CHOICES - Last Wednesday, I had unique choices, both related to South Africa. With season tickets to Temple Men’s Basketball, I also have the schedule for Temple Women’s Basketball. That evening the Women played the Women’s team from the University of Toledo. Now I’m not a hometown fan of the Rockets, but I met a former player Kristen Konkol, who is serving as an ELCA Mission Coordinator for the South African Young Adults in Global Mission Program, along with her husband Brian. She surprises many folks when she walks into a pickup game as the last picked.
I did though have another South African option. The Soweto Gospel Choir was in concert at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. It was my first trip to the new home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. [It was an obvious choice.] As Dawn and I waited for the concert to start, I noted how the choir was received at home after receiving their first Grammy, because earlier this week they had been nominated again. Dawn wondered out loud whether I could pronounce all the names of the Choir members. I started and stumbled on the ‘clicks’ in Xhosa, but I got through the list. The young man sitting next to me started chuckling. It seems he is Xhosa and a graduate of Penn and a former resident of Cape Town. He is ready to go home, but he has to convince his American ‘white’ wife that Cape Town is beautiful and cosmopolitan. We had an interesting conversation at the intermission.
The news today is about South African Choices. I may have typed about the schism that was beginning to appear in the African National Congress, but today it was reported that the Congress of the People, was organized today. The report here is that this new multi-ethnic party may have the political clout to be a major challenge to the ANC. I will view from afar.
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