Dear Mr Mcebo Dlamini
I together with some friends, all of us white and most of us Jewish, recently visited Sutherland, the home of SALT the largest single optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere situated on the summit of a kopjie. There it stands surrounded by more than 15 other telescopes, host to a small international army of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and communication experts probing the secrets of the Universe, of which we are an infinitesimally tiny part.
Together with the exquisitely delicate but intricate and robust technology on which this endeavour rests, the Sutherland hilltop represents all that is best and most hopeful in the imperfect human spirit: cooperation, focussed intelligence, dedication and patience and the transcendence of the individual human ego in the service of something greater than any single individual, group or nation. Contemplation of this project, itself part of a global network of similar enterprises, and the infinitely fragile and precious nature of human consciousness induced in all of us a sense of awe and hope – but also a feeling of vulnerability.
To explain the sense of “vulnerability” further let me describe our trip home along the N1 freeway into Cape Town. Driving South one passes through impressive hills growing in stature into mountains until one suddenly bursts upon the vast fertile alluvial plain of De Doorns enclosed by the imposing barricades of ancient mountains. Within this valley is enclosed much that is inspiring and terrible in the South African story. Here it was that white farmers once forcibly dispossessed the previous indigenous inhabitants and inducted them into slavery.
But out of this historic injustice has arisen both the beautiful vineyards and wines of the valley and the vast inequalities still existing between the descendents of the white colonists and the Khoisan peoples who once roamed free over this valley and surrounding mountains. And out of this injustice has also arisen the magnificent freeway connecting the hinterland with the coast, the spectacular railway and all the modalities of modern technology on which the future prosperity and hope of our country, South Africa rests. It is simply impossible to contemplate a future deprived of the technology and expertise brought to these shores by Western culture, the same society responsible for the subjugation and oppression of the other inhabitants of this continent - the very same Western civilisation which is largely responsible for the Sutherland Observatory.
These painful paradoxes are a microcosm of the rest of South Africa, indeed much of Africa. It is acutely uncomfortable for most of us, but more especially for those who were once the conquered and oppressed. How do they embrace the skills, technology and indeed the cultural foundations which made this possible, while hating the actual people who brought both pain and salvation to their land? All of us in the car driving home that day from Sutherland looked with a mix of foreboding and fragile hope at the task of building upon this flimsy structure a robust, prosperous and inclusive South Africa. I could not detect a trace of Adolf Hitler in any of us.