By Erica N. Williams
TNCP Community Writer
South Africa 2015
This summer I had the honor of taking a once and a lifetime trip to Cape Town, Johannesburg and Soweto South Africa. This six-week transformative journey through a country which just 21 years ago was plagued by apartheid, proved to be a “rekindling of the flame” experience for me.
Prior to my trip, I had become very weary due to the various injustices taking place in America. From the killing and oppression of black and brown bodies, I had become filled with righteous indignation and great sorrow.
In Cape Town, a place considered one of the most beautiful places in the world, it is also a place where the majority of blacks and coloreds are forced to live in slums and shacks, and the wealth of the country is in the hands of the white minorities. As a Master of Divinity candidate at The Howard University School of Divinity it is my mission to liberate those who are oppressed and to provide resources for those on the margins of society.
From visiting Robben Island, the place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years, to a community engagement project at the ARC City of Refuge, a shelter for the homeless, abandoned and orphaned, I left South Africa with a deeper commitment to fight for those whom society has deemed as the least. Although South Africa is now managed by democracy there are still high unprecedented numbers of poverty, unemployment, crime and segregation.
I will never forget the love and spirit of Ubuntu, (which means humanity towards others), I experienced in the motherland. Although the country has come a long way since the apartheid regime it still has a long way to go. And so does America. That is why I vowed to not quit on the journey for justice because there are people all over the world who need to be liberated from oppression. The fight for justice continues…
Erica Williams used to live in Lansing, MI. She is from Saginaw, MI. Currently in the Washington D.C. area, she is pursing her Masters in Divinity at Howard University.
This article was printed in the September 20, 2015 – October 3, 2105 edition.
