Word: mamelodi
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...year was 1981, and the telegram said, "You are called to Mamelodi parish." To the professor, Nico Smith, it meant a complete change in his life, a rejection, in fact, of everything that his life had been until then and everything fundamental in Afrikaner society and Afrikaner belief...
...Mamelodi is a black township of more than 300,000 on the outskirts of Pretoria. At Smith's request, not only was he about to become its white minister, but also he and his wife Ellen would be its sole white inhabitants. The Afrikaners, among whom Smith had spent his whole life, have a harsh word for behavior like that: Kwaardwilligverlating , meaning, literally, "malevolent parting." Says Smith: "It isn't just a divorce. It means you leave someone with the intention of destroying them. You become an enemy...
Smith, 59, is by now fairly well accustomed to being treated as an enemy. No Pretoria parish in the Dutch Reformed Church has invited him to speak since he went to Mamelodi. People he thought were friends have turned away. There are telephone calls in the night. "Now that you're living with the Kaffirs," said one caller, "when we come to shoot them, we'll shoot...
...accused him of preaching integration. "Teach theory, not conclusions," his superiors warned him. When Smith joined in public protests against the government's bulldozing of squatter shacks in Capetown, he was called before a church commission to justify his action. It was then that he got the call to Mamelodi...
...very melodious there. The government began building the township in the late '40s as a sort of dormitory-warehouse for black workers needed in Pretoria. The standard houses are four-bedroom huts, each with an outside water faucet next to the outdoor privy. For years the people shipped to Mamelodi were forbidden to own their homes or make improvements. That was supposed to make them look forward to eventual relocation to remote tribal homelands. Recently, the government has relaxed those restrictions; houses are being improved and a few streets paved...