 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|||
 |
 |
|
 |
Travel | |
|
|
When I visited South Africa recently, I held no illusions about what I would find. This was my seventh trip to this country, the last time in 2004.
As an American black, I was in a unique position. I was seen as a member of the "African Diaspora," a displaced people. I was not African, and I obviously was not white. I was more of a marginal person there than I was at home in the United States. I had never viewed myself as part of a diaspora. I had always thought of myself as someone born in Fort Lauderdale. This new status, a foreign existence I never adjusted to, influenced how I saw everything. On that first trip, most whites I met immediately recognized me as an American. Unlike African blacks who generally steered clear of personal encounters with whites, I, a graduate student on a research junket, eagerly asked questions and otherwise engaged in conversation with whites. Everyone noticed. By 2004, South Africa was a democratic nation. Apartheid had been abolished for 10 years, and blacks had access to virtually all opportunities - at least on paper. But I saw a troubling trend the longer I was there: Although all of South Africa's public venues and services had been desegregated, you rarely saw blacks and whites interacting together in groups. I saw few, if any, whites and blacks eating and drinking at the same tables in restaurants and bars. When I returned there several weeks ago, racial integration, like we find in many U.S. settings, had not come to South Africa. I rarely saw whites and blacks together anywhere in intimate ways.
But I was the lone black guest in the tea room, and my white waitress mostly ignored me. A black guide told me later that although South African blacks can have tea at the hotel, the influences of colonial separation still hold sway for many. American and European blacks, however, often do tea at the Mount Nelson. And, as in 2004, I was recognized in most places as being an American black. In fact, I was routinely asked where I was from "in the States" even before I said a word. "Your body language and the way you walk give you away," a white taxi driver said. South Africa is complex. It is contradictory, and it is paradoxical. And while it is a living monument to man's inhumanity to man, as a result of decades of apartheid's brutal white rule, South Africa is a land of dreams and hope.
My taxi ride along the N2 highway from Cape Town International Airport en route to Best Western Cape Suites, where I stayed for two weeks, was a snapshot of South African society. I saw wealthy suburbs, the Hottentots Holland Mountains, the low-lying, dusty, flood-prone region known as Cape Flats and sprawling townships and their adjacent shantytowns euphemistically referred to as "informal settlements," where tens of thousands of poor blacks live.
In the distance, I could see the blue waters of Table Bay, home to the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town's prime leisure and shopping complex. Most people say that Cape Town, population 2.5-million, is the best place to live and work on the African continent. It most certainly is the wealthiest, leading the continent in almost all economic indicators. Fast facts If South Africa is the "rainbow nation," then Cape Town is the "rainbow city." The population is more than just black and white. Blacks: Most of the population, 77 percent, is black African. Most are either Xhosa or Zulu. These also are known as tribes, with various subgroups and distinct languages. Whites: About 11 percent of Capetonians are white, descendants of Dutch, British, German, French and other white colonizers. Colored: About 9 percent is referred to as "colored," the most complex group. They are modern-day mixed-race descendants of slaves and slave owners brought to the Cape. Broadly, Indians, Asians and Cape Malay sometimes are included in this group. Often, though, Indians and Asians choose to be classified separately.
|
I went there first in 1977, one of the most turbulent years of apartheid. The black consciousness movement had matured into a threat to white rule. Black rioting had become commonplace, and the all-white police force and army were brutalizing and killing black demonstrators. On some mornings, I was too afraid to leave my room in a foreign student house near Johannesburg. 
This was the year activist Steve Biko was arrested. He would die weeks later, at age 30, in police custody, a death that would hurry apartheid's destruction. 
My most memorable example of this separation occurred when I went to the famous Mount Nelson Hotel for "high tea." No way was I leaving Cape Town without doing tea at the Mount Nelson. Approaching the sumptuous landmark, I noticed that all of the attendants were black, and each smiled slyly as one opened the door for me. I saw uniformed African blacks everywhere, registering and ushering guests. 
The nation has compressed a lot of history into a few years. It is easy for Americans to forget that Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner for decades before apartheid ended and he became the first democratically elected president in 1994. In the years since, with the rise of the black middle class, the country now proudly refers to itself as the "New South Africa" and the "rainbow nation."
Then, as we neared the hotel, at the foot of Table Mountain and Devil's Peak, giant construction cranes operated against the glittering skyline of Cape Town, affectionately referred to as the "Mother City."
 |
©2003 Role Models Foundation,
Inc., No part of this website may be used without the express permission of the author. |
||
 |
|||