The limitations of white empathy
Celine Angbeletchy: Most people are shocked when they find out you had no idea who Nelson Mandela was until you were 18, even though you were born and grew up in South Africa. You vividly talk about your experience in The Limitations of White Empathy. Can you take us through the ideas behind book?
Anton Kannemeyer: Well, with this comic I try to explain how censorship worked in South Africa, the fact that if you grew up there, you didn’t understand what was going on in the rest of the world. Nowadays you go online, you get on a plane and it’s very easy to go to another country. This was before the Internet, there was no way for you to know anything like that if your parents didn’t tell you. The school certainly wouldn’t and newspapers wouldn’t even allow to mention Mandela’s name. This is how it was. I saw him for the first time on a poster in Germany when I was 18, I basically had to go out of South Africa to become politically aware.
When I went to university, I refused to join the army (because in South Africa all white men had to do military service.) So I went to Germany where my mother lived, but I found it so restrictive and horrible, I just couldn’t fit in at all. The moment I was back in South Africa I felt I had a function there, there was some contribution I could make. So I joined all these student organisations and started fighting against apartheid, because that made sense to me. That’s where I started off.
Do read the whole article at GRIOT.
Celine Angbeletchy: Most people are shocked when they find out you had no idea who Nelson Mandela was until you were 18, even though you were born and grew up in South Africa. You vividly talk about your experience in The Limitations of White Empathy. Can you take us through the ideas behind book?
Anton Kannemeyer: Well, with this comic I try to explain how censorship worked in South Africa, the fact that if you grew up there, you didn’t understand what was going on in the rest of the world. Nowadays you go online, you get on a plane and it’s very easy to go to another country. This was before the Internet, there was no way for you to know anything like that if your parents didn’t tell you. The school certainly wouldn’t and newspapers wouldn’t even allow to mention Mandela’s name. This is how it was. I saw him for the first time on a poster in Germany when I was 18, I basically had to go out of South Africa to become politically aware.
When I went to university, I refused to join the army (because in South Africa all white men had to do military service.) So I went to Germany where my mother lived, but I found it so restrictive and horrible, I just couldn’t fit in at all. The moment I was back in South Africa I felt I had a function there, there was some contribution I could make. So I joined all these student organisations and started fighting against apartheid, because that made sense to me. That’s where I started off.
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| Guilt and shame (2017), Anton Kannemeyer |
Do read the whole article at GRIOT.
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