Political and Social Climate of South Africa


In the beginning of The Road to Mecca, Elsa Barlow makes a 12-hour trip to visit her good friend Helen Martins. Elsa’s drive takes her from the urbanized, English-speaking world of Cape Town to the small, Afrikaner town of Nieu Bethesda.


Elsa lives in Cape Town and has access to universities, international news, and the opportunity to witness and participate in the fi ght against Apartheid. Miss Helen and the Dominee (Reverend) Marius Byleveld are longtime residents of Nieu Bethesda, a village in a rural farming community. Helen and Marius are physically and culturally cut off from the outside world.


The Karoo region, where Nieu Bethesda lies, was originally home to the Khoikhoi and San, indigenous African groups that raised livestock and lived as hunter-gatherers, respectively. White descendants of 17th century Dutch colonists, known as Afrikaners, fi rst arrived in the Karoo in the late 18th century. Miss Helen, Marius, and all other white residents of Nieu Bethesda are Afrikaners.


Many early Afrikaners viewed native Africans, with their unfamiliar traditions, as heathens. Africans became low-class servants or indentured laborers. At the same time, slaves from Madagascar and Indonesia were brought to the colony. A complex racial caste system of “whites,” “coloureds” (of mixed and/or Asian ancestry), and “blacks” resulted.


By 1974, when The Road to Mecca takes place, a formal system of discriminatory laws known as Apartheid (“separation” in Afrikaans) was in effect. Though white South Africans made up only 10% of the population, they owned almost all the land and were the only racial group with full voting rights. A small town like Nieu Bethesda would have an all-white neighborhood in the town center surrounded by poor black townships.


Religion plays an enormous role in the life of Nieu Bethesda. Afrikaners are members of the Dutch Reformed Church, a Protestant form of Christianity. Society revolved around the strict rules of the church. Indeed, Nieu Bethesda was founded in 1875 by a group of local farmers who wanted a church closer than Graaff-Reinet. For many years,


the Dutch Reformed Church owned the land on which Nieu Bethesda was built.


Jim Dale and Rosemary Harris. Photo by Joan Marcus. UPSTAGE THE ROAD TO MECCA 7


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