Port of Call LAST UPDATE March 7, 2009
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February 13, 2009 Cape Town, South Africa – Conflict Resolution inside Pollsmoor Prison
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Tour guide and former political prisoner Thando Sekame
The ship’s recent call to Cape Town marked the tenth anniversary of Peace Boat’s calls to the South African port. After learning about South Africa’s history from several guest educators onboard the ship, a group of thirty participants embarked on a mission to learn about Cape Town’s struggle to overcome the legacy of apartheid. Though the official policy that black and Indian people are lesser citizens than white people ended 15 years ago, the effects of apartheid remain to this day. Peace Boat members met people disenfranchised by the system at Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, where they participated with inmates in a conflict resolution workshop. Afterward, they visited the newly founded organization Palama Metsi, which uses surfing as a means to keep youth off the streets and out of the prisons.
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A boy from Palama Metsi teaches participants how to surf
As they entered Pollsmoor Prison, the tension was obvious in the faces of Peace Boat participants. After being frisked by guards, they were ushered into a small, concrete-walled room. About twenty inmates in bright orange jumpsuits were waiting for participants to arrive, then for the start of the first meeting of the eight-week voluntary conflict resolution workshop led by Joanna Thomas, an eleven-year volunteer at Pollsmoor. With the rows of plastic chairs facing each other so closely that participants’ and prisoners’ knees touched, there was no choice but to introduce themselves to each other, and nervous smiles soon gave way to genuine laughter as Japanese participants practiced their English and South African prisoners picked up a few words of Japanese.

With poor reactions to moments of conflict being the reasons that most of the men were sent to prison, Ms Thomas urged workshop participants to think of conflict in a new way. “When I strike a match against a matchbox, I get a flame,” she said. “That flame can be used for something positive—building a fire to cook with—or something negative—creating a fire to burn down a house,” she said. “It can go either way. When you think conflict, I want you to think opportunity.” Both the inmates and the participants shared their thoughts about conflict through a series of exercises. At the end of the workshop, the two groups shook hands and thanked each other: “From the bottom of my heart and from all the prisoners I thank you for coming here and giving us the chance to communicate with people from overseas,” said a prisoner named Mervin.
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Peace Boat and Palama Metsi cleaned litter off the beach
After the conflict resolution workshop, participants observed the prison’s bird-raising program. Through a rigorous application process, prisoners are given the chance to raise birds from birth to adulthood. The program is an innovative way to teach the men how to care for other living creatures and become responsible. The ten-year-old program has been extremely successful. Of the four men who have been released after participating in the programme, none has been rearrested, and one former inmate is now even working at a South African bird sanctuary. Tony, a 59-year-old man serving a 20-year sentence for murdering an undercover police officer, was proud to show off his two birds. “Outside, I never had any respect for life,” he said. “It was all about me. I didn’t care about the consequences of anything. I was only thinking about what I want. Here you can see what the female goes through, raising the babies, all the trouble she goes through. It’s just the same with humans. The programme has really affected me.”

After getting to know the prisoners of Pollsmoor, Peace Boat participants traveled across town to Muizenberg Beach to learn about Palama Metsi. The organization was started when its founder, Shafiek Khan, saw some of the local boys while playing with his son on the beach. “When I met the boys, they looked horrible,” Mr Khan said. “So unclean. They had no sense of hygiene.” Most of the boys were homeless, living on the rocky cliffs surrounding the ocean’s shore, poor and in danger of succumbing to Cape Town’s current crystal meth epidemic. Mr Khan and his friend Darrel used their own funds to find housing for the boys, and also put together a surf team to provide stability and a sense of family. It wasn’t difficult to convince them to surf—the boys are extremely talented, often placing first in national competitions. But what was challenging was getting them into school, a prerequisite that Mr Khan insisted on. “They are experts in the water but put them in front of a book and they couldn’t do much,” he said. “As much as they know in the water, they should know out of the water.”
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Participants and surfers
The boys are all in regular or trade schools now, but challenges for Palama Metsi remain. After nine months, Mr Khan still has not received any funding for the organization, despite the community services that the boys voluntarily perform, such as cleaning the litter off the beaches twice a week. Because of lack of money, Mr Khan was not able to provide the necessities that some of the group’s young women asked of him. “I kept asking them to wait, but they couldn’t,” he says regretfully. In the end, the girls stopped coming to the beach during the day to surf—instead, they began coming at night to prostitute themselves.
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A young boy from Palama Metsi demonstrates his talent
From boys who lived in the mountains and didn’t bother cleaning themselves to young men who earn top prizes in national competitions and clean trash off the beaches, it’s possible that Shafiek Khan has met his goal of preventing these young people from ending up in Pollsmoor Prison. Like so many worthy initiatives, funding is the only thing that’s stopping this program from changing many more young lives. If you would like to find out what kind of donations Palama Metsi needs, you can contact Mr Khan at africahaveaball{at}yahoo.com.