Black MiraCosta Professor Recalls Life in South Africa

When Anthony Ngubo came to the United States as a graduate student in 1962, he had already lived within the shadow of government-sanctioned racism during his youth in South Africa. Ngubo’s arrival during the turbulent civil rights demonstrations of the ‘60s exposed him to the racial contradictions within American society.

“My first summer was 1963. For the first time, I saw confrontations between the agents of the law and demonstrators for civil rights. It seemed strange that the national government could not intervene when the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens were not being enforced. The government had to pass a civil rights act, even though black people had been born here, and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments guaranteed them these rights.

“Then I read ‘American Dilemma’ by Gunnar Merdel. It helped me to understand the schizophrenic phenomenon operating.

“South Africa has become an autocratic country. The first thing an autocratic country cracks down on is the press. The government is not going to expose its own sins,” Ngubo said.

Today, as a MiraCosta College sociology professor, Ngubo articulates the complexity, the violence, the desolation of the South African dilemma.

Ngubo speaks with a clear, thoughtful tone. Distinguished-looking with gray-flecked hair and expressive features, he emphasizes his words with big gestures, his serious visage interrupted by an occasional smile. A U.S. citizen since 1982, Ngubo lives in Del Mar with his wife, Peggy. His daughter, Meliss, 20, works in Virginia. A son, Thabo, 23, attends San Diego State University.

Ngubo, 55, was born one of eight children and raised in the black township of Richmond in Natal province near Durban. In the agricultural community, members of his family made their living farming and raising cattle. One of Ngubo’s treasured childhood memories is of his grandmother, who after dinner would gather family members around her. Then, in the African oral tradition, she would tell the age-old tales handed down through generations.

“They were beautiful little stories,” Ngubo said. “Older members of society could impart morals through these stories. They were the only entertainment we had.”

A Top Student

As a young boy, Ngubo avoided the life of a tenant farmer by attending private junior and senior high schools through scholarships, work and his family’s savings. High scores (he was one of the country’s top three students, black or white) on a national exam enabled Ngubo to attend the University of Natal.

“Blacks and whites were taught separately. No one thought a thing about it. . . . it was the South African mentality,” said Ngubo. The white section was taught at 9, the black at 10, until some professors figured out it made more sense to put the two sections together.”

In 1957, with a degree in sociology and psychology, Ngubo took a position with Lever Brothers in South Africa, where, on the job, racial lines blurred for the sake of expediency.

“They would ‘Sir’ me. . . . If I had to go to town, I was treated as a white. They called a cab, and the white cabbie took me to J. Walter Thompson ad agency downtown. There, instead of using the freight elevator (as blacks did), I used the white elevator. But after work, as soon as I walked outside, I was black again. I couldn’t get a white taxi, and I went home to the ghetto, subject to curfew.

“Many of us lived like this. After work, whites retreated into their white communities, blacks to their black communities. While there might be friendships at work, those tended to end at the close of the work day.”

Ngubo’s mentor was Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert J. Lithuli (1899-1967), former president of the African National Congress, of which Ngubo was also a member. Lithuli, a powerful influence on Ngubo, emphasized nonviolence, recognition of each person regardless of race as a unique individual, and the need for a non-racial solution to South Africa’s problems.

“He (Lithuli) insisted that any political solution must include all South Africans, not as groups but as individuals. The individual must then make personal political decisions and commitments according to his own convictions,” Ngubo said.

Ngubo escaped the South African maelstrom. But for today’s black South African children, educational perspectives remain bleak.

“Education for blacks is neither compulsory or free. Teachers are ill-prepared. It makes your heart bleed,” Ngubo said.

Need to Break Cycle

“The educational system for blacks has been criticized by blacks and whites alike as decidedly inferior. That is not by accident. Designed in 1953 by the present government, the system was called Bantu education, for children who speak the Bantu language (about 70% of black South Africans). The education was not good enough for the white kids, or for the Colored (mixed race) kids, but was designed to prepare the Bantu children to take their place in society.” With jobs often racially classified, educating the Bantu was considered a waste of community resources.

“The education deficit has caught up with society--it’s a South African social virus. Everyone is trapped in it unless slowly we can break the cycle.

“All South African children need to be taken out of their frozen psychological states, so that they can experience a life without restrictions,” Ngubo said. “People who have been restricted lose the ability to govern themselves, and they in turn become just as blind as their former oppressors.”

Ngubo advocates training black children abroad. But obstacles--prohibitive costs, loss of family income, the drain on the pool of young people who could make significant contributions to South African society--pose insurmountable barriers.

Ngubo left South Africa in 1962, attending graduate school on a sociology scholarship at the University of Indiana.

After studying in Indiana, Ngubo and his wife chose to remain in this country. A return to his job at Lever Brothers would have been difficult, and, because of the obviously limited opportunities, “A college teaching job in South Africa seemed very unattractive.”

The Ngubos decided to live on the West Coast.

“UCLA happened to have at that time the strongest center for African studies, with an interdisciplinary approach. That was the main reason. Second, I felt somewhat isolated from what I considered the main (geographic) centers of action in this country. Going to UCLA enabled me to mingle with people knowledgeable about teaching and world affairs.”

At UCLA, Ngubo earned his doctorate and went into his chosen field--teaching. In addition to his eight years at MiraCosta College teaching sociology and social psychology courses, he also has taught at Cal State Los Angeles, UC San Diego and the University of Washington in Seattle.

“We’re very proud to have Tony on our faculty,” said MiraCosta College President H. Deon Holt. “He’s very knowledgeable about that area of the world and brings a special currency to his discipline, an insight to help people understand the South African situation.”

“Tony Ngubo is one of the best teachers here on campus,” said Leon Baradat, a political science professor. “There are students in his office all the time. He’s very, very gentle, quiet, intelligent, a good person.”

A group of students from a creative writing class recently heard Ngubo lecture on South Africa at a forum through MiraCosta’s Center for International Understanding. They returned “profoundly moved” and impressed with his balanced point of view and sensitivity.

Ngubo last visited with his brothers, sisters and friends in South Africa in 1983.

“It’s hard for me, and sometimes for them, to be very expansive in their communications. When a country is in a state of tension, and the security forces are alerted, you don’t want to get into local affairs. Someone might pick up on the conversation and start asking questions.

“If you say anything, even as an individual, you might be in violation of the law, and thus labeled ‘subversive,’ which means anything from being openly critical to (having) political discussions with friends,” Ngubo said.

“My major concern is with the clampdown on the press. Only the South African government knows what is going on . . . no one else in the world can know. The government prevents press from observing or verifying information. Many of us are feeling uncomfortable. We hear about people disappearing. We don’t know if the death rate is higher. We’re getting bits and pieces of information, which is quite different from a trained journalist’s report.”

U.S. Students Need Help

Ngubo’s 24 years in the United States have given him a dual vantage point on racial, political and educational issues.

In classes, it is the students who lack both skills and motivation whom Ngubo finds tragic.

“Here, we don’t challenge students sufficiently.

“I find it hard to understand how a student can complete 12 years of education in this country, but can’t read and write.”

Ngubo feels California’s educational system suffers from over-administration by non-educators and too much intervention by politicians.

“I’m trying to teach, keep up with my field, and someone in Sacramento is telling me how to outline my course work.”

Ngubo is also interested in the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries. “All developed countries have had a poor track record at bringing underdeveloped countries along. It has to do not so much with political ideologies, but with the political cultural orientation . . . Liberia has been under our (America’s) wing since 1843, yet is still underdeveloped. Japan is not the country it is today because of the United States’ help. The Ethiopia of today will be the Ethiopia of the 21st Century.”

Ngubo analyzes American society as a transplant from a culture worlds apart. But South Africa is always in his thoughts.

Of the move in South Africa to make the state of emergency permanent, Ngubo said, “This law proposes that police in a given district decide under what circumstances persons will be detained. What I see happening is that South Africa will become a police state.

“Unless one is able to experience life as it is felt by the majority, there’s no way out of this hole. Even if the government changed tomorrow, the vote does not give participation--it simply meets the formal requirements. For blacks to be effective participants, they must have access to all those opportunities enjoyed by the rest of society--economic power, education, choices in employment,” said Ngubo.

“There must be a will, especially among those who hold the balance of power, to make changes, to think of people as individuals, rather than as representative of any one group. We must move toward a common personhood.”