Cowbridge on Goedgedacht farm (evening programmes)

Wales is not known as the land of song for nothing. On the first evening (Saturday, 18 July 2009) – which was also Nelson Mandela’s 91st birthday – the young people from our Tiener Aksie (teen action) and Youth in Construction youth groups welcomed the students and teachers from Cowbridge with an evening of karaoke and dancing. The room was filled with songs like Delilah from Tom Jones and everyone trying to do the macarina!

There are so many highlights that I can mention but of all the evening programmes that stood out for me was the one in which we tried to explain the concept of Apartheid to our own youth and the young people from Wales. Not knowing what was heading their way and in complete trust, the group of 82 youngsters lined up in our barn only to find out that they were about to be separated because of the “color of their skin”. How was that possible in this day and age you may ask? Well, Colonel van der Merwe and his troops made sure that they conducted the same pencil test that were used in the past to classify people as White, Black and Coloured.

A few games were played in which the groups competed with each other. In one of the games each group got a number of chairs and had to get from one end of the room to the other end. The group who were classified as White received the most chairs which made it so easy for them to get to the other end. The Coloured group received slightly less chairs than the White group which meant that they had to put in a little bit of effort to get to the end of the room, but it was not impossible. As for the Black group, they received only three chairs which made this excercise impossible. At the end of these games, we could all feel the frustrations of the young people who belonged to the Black group – they began shouting “it’s so unfair!” Luckily for Colonel van der Merwe and his troops, the games were over just before the Black group could start an up rise against this very unfair system.

At the end of the evening we all came together and talked about the importance of learning from our history to make sure that we as the future leaders of our own countries do not repeat the same mistakes that were made by our leaders of the past. One of the most important lessons that Apartheid could teach us all is never to think of ourselves as being superior over others because of how we look, where we come from, what I have, etc….all those things are far less important than striving to treat everyone else with repsect and dignity at all times even after they hurt us – because we are all human beings no matter how we look, what we have and where we come from. Let’s remember this and together try and change the future of our countries.

I will put some more photos of this evening as well as recently held winter school holiday programme, Glenthorne Secondary School’s visit and more of the Cowbridge Comprehensive School visit in our photo album on our website. Some of these photos will be posted onto our facebook group called Goedgedacht Path out of Poverty Programme. So, if you have not joined this group yet please make sure that you join soon so that you do not miss out on all the wonderful and exciting news of Goedgedacht Trust. Thanks for sending us your comments and giving us your support. We appreciate it very much.