KQED: Common Ground : Reflections of Rabbit in the Moon

KELVIN SAULS
Associate Pastor at Jones United Methodist Church in San Francisco Reverend Sauls was born and raised in South Africa.

Eventually as I watched that story, I realized that that happened in 1942. Apartheid, you know, happened way before that, but it was legalized, it became a constitution in 1948. So immediately there is a global link for me to my story.

I can relate very, very well with what happened with the internment camps. In fact, ours were called townships. Basically, after watching that, I could call them internment camps because basically what the townships were: they were designated areas for people of color in South Africa. So we call them townships. Over here they call them internment camps. But the purpose and the conditions of them were the same. Families were split up, families were forcibly removed.

It just points out how important it is that we get to know each other's histories. That we get to hear each other's stories. Because once we are able to do that we realize the pain that we share. My story will never be their story. Their story will never be my story but now I know that there's some kind of commonality. We have a common destiny now.