© NCSU Student Media 2012
Timothy Hinton, an associate professor of philosophy, was raised in South Africa and strongly opposed apartheid in that region. Hinton says that even though the United States is a free country, there are still issues of equality all around, which is often overlooked by students. Photo by Jordan Moore
Timothy Hinton was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of a minority within a minority. He is white, and was part of a family who opposed Apartheid, a system that was benefiting most of the white population during that period.
During his early childhood, his family hired Beauty, a black maid, to work in their house, and her young daughter came to visit during her school holiday. Hinton and the little girl were about four years old and were playing outside on his swing. He began pushing her too fast, and she fell and scraped her knee. Even in the midst of the violent oppression taking place, Hinton was still able to realize that there was a fundamental element that connected him and the black girl.
“I realized-it was the sight of the blood-that made me think ‘this person bleeds just like I do, this person cries just like I do, this is a human being just as I am,'” Hinton said.
Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Hinton cites his experiences with apartheid as the reason he became interested in philosophy, and subsequently received his PhD in political philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hinton’s mother, a midwife, and his father, an insurance salesman, raised Hinton and his younger sister to recognize black people with respect, while other young white children spoke about them with contempt or offensive language.
“[My parents] were both Catholics, who thought it inconsistent with their beliefs to be racist, since one of the [Greek] meanings of the word Catholic is ‘universal,’ everyone,” Hinton said. “I was brought up to be very polite, so it was probably more an awareness of politeness than an awareness of an embodiment of social structures.”
It was this politeness and upbringing that allowed Hinton to befriend the first black student allowed to attend St. Benedict’s, his private Catholic elementary school. There had been moderate reforms after the Soweto Uprising in executive capital Johannesburg in 1976 that allowed slightly more freedom for black people.
“At that point [the school] had no black students at all, and it was illegal to have black students,” Hinton said. “[The school] allowed a black student, Nelson Lolwane , to come…and he became my best friend. It was the first time I had interacted with a black person as an absolute equal. After we got to know each other, we could talk frankly. It was astonishing to me.”
As Hinton grew up he became more politically involved, actively working with the Progressive Federal Party, the party of his parents.
Hinton attended the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a vague intention of going into law.
Hinton said lawyers could give some maneuverability within the restrictive laws of the apartheid system.
“There was a law that allowed people to be detained without any trial or charges being brought against them, more or less infinitum,” Hinton said. “But lawyers could challenge a particular person being held, so [my motive for going into law] was certainly a political motive.”
Hinton said people would protest these injustices, but the response of the apartheid regime was always very swift and violent. People were detained en masse, people disappeared, and trade union leaders and leaders of the United Democratic Front were murdered.
Hinton even witnessed this violence during his time at Wits.
“[While] at the university, I could see the brutality of the police when they would shoot at students with rubber bullets and would beat them,” Hinton said. “[The students] were protesting and would call up a strike, and we would wait, and eventually they would come onto campus and would be shooting.”
Hinton was a member of two activist groups during college-one that opposed conscription and tried to educate young men eligible to be drafted, and another that brought food and books to students who had been detained without trial.
“The army was being used to wage war against people in the townships by this point,” Hinton said. “So I eventually became a member of an organization that was trying to end conscription, but it was banned shortly thereafter, just as the second group.”
But Hinton could only defer conscription for so long, and he eventually fled South Africa to avoid being forced to fight against fellow South Africans, or put in jail.
In Sept. 1991, he attended Oxford, where he received his Master of Studies degree.
Hinton returned to South Africa twice in the time he attended Oxford, “due to a weird accident of his heritage,” he said. “I was able to get an Irish passport, so I went back…hoping they wouldn’t realize this Irish tourist was me.”
Hinton said things hadn’t changed at all during his first visit to South Africa and had become more brutal, with more people in jail.
“When I left, I honestly thought there wouldn’t be change in my lifetime,” Hinton said. “I remember being in Kensington Gardens outside of London and just feeling this intense sadness at the thought that I might never be able to go back and live there, because it wasn’t going to change, and yet within a few years, it changed radically.”
But then when the new prime minister came to power, F.W. de Klerk, he unbanned the African National Congress, the party of then political prisoner Nelson Mandela, the icon of the anti-apartheid movement. Lifting the ban freed Nelson Mandela.
“I remember watching the footage on a T.V. in a common room [in Oxford] in tears,” Hinton said. “I remember having on my back pack as a school boy ‘Release Mandela’ and suddenly it was true, it had come true.”
Hinton was able to vote in the election of April 1994, at the State House in Boston, Mass. He had his identity documents with him to prove his South African citizenship, and it was the first time he had ever voted.
“Once I became politically of age [in South Africa] I didn’t vote because I didn’t want to vote, because only white people could vote,” Hinton said. “There’s this incredibly moving footage of lines, literally, miles long on plains in South Africa of people waiting all day to cast the first vote of their lives.”
Hinton said his background continues to influence his interests in politics and philosophy. He attributes this influence to our humanity, and the fact that he feels “affronted by any system or law that undermines our humanity.”
South Africa has drastically changed since Hinton’s childhood. His friend Lolwane now works closely with the South African Supreme Court as a lawyer. Despite the persisting gaps between social classes, South Africa has progressed. But, Hinton said its not nearly enough.
With his perspective from South Africa, Hinton said he doesn’t believe that real equality has even been achieved between blacks and whites in the U.S.
“[Equality can be achieved] by a combination of reasoned debate and movement from people who are affected by the inequality,” Hinton said. “Sadly, reasoned debate seldom wins on its own.”