Cape Town: a visual reminder of the human condition

Cape Town is a visual reminder of the human condition.

It is glory and beauty and spectacular contrasts. And it is also depravity and violence and hopelessness. How can one place–how can every individual contain all of that at the same time?

Finally, my summary of Cape Town, South Africa, if that’s even possible. After having spent a week in Amsterdam in March, it was crazy that we went next to Cape Town, South Africa, only a month later. We’ve had quite the Dutch cultural experience, which is not unlike our human experience. After much debate, my husband and I decided this huge trip to the bottom of the world was worth our time and money; a leadership conference pulled us there. Everything there made it worth it.

Of course, the penguins were also a pull. 

I really didn’t know much else about South Africa apart from the new reports of killings and my brief knowledge of apartheid, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela—all unintentional blessings from a South African professor during my masters program.

I had a big gap in my understanding of Cape Town’s complexities. I’m sure I still don’t understand it.

But I’m giving it a shot here because I love new cultures and travel.

When you go to countries where poverty and violence run relatively unchecked, you realize that time stands still, even as it moves at a breakneck pace. You’ve never been there before, but the place looks alarmingly like slums you’ve seen in South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. The effects of ambition, power, and prejudice are the human condition; they always produce suffering and want. They are ugly everywhere. They happen for different reasons and the same reasons. And they are addressed and improved through complex  economic and social changes over generations. And at the same time, they are simply solved through spiritual transformation. (That’s the miracle of the Kingdom of God.)

Here’s my brief economic history of my observation of Dutch influence: mother country>colonization> subjected nation>effects of colonization> discrimination, violence, poverty, economic failure. Basically, another lesson in world economics. (But all this makes redemption so much more obvious. Coming to this part soon…)

First I’ll give you the short version of this paradoxical location:

Landscape

Gorgeous mountains; Table Mountain lives up to the hype; we took a cable car to the top and walked around the mountain plateau. The ocean and beaches surround the mountain on all but one side; sunsets were magnificent.

Thirty townships (aka. slums) exist within view of Table Mountain, but their inhabitants will never see the summit and will never swim in the ocean; they will likely never leave their slums. This is one of the many by-products of poverty: a myopic and hopeless view of life and the world.

History & Culture

An amazing mix of wealth and poverty. The Dutch East India Company (abbreviated as the VOC, for Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) established Dutch culture & architecture in South Africa upon arrival in 1652. The VOC monopolized the spice trade to Asia and were one of the first joint-stock companies in the world.

The British fought the Dutch to gain control of South Africa’s natural resources and premier trading location. Wars ensued between the European nations and among the many African tribes. England’s influence is also evident everywhere: football (soccer), cricket, rugby.

The diversity of this country is evident in the cuisine, the culture, and in the 11 official languages of South Africa, which includes Dutch, English Afrikaans, Zulu, and other tribal languages.

Ten percent of the white Afrikaners (also called Boers) speak Afrikaans as their first language; Afrikaans is a of mix of primarily Dutch, German, and Portuguese, unique to mostly to South Africa and Nambia.

No surprise, the Africans native to South Africa were exploited by Europeans for hundreds of years. The DeBeers monopoly on the diamond trade essentially enslaved generations of men and children to work in the diamond mines.

The twentieth century brought apartheid (severe racial segregation and discrimination) to South Africa, which was not officially terminated until 1994, under the influence of Nelson Mandela. The DNA of apartheid is still seen today. Cape Town alone has 30 communities where Black Africans were placed under apartheid. They still live in shocking poverty, with no government systems in place to help them.

Ministry

We attended a Christian leadership conference in the middle of our week. These men and women were incredible. Their “kingdom” mentality challenged me to live outside of this world’s system and fight for what really matters. We toured an indescribably brilliant ministry in Delft, one of Cape Town’s most dangerous townships. The leadership there is changing the economic structure of their town and giving people a fighting chance to break out of poverty and find spiritual and economic freedom.

Sight-seeing 

South Africa was never on my bucket list, so I didn’t have many expectations, but I quickly saw why it’s a top travel destination. We enjoyed:

• penguins at Boulder Beach
• Table Mountain: cable car up, hike around, view of Atlantic Ocean
• Cape of Good Hope: views of Atlantic and Antarctic Oceans
• four-wheeling through a vineyard
• eating outside in gorgeous weather with warmth, sun, breeze, and no humidity
• catamaran ride at sunset in the Cape Town harbor
• safari (we saw 4 of the Big Five)
• shopping and walking around in the seaside shopping mall area

We traveled through astounding and varied climates in such a small space: viewed mountains, savannas, and ocean; moved through wealthy areas past miles of shanty towns; enjoyed the mixture of European and African art, cuisine, and architecture.

I would go again, and I didn’t think I would. (After all, it was a 17-hour direct flight from D.C., some 8 hours longer if you stop for connections. That’s a long time in the air.)

now for The most important revelation

For the safety of the ministries there, I can’t elaborate in print about the jaw-dropping economic and spiritual work being done by committed Christ-followers in South Africa. But the Kingdom of God is growing and thriving there. Men and women have tackled a seemingly unsolvable social, economic, political, and spiritual problem from every angle. They have brought the Kingdom of heaven to earth, and it’s breathtaking.

I am like Cape Town. I have my history, my perspective, my conglomeration of cultures and ideologies. I am lovely and messy and awful and trying to change. I need help. I need redemption and hope.

This is my Cape Town takeaway. The Lord is always breathing life into dead things. He is always carving out pathways toward freedom. Redemption is always possible.

Life thrives in the desert. The sun rises and sets over the horizon.

Forgiveness (Tutu’s influence) and hope (Mandela’s influence) spread like fire over hearts that seek restoration and belonging. Whenever you see God’s glory manifested in hard places, you realize once again that Christianity is an eternal idea. The Church, as we know it, is not a modern first-world phenomena. It was God’s eureka moment for changing humanity. All of us who suffer from the human condition crave the miracle of life we find in salvation, but the testimony of this change to a dying world is the Kingdom of Heaven, demonstrated through the Church.

We can. That’s why Jesus came.

Isaiah 43:18-21

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
²⁰ The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
²¹     the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.