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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| January 29, 2004 |
Living in the Rainbow Nation – Victor Matom |
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| Mr. Victor Matom presents wearing a T-shirt featuring the lyrics of the national anthem, "Nkosi Sikelel' |
Mr. Victor Matom joined Peace Boat's 44th voyage from Mombasa, Kenya, to Cape Town, South Africa. Known to every participant for his radiant smiles and bone-breaking handshake, Mr. Matom is a former boxer who now works as a freelance photographer as well as teaching photography to children in impoverished areas in his native South Africa. In addition to offering a series of photography workshops onboard, he shared his experience of coming of age in South Africa under Apartheid rule and his involvement in anti-Apartheid efforts during his youth. In his lecture "Living in the Rainbow Nation", he shared his love of, and hopes for, South Africa, referring to the country as a "rainbow nation." The phrase was coined by the former South African President Nelson Mandela to express his belief that different races in South Africa, who had not been allowed to live in a same area or even to associate with each other under the Apartheid regime, would someday live in harmony with equal opportunities.
Mr. Matom was born in 1959 in Soweto (an abbreviation of "South West Township"), an obligatory residential area for segregated black population during the Apartheid years, and which remains as the nation's biggest township. The hardship of the Apartheid laws that gave more privileges to "coloreds" (racially mixed) than to "blacks", resulted in his parents, classed as colored and black, separating, and he and his three siblings were brought up by their grandmother. Under the Apartheid system, opportunities were very limited in his childhood, but he found joy and a sense of hope in boxing. His social context included the persecution and imprisonment of vocal anti-Apartheid activists such as Nelson Mandela and through this Mr. Matom gradually became aware of the systematic nature of the discrimination, which he confronted on a daily basis. The most unforgettable incident of anti-Apartheid movement for him was the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976, in which he took part. The Soweto uprising was a unified reaction by hundreds of black high-school students against the attempt to make education in Afrikaans, which to them was the language of the oppressor, compulsory. Several hundred African lives were lost in the ensuing violence. In the midst of police gunfire, he and his friends marched toward the Ministry of Education, singing a song of struggle - "even if we die, forward we go, because we are struggling for a good cause."
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| Placard for his lecture "Living in the Rainbow Nation" prepared by Peace Boat participants |
Mr. Matom remembers April 26, 1994, the day of the first democratic elections in South Africa, vividly. Millions of black voters woke up at three in the morning for what was their first opportunity to participate in a genuinely democratic process and one which marked the official end of the Apartheid system. However, despite the election of the first black president and the adoption of a new Constitution which guarantees the protection of human rights for all, de facto segregation has remained as an intractable structural problem. The disproportionately high employment rate among the black population persists, and social problems born of poverty, such as crime and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, continue to threaten the welfare of the nation. However, South Africa today offers itself as a beacon of hope and a role model for many countries that are striving to overcome the legacy of dictatorship. Reflected in the lyrics of the national anthem, 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika', which is written in four different languages to celebrate the ethnic diversity of the nation, people of South Africa share the feeling that they are building this "rainbow nation" together.
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