Lately, I hear a lot about how little has changed for black South Africans, and for too many this is sadly true. Too many still live in tin shacks on muddy, trash-strewn streets where they are daily prey to the drugged-up degenerates who have no qualms in violating their own neighbours, people, who are only slightly less down-trodden than themselves.
But so much HAS changed. The country I now inhabit is vastly different from the one I grew up in. As a 40-something (okay, nearly 50 year old), I came of age at the cusp of change. I was 21 and eligible to vote in the ‘92 ‘whites-only’ referendum to end apartheid. It felt so good to go and vote ‘YES’ – FOR GOD”S SAKE YES! And then two years later, to stand in those long, iconic queues in the first democratic election of 27th April, 1994.
I was raised in a politically liberal home where my parents voted PFP (Progressive Federal Party) their whole lives. I know some of my black compatriots will sneer at this, but it was no small feat for two individuals born in the 1940s, both in small ‘platteland dorpies’ (towns) to Nationalist Afrikaaner parents. I applaud them for using their own brains and hearts.
My mother raised me on a diet of Market Theatre protest plays – I saw all the greats (John Kani and Athol Fugard) and so I guess you could say I was ‘concien-tised’(millenials read ‘woke’) to some extent from a young age. My parents were both civil servants – my mom was a teacher, and my dad was a statistician for the CSS (Central Statistical Service). Can you imagine being a progressive (probably the only one) in that environment? Trying to make changes and suggestions right from inside the instrument of the State? Again, I know many now scorn those who didn’t protest enough, or sacrifice their privileges. All I can say to that is, it’s easy to look with the advantage of hindsight and say, “I would have stood up to Hilter”… Also, not all of us are heroic martyrs, not all of us are Martin Luther-Kings. Some of us are timid, quiet souls (but brave) who make small differences in their daily interactions with people; challenging the status-quo in ways that make people think anew and bring change incrementally. But they are heroes none-the-less, and I count both my parents as such. I never heard a derogatory word spoken about people of colour in my home and although the only black people I knew were domestic workers, I was raised with the conviction that apartheid was evil and that black people were no different to white people. (Well done mom and dad – I love you for giving me that)
When I finally met black peers at WITS university, it was such a delight! Like meeting unicorns – I knew they existed – I had just never seen any! I made friends, I joined anti-apartheid organisations, I had my room searched by police, and I stuck a new South Africa flag on my little red city golf.
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The country I live in today is very different, and my children’s experiences are very different to mine. From having grown up in a ‘white-only’ world, now I am frequently the only white person in a shopping mall, or in an office. My husband is one of 9 whites in a team of a 100 managers – exactly the South-African demographic, below him the employees are all black. I have taught black and white children throughout my teaching career. I now run a guest house where most of my clients are black. My children have black friends who regularly visit and stay over. I am very aware now of my minority status here, but it doesn’t worry me at all. Because that’s not what’s significant.
What is significant, is that I am still within a majority of South Africans (regardless of race, colour, creed, gender, sexual-orientation) who want the same things – a healthy, happy country with jobs and decency and safety and family. So many of us want that. Despite the vitriol of politicians, the lurking under-currents of racism and sadly still too many racists; the bitterness of those who lust for revenge; despite the legacy of crime and violence that threatens all of our day-to-day lives – and especially those who are already the most down-trodden; despite all that - I am almost daily still amazed by the interactions I see on the streets. The little interactions with cashiers and security guards and car guards. I see whites chatting to blacks on the pavement, little gestures like hands touching arms, smiles and enquiries after families. I’m not naïve, I am sure some turn away and smirk with their friends about the ‘rich white bitch’ or what ‘the blacks’ do, but the common decency still inspires me.
I can tell you so many little stories – like the black shop-owner who gives the old white car-guard R20 and enquires after his health and family because he’s known him a long time and likes to look out for him. To the white manager who asked the company to fork out some money so that his maintenance guys can learn to read and write. And then there are the hundreds of little stories like ‘black person interacts with white person as equals and nothing happens’ because it’s just normal and we’re all just people going about our lives. Really I know so many of these ‘little stories’. The multitude of these stories are bigger to me than the big ones about Zuma and Gupta and Malema and even than the hijackings and the murders - as deeply, deeply painful as they are. I am haunted by the encounter with a black receptionist who was so raw with the pain of her recent loss that she took out her phone and showed me (a complete stranger) the photos of her father's skeleton, picked dry by the birds and the ants, because he had only been found some 6 months later after a tip-off to the police, lying discarded on a rubbish dump after a hijacking. You see we ALL face the big stories, we all live in them. But we also live in these small stories. And call me a hopeless idealist if you will, but these are the stories that make life worth living.
If the South-African project fails it will having nothing to do with blackness or whiteness or ordinary people. It will be a failure of leadership. Everyday life in South Africa is very different than it was 40 years ago. Everyday heroes abound. I have even more hope for the ‘born-free’ generation, provided they don’t take for granted the slow and deep and significant work that has been done. What we need now is big heroes who will step up and lead us forward.
great going Nat...impassioned.
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