Little Essay on the South African social situation

Introduction

A few weeks ago I left South Africa as my visa was expiring, I am now writing this from Mozambique! More about that in future posts. This post is a bit different, I wanted to share a bit my impressions on the social situation in South Africa, so beware it's a lot of text, don't expect pictures here.

I loved my trip around South Africa, those three months have been incredible. It was the first time I took so much time to discover a country in a trip, and it really is a completely different experience. Besides the obvious advantage of having more time to see more places and enjoy them more, I found that the most interesting part was to really be able to properly experience and understand the culture there. When going on a short trip to a country, it is so easy to completely miss the actual cultural environment; not the one you see in museums, but the things you only get to learn by interacting with locals and going out of the touristy places. This is something I was fortunate enough to experience in South Africa, and I actually feel like I now got a decent global picture of the different aspects of South African culture, its struggles, history and aspirations. And I find it absolutely fascinating! South Africa really is a special country, because of its tragic history and the fragile balance between the different populations that compose the Rainbow Nation. You got a few hints here and there throughout my posts, but I thought I would try to introduce you a bit further to the situation in South Africa and what it is like to live there, in a dedicated post. Of course this understanding is mostly based on my encounters so it could be biased, but I do have the impression I have met quite a few different people there from different backgrounds. Feel free to react if you agree or disagree in the comments!

Segregation

One of the most striking realizations in South Africa, is that the apartheid, despite being officially over since the early 90s, is in practice still very much present. There is no law that prevents black and white people to take the same buses anymore, but all the buses I have taken where either only filled with whites, or with blacks (with the notable exception of Cape Town where the city buses sometimes had a tourist or two in them). And this is true for many other things: I have been to pubs with only white people, and some where I was the only white person in the room. Note that I am using the "black" and "white" terms as a generalisation, in reality there are many other populations such as Indians, Chinese, Malays and so on, but this is how South Africans tend to generalise as well.
The "white-only" and "black-only" neighbourhood signs have been removed, but they could as well still be there as the segregation is still ridiculously apparent. You don't see any white person in black neighbourhoods (even the tourists are scared to go there, every tourist guide will advise you to stay away from most of them); you do see black people in white neighbourhoods but only as workers: gardeners, maids, security, they are everywhere and often outnumber the whites, but they never live there. I have seen a super luxury hotel where the entire staff was black and living just a kilometre away, in miserable conditions in a few slum houses.

Reading this you might have the wrong impression that nothing has changed since the apartheid. So what happened in the last 30 years, what about Nelson Mandela and the reconciliation of the Rainbow Nation? The good news is that some things have changed for the best. The segregation is still present, but the living conditions of most of the black population improved a lot since the apartheid. There is more electricity distribution, more decent housing, access to better jobs (sometimes with the help of positive discrimination), with most of the administrative and political positions now being held by blacks. A small middle class emerged from the black population, which even though it still does not mix much with the whites, lives in very decent conditions. And of course, the law now protects blacks and whites indiscriminately, which sounds obvious today but wasn't true just 30 years ago.

Racial inequalities

However progress is slow, there is still a huge gap between the wealth of whites and blacks. The mostly white 10% richest of the  population holds about 80% of the wealth of the country (South Africa is the most unequal country in the world!), 55.5% of the population still lives under the poverty line (25% in food poverty), and crime is rampant in many black townships. The government and institutions are highly corrupted (as I could experience with the police!), making the people lose faith in their leaders (former president Zuma is now facing trial for corruption involving crazy amounts of money). Elections attract less and less people, and most people I spoke to seemed desperate and resigned that real change might not come any time soon. The high hopes that Mandela had raised when coming to power seem long gone... In fact I heard many among the black population complaining that Mandela didn't do anything to change the situation, or at least not enough. While that might seem a bit ungrateful at first, one understands their point of view. Mandela's project was to reunite the nation without hurting or dispossessing anyone, which is a very noble cause, and the reason he got a Nobel Price. The problem with that approach is that by mostly  leaving the whites in peace, he also left a huge part of the country's wealth with them. And in a capitalistic country, wealth means power... The white population might not have direct political power anymore, but they have the money, which is probably more important. Mandela did little to try to prevent that, he actually likely thought he needed the whites support because of that too. It also didn't help for his popularity that his successors, all from the political party he created (the ANC has won every presidential election since the end of apartheid), often abused their position for their own interests and were involved in a lot of corruption scandals. Western companies used this to their advantage to take over resources and markets by simply giving money to the government and often pushing out national companies. Needless to say, this money was never used to develop the country... 
And while the politicians were busy filling their pockets, the electricity production started facing some huge issues; because of the lack of maintenance on old electricity plants in the last few decades, there is simply not enough power generated to provide for the whole country anymore. South Africa actually came out with a unique solution to this problem in the last few years, called load-shedding! Rather than building and investing into more electricity production, the national electricity company Eskom put in place a system of power cuts in different sectors at different times. Basically, all neighbourhoods take turns in having their electricity cut for 2 to 3 hours, sometimes several times a day in periods of high demand. This power cut schedule became part of daily life in South Africa, and even though it's a bit confusing and annoying at first, you quickly get used to it and arrange your day around it! Since the power schedule is different every day, you need an app that tells you will have electricity during the day, always useful to not get surprised by a sudden lack of electricity. People are getting used to it but this raises the question of whether this temporary solution might not become permanent.

So as we've seen it, the situation in South Africa isn't exactly great, and the black population tends to blame the corrupted politicians who steal the country's money and didn't manage (try?) to take the wealth and power back from the white population. Let's remember that the white population mostly inherited their wealth from centuries of slavery, racist policies and abuses in a country they took all the resources of...  The resentment is understandable, and to be honest much weaker than I would have expected given the history of the country.

What of the whites here, what do they think of all that?  At this point it's worth mentioning that the white population isn't homogeneous either. I will divide them roughly into two categories, the Afrikaners and the British. While the British arrived later in South Africa (once Great Britain took it over, in the early 19th century), Afrikaners are the descendants of the first colonists coming from the Netherlands, which then formed the Boers. The latter were mostly farmers, who aggressively expanded throughout the whole country by claiming land belonging to the local tribes, starting many wars and bloodbaths with the Zulus, Sothos, and other tribes. While the British speak mostly English obviously, the Afrikaners also speak Afrikaans, a weird language originating from Dutch but mixed with some local African languages. From what I got to see and experience, those two groups do not only differ in the language they are using though. The British I met were in general much more open-minded and respectful towards the black population, like Gerry from the first farm I worked in. By contrast, I have met quite a few Afrikaners who were sometimes openly racist, and who regretted times when the country was safer and with better infrastructures. They would never say that they regret the apartheid of course, but I think they are unhappy that their situation and comfort has degraded since the end of it. And it is of course true, since the end of the apartheid the white population is now forced to face at least a part of the rampant crime, poverty, bad infrastructure and electricity problems which were previously hidden in black neighbourhoods, away from the white-only areas. I do not believe all Afrikaners to be like that of course, but meeting several British and Afrikaners I did see a trend of the latter being sometimes more intolerant. Overall I had the feeling that the whites tend to respect Mandela though (but not so much his successors), and they believe he did his best to unite the country... Maybe also because he left them in peace.

A heritage of white domination

So here you have it. A country still torn between the former slave masters and their former slaves. The main problem is, ending slavery is nice, but if you free a slave and give him nothing, you do not change the power balance. You move from a slave and his master to an incredibly poor man and a rich one. It's better of course, but in a capitalistic world this means the former master is still superior to his freed slave (in fact many newly freed slaves chose to stay and work for their former master because they just had no way to survive otherwise). This was true when slavery was finally abolished, and it was the case at the end of the apartheid too. Centuries of white domination has led to a very poor black population, finally equal to the white one on paper, but ridiculously inferior in terms of wealth and life quality. In fact, for most of what I have written in this little essay, you could replace "white" with "rich" and "black" with "poor", and you'd get an almost identical depiction of the situation. Furthermore, this would maybe give you a picture that seems closer to something we sometimes see in Europe: even there, you do not see many rich people going to ghettos or poor neighbourhoods, or the other way around. The racial segregation in South Africa is at least partly due to the wealth imbalance created by the whites through colonisation, slavery and the apartheid governments. One striking example of this is what happened with the rural black population at the end of the apartheid. Finally freed from the obligation to stay in their black only area, many moved to the city hoping to improve their life quality. The cities were now in theory fully opened to all populations, not only the whites, but in practice no black person could afford to live in the former white-only areas... The rents were just way too high. So all those displaced people from the countryside went to the only affordable places, at the periphery of cities, where the former black-only areas were... Growing the black population in these slums and often living in terrible conditions, perpetuating what the apartheid had done before.

Conclusion

I do not mean to say that the situation in South Africa can be reduced to inequalities between poor and rich, there are many other factors to take into account, such as cultural differences. For instance, it seems plausible that some typical African traditions, habits and beliefs might not be very adapted to the very western capitalistic environment that was forced upon the country. One could cite the belief in ancestors and their influence on everything (if you succeed in your career, its not because you worked hard, but just the ancestors being nice to you), or the very noble and selfless tradition to share everything you have or earn with your whole family (it can be difficult to get out of poverty when you do not get to enjoy much of a higher salary you receive by working harder). However I don't think I know quite enough details about these cultural particularities to infer too much out of them. The wealth inequalities are much more obvious, and in my opinion play an important role in the racial segregation found today in South Africa.

The situation therefore seems bleak, and so do the perspectives for much improvement in the future. However, somehow, despite its many flaws and problems, people of the South African country go on with their life, often with a big smile on their face, and are still some of the happiest, friendliest and warmest people I have met. An incredible country really, where blacks and whites, even though they do not always mix much, do manage to live together... A true Rainbow Nation.