A Snapshot of Life Living in Post Apartheid South Africa

South Africa is a country blessed with incredible natural beauty and wildlife. Think of the Cape Town area, with Table Mountain a constant backdrop, often draped with a tablecloth of white cloud, and roads that hug a breathtaking coastline leading off to interesting beaches and then further inland, to wine farms and game reserves. South Africa is also a land of stark contrasts. There are some very rich people, and many destitute and poor. Many poor people live in large shanty towns, with small roughshod buildings made of scrap metal. The rich people who live in South Africa have been mostly white, but this is changing due to BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) and there is a rising tide of black elite. Disparity between rich and poor remains, the demographics alone are changing, leaving many to languish in generational poverty, though adding different ethnic groups to the mix. White people now also live in shanty towns in South Africa and maybe one can say equality has truly come. Widespread upliftment is needed, not just a change in the colour of the workforce.

South Africa can be a hard place to live at times. Hatred is prevalent in South Africa, perhaps largely due to apartheid which put barriers between people. When I drove around the streets, especially at night, I was always watching and looking to make sure I was not hijacked (car jacked) and I kept my car doors locked and windows up. To be hijacked meant one could be killed, even if one surrendered the car willingly. I watched a video once which showed how quickly a hijack can happen, and how hijackers will hide behind a tree or another car, waiting for a target. Thankfully I only had someone peer intently into my car once at a traffic light, and it was obvious he was looking for something to steal. Car windows are smashed while people are sitting in traffic in broad daylight waiting to move forward, and handbags are grabbed or phones snatched, and bystanders in surrounding cars look on helpless to do anything. Many other people will come up to cars while stationary at traffic lights, usually if they are selling something, but sometimes if they are begging. One of these street hawkers once reached through the half open back window of my car and was feeling my toddler's face, and said he was only being friendly when I began yelling. Another person walked around to the passenger door of my car and asked me to open it as he needed a lift to the shops down the road, and another said he loves my car but I must come around and look at the number plate--these are ploys to get one to open the locked car door, so they can be hijacked.

Richer people live behind bars. Bars on windows, security alarms, security patrols, high walls, big dogs. This is because crime is so rampant. Intruders break into houses while people are asleep and this often means you will be killed, or tied up and beaten, and woman raped. Rape is prevalent in South Africa. I read recently somewhere (not sure if the statistics are true) that South Africa has two and a half times more incidences of rape than India, yet South Africa has only 50 million people, and India has 1.2 billion people! And that is reported rape, as South Africa is known for an under-reporting of crime. Most crime is not reported in newspapers, and one hears often from other people about the people they know who are killed in cold blood, and there is nary a trace mentioned in the media. Sometimes I wonder what is special about some of the cases that are reported on--why did they stand out to be worthy of mentioning in the media? 

When I first started my working career twenty years ago, I worked in a mainly white workplace, though, ironically, in our small department of about seven people, three were non-white, including a non-white woman manager--exceptional for those days. A few years after apartheid ended, I noticed an increase in non-white people beginning to work for the organisation. First a few, then a trickle, then a flood. There are still many white people working in large corporations, but there is a very big focus on ensuring white numbers decrease to make way for non-white people, to make sure affirmative action targets are met. The demographics of the country dictate that at least 90% of the workforce is non-white. People are hired based on colour first and then skills later. Even people selected to train as doctors at universities are selected based on colour first, not merit, and a lower pass mark is allowed to ensure enough non-white doctors can make it into medical school. It is a numbers game. It is a consequence of a previously divided society searching for equitable solutions, and it is unfair to make a decision purely along racial lines, but change is also needed, perhaps until, hopefully, merit becomes the selection criteria again once equilibrium is reached.

What did this mean for me? As a white person, I was not sure if I could get a transfer to a different department, or get another job, because they had enough white people already who were making sure they stayed unless they too found another job. One of my key performance indicators, to measure my performance at work, was making sure I devoted time to training my non-white colleagues; I was told to make an effort to train the non-white people who worked with me, and I assumed this was because they were going to be given my job someday and promoted over me, and then I would be retrenched, as I was not of as much importance to the numbers as I was a white person, though in my favour initially was that I was a woman, but later that meant nothing when rules changed again. A couple of South African companies were recently accused of blatant racism towards white people, as their job adverts said no white people to apply. And so the wheel now turns the other way, and racism is now openly shown towards white people in South Africa, with the country said to be at genocide level six, with the next stage being extermination of white people. Many may say this is justice. I say, how can we move forward when we keep repeating dysfunctional behaviour patterns that have never worked in the past? I pray genocide never happens in South Africa.

I love South Africa, but it is not a safe place to live. I pray for a culture change to sweep through South Africa and to bring integrity and good policing to eradicate crime and corruption. I also pray for healing in the form of neighbourly love as Jesus spoke of it (The Samaritan Who Helped A Stranger), as all people who live in South Africa are fellow human beings, equal in God's eyes, and should be united under one common umbrella of humanity; a single country with all people equally free, regardless of colour or culture. Maybe the past can be done away with. There is a new future of hope to walk into.