A Lesson
Today I met with Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, President of the Inkatha Freedom Party. It's the third time I have had the privilege but the first time he brought me to serious (secret) tears. I had asked him a question about his memories of lions, and if increasing urbanisation of his people had somehow bought a disconnection from Nature... a kind of spiritual vacuum. But the magnitude of his answer only really hit me when I was back on the very windy 15th floor rooftop parking of the Royal Hotel. He had explained to me, briefly and gently, that it was very difficult to see lions during the years of apartheid because the game reserves were exclusively for white people. And that the first time he saw a lion was as a trophy in the United States! I cried into the hot wind and watched the harbor for a while from the rooftop with this sharp pain in my heart. I wondered if the extremely high levels of violence we experience in South Africa could come from this enfo...