SENTINEL WATCH October 25, 2004 Issue

Making connections

By Kurt Shillinger

We were talking about connections. is it possible to annul ethnic and religious divides and truly connect as human beings? The novelist at our dinner table that night, a deep thinker and a Zulu man, related a story he had once written.

A black man from rural South Africa stood trial before a white judge in a court based on a European-style legal code. The man was accused of assaulting his neighbor. The victim, still bruised, testified against him. So did several eye witnesses. But when the judge asked the defedant for his plea, the man said he was not guilty because his victim had insulted his mother. They were at an impasse: The law viewed the matter from one perspective, the man's culture from another. "The two sides cannot be reconciled," the novelist said.

So it seems. The world urges us toward "otherness." It's how we define one another and ourselves, too. A decade ago, South Africa achieved a remarkable political transformation when it set aside segregation for democracy without going to war. As important as that change was, however, it did not end the discussion about race. It simply redefined the terms. Lasting reconciliation remains a daily endeavor. There's still a tug-of-war between equality and diversity. Who's Africa? Who's entitled to hold office, run a company, or edit a newspaper? Who belongs?