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Port of Call |
LAST UPDATE July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| February 1-2, 2004 |
Cape Town, South Africa |
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| Local children with Japanese calligraphy that says Peace |
In the early morning of February 1, Peace Boat docked at Cape Town Waterfront docks, from where the sight of the famous Table Mountain, draped with its pristine tablecloth made of cloud, gives the city the reputation of being one of the most picturesque in the world. Since its eagerly anticipated first visit in January 1999, Peace Boat has visited South Africa six times. This visit, Peace Boat and its counter-partner Clive Newman Conferences (CNC) - one of the few black-owned event management companies in South Africa and a specialist in social reality programmes - held a Peace Festival in the courtyard of the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, with the participation of local communities.
Peace Boat Director Mr. Ryo Ijichi and Mr. Clive Newman from CNC gave welcoming speeches expressing the partners' sense of solidarity and reaffirming the mutual commitment of both organizations to broaden South Africa's impressive efforts to overcome the pain of its deeply segregated past and to build a "rainbow world" where people of all races can live in harmony. |
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| Performance by South African youths at the Cultural Festival |
Performances by Khayelitsha Craft Market Marimba Group, local band Cape Melodies, and local Afro-Jazz band, were followed by Peace Boat participants' presentations of the South African national anthem Nkosi Sikelel' Afrika, a Gumboot Dance, and a traditional Japanese fishermen's dance - a line-up celebrating the cultural diversity of South Africa and beyond. Local children also played African drums and danced on stage, stimulating the audience to join in and move their bodies to the highly-spirited music. At the venue, Peace Boat participants set up a "Japanese Cultural Booth" to share Japanese traditional culture, such as calligraphy and origami, with the local people. |
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t is an undeniable fact that South Africa is one of the strongest economies on the African Continent. Ten years after the end of the Apartheid system, marked by the first democratic election in 1994 in which the South African people chose President Nelson Mandela to be the nation's first black leader, the center of Cape Town has come to mirror the cultural and ethnic diversity of the country. However, the legacy of the Apartheid years has not been completely cast off, with the "townships" that cover 13 percent of the total land area representing the part of South Africa that has yet to see much in the way of meaningful change.
On the second day of our stay, approximately 50 Peace Boat participants visited Langa township to witness the reality of post-Apartheid South Africa. Langa started its history as a small all-male town of forced laborers. While it has grown in size over the years, its essential character has remained unchanged, providing homes for impoverished black South Africans whose everyday life is remote from the life outside the township.
Peace Boat participants visited a youth center run by a Langa-based NGO Love Life that offers HIV/AIDS and sex education and various after-school activities to local children. By dynamically engaging teenagers, Love Life aims to keep them from self-destructive behavior, promote safe sex, fight stigma and discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, and educate them to become confident and productive individuals in order that they may help guide South Africa towards a more just society.
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| Peace Boat participants and local children at the Love Life youth center |
The coordinator of Love Life, Ms. Phumla Hobe, welcomed the group and gave us a tour of the youth center, which was full of energetic children eager to join in cultural and sports exchange programmes. Black children from Langa and "colored" children from outside the community, who had not been allowed to live in the same area as "blacks" under the Apartheid rule, spent the morning and afternoon together with Peace Boat participants dancing, singing, chatting, and playing soccer. We left Langa with high hopes to hear the voices of children from all races playing together in the township in the near future. |
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