Last November, the Christian Science Board of Directors traveled South Africa coast to coast, meeting with individuals, groups, and branch church congregations from the townships of Nyanga and Atteridgeville, as well as urban centers including Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Kloof, and Johannesburg. Johanna Frontczak, The Mother Church's manager of international communications for the Clerk's Office, traveled with Directors Tom Black, Walter Jones, Margaret Rogers, Nate Talbot, and Mary Trammell, and filed this report.
SOUTH AFRICANS OF ALL PEOPLE know what it means to go through profound social and political change. When our flight touched down in Johannesburg on November 8, 2008, the first black president of the United States had been elected only four days earlier, news that prompted Nelson Mandela to say, "No person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream." As visitors, we felt privy to a momentous time not only in our own history, but in South Africa's, as well.
Prior to this trip I knew very little about South Africa's history. So, before we left Boston, I watched several South African movies and documentary films, many of which focused on the apartheid era. Apartheid as a system of racial separation effectively ended with Mr. Mandela's election as South Africa's president in 1994.
