Thursday February 21, 2013
Today was a hard day. Like the Apartheid museum. Only even more intense. Today I went to Constitution Hill. The place of prison. The place of punishment, torture, execution, humans inhumanity to humans, injustice writ LARGE. Having visited historic prisons in the US, and having been in prison myself (another story, another time), it hardly seems possible to make it worse. But it was; because they jailed people because of the color of their skin or because they were standing up to injustice, or both. And because we aren't talking history here, we are talking less than 20 years.
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| The Men's prison |
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This is where Gandhi and Nelson Mandela spent time.
Among many other named, famous, infamous and unnamed men. There are large blocks with no beds, just blankets, and no privacy. |
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| In the midst of torture- who really loses their dignity? who really is debased? |
Then there is solitary confinement.
No light, no company, no humanity.
Then there is the women's prison.
Not exactly a women's dormitory.
And here is what they did to this place to redeem it. They left the prison to remind people of the horrors. And placed a beacon of hope, the Constitutional Court.
With the freedoms and rights engraved on the doors.
And in many languages.
And left two of the staircases as monuments to courage...
and tore down the rest of the building to use the rest of the old bricks to build the new walls and walkways...
OF DEMOCRACY.
May it be so, Amen.
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