doesn't feel right. But Rich wasn't so sure.

Rich Robinson

Another day, another dinner with Josh's family. Our goodbye dinner. The conversation revolved around a few ongoing obsessions.

Josh Seftel

On this visit, they seem more beleaguered than anything else. They told us about all their friends who'd been robbed and attacked. Molly explained how she'd been mugged at knife point.

Josh Seftel

Not long ago, Molly had been famous and powerful. She was an actress who had been in lots of plays and a few films. She was the first white actress to appear on stage with a black. Her husband Monty had been a politician and had served as the mayor of Johannesburg during the '70s. But he died a few months before we arrived. Now she lived by herself in a big house with a big wall surrounding it. She was alone, except for her black servants.

One of the turning points in her life as a South African, one of the moments that changed her from an activist into the person she's become, was the day that the Seftels had waited for for years, the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The day started off just fine.

Rich Robinson

The new South Africa wasn't working out the way they expected. They complained that since the ANC took power, the mail service is horrible, there's litter in the streets, the government's corrupt.

Josh Seftel

And they're scared. I mean, they're scared in their own homes.

Josh Seftel

Now, most of the young people in the family are leaving. One of Molly's children has emigrated, and one of Harold's. And another of Harold's sons is probably leaving soon. Harold told me that in 15 years, there will be hardly any Seftels left in South Africa.

Josh Seftel

Even at this last dinner, even getting along with them as well as we were, there were still things about my South African relatives we didn't completely understand. And it might have been impolite, but we just asked them over and over. What did they do during apartheid, if they felt guilty?

Josh Seftel

So that was it. Now that we're back in the States, Rich and I never really talk about what happened in South Africa. I guess we've said everything there is to say to each other.

Rich Robinson

It's been several months since we've been back and we haven't had a single fight.

Ira Glass

Josh Seftel is a documentary filmmaker who made the film Taking on the Kennedys. Rich Robinson works for a business consulting firm. After coming home to the United States, he moved to Brazil for six months on business. Alone.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Paul Tough, Nancy Updike, and Julie Snyder. Contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margy Rochlin. Production help from Alex Blumberg, Susan Burton, Jorge Just, Todd Bachmann, and Sylvia Lemus.

[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

If you'd like to buy a cassette of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Or you know, you can listen to most of our programs for free on the internet at our website www.thisamericanlife.org. Thanks to Elizabeth Meister who runs the site. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who walks up to me at the end of every single show we do and declares--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Happy Independence Day. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

PRI, Public Radio International.