As a boy growing up in Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, Fr. Patrick Hartin, a religion professor at Gonzaga, experienced firsthand the beauty and evils of his country. His father, at 19, left home in Ireland to build his future in South Africa. There he met Fr. Hartin's mother, born in Africa from Irish immigrated parents. Fr. Hartin's family fit into South Africa's white middle class. Hartin's father became the director of the Polio research foundation in Africa and his mother was secretary at a local school. Throughout his elementary and high school education, Fr. Hartin attended Catholic schools. He attended the University of South Africa and earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy. Fr. Hartin traveled to Rome where he studied at the Gregorian University and joined the seminary. There, he also earned a master's degree in theology and was ordained in 1971. He then returned to South Africa so that he could teach at the University of South Africa. While teaching, Fr. Hartin earned two doctorates: ethics in 1981 and New Testament in 1988. Fr. Hartin came to Gonzaga in 1994. He was traveling in the U.S. on business and just so happened to find an appealing teaching position available. He now teaches two religion courses and is the Classical Civilizations Chair at Gonzaga. During the years that Fr. Hartin lived in South Africa, a great deal of conflict took place within the government. When he was born in 1944, South Africa had recently become an apartheid country. The apartheid was set in place by a small number of white politicians. They gained control over the South African government after it won independence from England. During the 1940s, these politicians set apartheid into place to maintain white domination and racial separation in South Africa. The apartheid was specifically meant to function as a means to keep blacks subservient to whites, even in education and employment. Fr. Hartin did not truly understand or notice the segregation until his adulthood. "You know, growing up in a situation like that, it was only when I went to college that I saw the evils of it," he said. "You know, you grow up as a youngster and you don't know it all. The fact is that you don't have any contact with people from another culture." However, even as a child, he couldn't help but observe the effects of the apartheid. "Life was originated by the color of your skin actually, because there were laws that separated every dimension of life," he said. "People could only live in certain areas. People could only marry within their own community. People had to go to a white school or a black school or whatever and choices regarding what you could do were obviously, for the black people, very limited." It wasn't until 1994, when Fr. Hartin left South Africa to come to the U.S., that apartheid was finally lifted. Speaking of liberation, Fr. Hartin's stance on the war is "pacifist." He does not believe in war at all, under any circumstances. Fr. Hartin mentioned that one of the biggest differences between his youth and an American youth during the time that he grew up was that he had no television. He did not even see a television until 1976 when he was in Rome. He explained that this was due to the government's effort to subdue the black Africans. "The reason for that was the state was trying to keep control of the news that was broadcast to the public," he said. "Now you have the Internet and so on, but back then it was possible for the state to really control what people heard." Here in the United States, we imagine Africa with pictures of grass huts and elephants in our heads. This is only partially accurate. There are also large cities like his hometown, where each class of society resides, including the upper class, Fr. Hartin said. However, outside the cities and in the countryside are all the creatures one might imagine. Fr. Hartin recalled how he and his brother once went camping in the wild. "I once went all the way up to Botswana ... we went on the river and there were crocodiles. I remember the one time, sort of being at the camp, because we were all out in the wild, and some elephants came into the camp and that was quite scary," he said. Luckily, elephants only attack if their young feel threatened. Although it was a frightening experience, no one was harmed and no damage was done, leaving Fr. Hartin to live a multitude of other experiences that led him to Gonzaga.
The Gonzaga Bulletin > Community
Fr. Hartin brings wisdom from South Africa to Gonzaga
Published: Sunday, April 20, 2003
Updated: Friday, October 30, 2009 23:10
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Fr. Hartin observed apartheid up close while he lived in Africa.
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