Holding Up the Sky Read Online Free

that only fifteen minutes drive from our idyllic community centre in the forest, such events were taking place. But from the looks on the faces of our black fellow trainees, this was real.
    Though Buthelezi had once been a member of the ANC, during his student days he revived a Zulu cultural organisation which refused to support sanctions against the South African government or respond to the ANC call for arms. Being of royal Zulu blood, he chose instead to lead the Buthelezi clan and ultimately the IFP down a different road, one that allegedly had close ties with the national government and other foreign governments sympathetic to the apartheid regime. In so doing, he set himself against the ANC and the other liberation movements in South Africa. His Inkatha constituency was largely based amongst the rural, more conservative Zulu people, as opposed to the urban dwelling Zulus in the townships. So the lines were drawn and the blood would flow.
    Steve completed the briefing by explaining more about the program and what we would be doing over the next few weeks, before we all piled into the centre’s kombis and were driven into town. The director of the organisation, David, was holding a lunchtime prayer meeting in the Town Hall in an effort to bring the attention of the white community to the lives being lost on their doorstep. The media was not covering the murderous events in its own city and most white people had few avenues for finding out what was really going on. At first, I found this almost impossible to believe. How could someone not know what is happening ten minutes from home? Only later did I realise how separate people’s lives were. The only black people your average white South African was likely to meet were those who worked in their homes. I learnt that it was rarely in the interests of the blacks to educate their employers about the bloodshed that was all around. It was far safer to smile and say nothing.
    At the end of the prayer meeting, David invited all those in the packed hall to take part in a peace march that church leaders were organising in two weeks time. It struck me how different this event was to the prayer meetings I had been to in Sydney. The events that we prayed for here were in our backyard, not safely thousands of kilometres away in some vaguely defined part of Asia or India. I also understood that joining a public march here in ’Maritzburg would put each person under the gaze of the police. Steve had explained on the way into town that the police kept an eye on anyone involved in the peace talks, as David was, or in any cross-cultural or township work, as Steve and the trainees were and we soon would be. It was a sobering thought for a law-abiding Sydney girl who had never even had a school detention.
    So from our first day, I realised that South Africa was going to be ‘in your face’, that I would be constantly confronted with the question: ‘What do you stand for?’ Not only that, I would have to decide what price I was prepared to pay for standing up for my beliefs. It’s one thing to hammer on about what is right and wrong from the safety of the family dinner table; it is another thing altogether to risk your personal safety by taking a public stand on issues in front of a line of armed security police. At that moment, I could have opted to remain a tourist, but like a coffee lover smelling the aroma of the day’s first brew, I sniffed a sense of purpose in the air and found it irresistible.
    In the days that followed, we fell into a routine: meals in community, drama rehearsals and late nights up at the house. Steve and the team were already doing work in schools and were keen to incorporate the drama performances we had used in Zimbabwe. They also had some music prepared, and a few workshops on different issues as well as opportunities for members of the team to talk about their lives. Steve felt it was particularly important for kids at white