Homelands and Hartford: Experiences of Race in Post-Apartheid South Africa and the U.S.

Throughout our travels we've been forced to rethink many of our conceptions of our native land, the good ol' U.S. of A. In many instances, despite their articulating severe criticisms of the American government/foreign policy, we've been surprised to find that so many people across the world have such a positive view of what the U.S. represents, and less surprised but still overwhelmed about how many people we meet ask us how they can move to the U.S.

South Africa felt different from any other country that we have visited on this trip, and also the most similar to the U.S. (and especially Hartford). Despite having our camera stolen in Mexico, and despite having been hassled and verbally harassed to some degree in nearly every place we've visited, before South Africa we haven't felt afraid or endangered. By contrast, in South Africa everyone we talked to tried to make us afraid, and we also felt some of that fear ourselves. In thinking about this feeling and South Africa's history of Apartheid (and the "Homelands," politically semi-autonomous Black areas that were supposed to demonstrate to the outside world that South Africa's racial separation worked for all) , we wanted to write more retelling and reflecting on our experiences of race there compared to our experiences of race in Hartford. We'll focus first on South African perceptions/stories of race, next on some of our own experiences/conversations there, and finally our reflections/comparisons to the U.S.

[Since our relatives are the primary readership of this blog, we want to first make clear that we were (and continue to be) very cautious and careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Our only personal experience with crime in South Africa happened the day we arrived in Cape Town, a half-joking attempt at intimidation by 2 young men]

In our experience, an overwhelming aspect of race today in South Africa is all about crime and fear. Fear there is of an entirely different degree from the racial fear in the U.S. At least a part of this fear is justified by reality, by the statistics. South Africa has an incredible amount of violent crime: 52,000 murders per year in a country of 4 million whites and 40 million blacks (along with millions of people classified as coloured or Indian), and the highest (rate/number?) of rapes of any country in the world.

Again and again, we heard from people stories and personal experiences about crime. Our friends in the Peace Corps told us that P.C. volunteers are not allowed to visit Johannesburg. Several volunteers they know have been mugged. One had been "barred" (choked from behind with a steel bar) and bitten in Pretoria; he had to undergo the incredibly toxic and painful HIV-preventive vaccination. Bitten--like the stereotype of savagery, the humanity of the attacker being transformed into animal fury.

Johannesburg is portrayed as the center of all evil. Marcus, the English journalist that we traveled with in Ghana, had been working on a free lance piece in Nigeria before we met him. He was mugged his first day in Lagos. Marcus had worked previously for three years in Mexico; he said that Mexico City was like Disneyland compared to Lagos, and then later told us in an email that people in Nigeria said that Johannesburg is more dangerous than Lagos. Driving at night in Joburg, people don't stop at red lights, for fear of being highjacked.

The occupation with the highest death rate in South Africa is police officer: police are targeted and assassinated by criminals, and some police stations have hired private security firms to protect their police stations. The second most deadly occupation is a farmer, since farms are often isolated and therefore more vulnerable to attack.

While we were in Cape Town, 2 township tours were mugged. A year before, a bus full of German travel agents who were visiting was mugged on a township tour, and they caught the next flight back to Germany. Like the biting aspect of the P.C. volunteer's attack, here is another example of the outburst of anger: targeting those (whites on a township tour) who are actually trying to bring in money, tourism, etc. to impoverished areas.

It wasn't just whites who were afraid of crime: driving from Manyeding with the bride and groom, the bride told us to be careful walking around, and that she had recently been "barred" for her cell phone. Like in the U.S., many of the victims of crime are nonwhite: our Cape Town host's cleaning woman, who lives in a township, has her house robbed every few months. Our host told us she pretends to be asleep when the robbers enter so that she isn't harmed, knowing that the robbers will be back as soon as they've given people time to acquire new goods.

Like Rachel mentioned in her Urban Experiences blog, everything in South Africa has at least a fence around it, and probably more. (One of the more lighthearted examples of security was a few blocks from our host's house in Cape Town, the entrance to the hiking paths is padlocked (neighborhood residents are given a key) to keep out "sangomas:" traditional healers who were stripping the bark from some of the trees near the entrance to use in their medicines.) If plastic bags used be referred to as the "national flower" of South Africa (a problem which has since been solved by charging a minimal amount for plastic bags in stores), then razor wire is the "national plant." Never have we seen so much anywhere: at a gas station, the sidewalk fence between the pumps and the store entrance was looped with razor wire, presumably to deter would be robbers looking to make a quick getaway. The schools around Manyeding village were fenced with razor wire; they, like many of the houses with razor or electric wire fences and bars on the windows, looked more like prisons. One German told us about his friend who lived in a gated community outside of Pretoria. I almost had to laugh when he said that she's been robbed there several times, wondering if _anyone_ in the U.S. would live in a "gated community" that despite that status still has regular robberies.

Although we had many interactions with people around the issue of race, two of them stand out. The first was in Nature's Valley, talking at the pub with a white couple (an Afrikaaner man and an American woman) who owned a contracting business that employed about 40 workers. They spoke about the problems they have with all (whites included) workers, and their disagreements with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the South African version of affirmative action. While genuinely reflecting the realities of their situation, they also used the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." several times, as well as the half-joke, "What's the difference between a tourist and a racist? Two weeks." While we certainly disagreed with some of what they said, it was an interesting conversation in terms of giving us a glimpse of some of the issues from a very different perspective than our own: that of small business owners trying to make their company work in a new political and economic climate. Their attitudes were not just a simple as "black and white."

The second interaction occurred poolside in the Drakensberg mountains. A group of Colored (again, the South African term for people of mixed race: not as far as we can tell considered inappropriate by anyone but still difficult for us to write/say because of its history as a derogatory term in the U.S.) people about our age were starting their weekend, drinking and talking loudly. A white man who was sitting nearby came and condescendingly yelled at them, playing the race card from the start by first of all saying "I don't know whether you're staying here," and then justifying his own rights there by saying that although he lived in England now, he was born in South Africa. When he returned to his seat, the Colored people grumbled loudly "Go back to England" before eventually one of them offered him a glass of wine and some kind of reconciliation took place. This interaction was notable for its boring predictability, and the fact that while race wasn't really at issue (people being loud), that's what came to the forefront. In some small way maybe it represents the difficulty, the understandable wariness that all racial categories of people have in trying to live together in the "new" South Africa, which despite massive amounts of crime and violence has also experienced incredible change (our Servas hosts in Durban telling us that the downtown has basically gone from being 95% white to 95% black since Apartheid, and that this has happened peacefully).

In closing with a few thoughs on similarities to race in the U.S., one large factor in the perception of both is the media. In South Africa, the media seemed to relish the bloody headlines in a sensational, tabloid way. While it's clear that there is a reality to the crime and problems around race, it's also clear to us that, like our walking tour of Soweto demonstrated, crime and the perception of race as a type of fear is far from the only reality.

But crime does exist in South Africa, and because it's a part of daily life, it's how most whites experience the category of race and Apartheid inequalities directly. Living in a poor area of Hartford, we were also victims of crime: in some way, the statistics say it's almost bound to happen, if not to you directly than at least to someone you know closely. Fear and crime are the individual experiences, which understandably obscure the structural, the historical inequalities. Like in the U.S., those who are able flee these areas in their self-interest of avoiding crime--we heard time and time again about white relatives who were urging family still in South Africa to leave the country.

We felt that while talking with the white business owners in Nature's Valley gave us valid angles on social and economic questions of the present, it did not give possible answers to the sometimes insurmountable-seeming question of how to work to redress past wrongs. Some of the more extreme attempts at doing this (at least in Africa) seem like complete failures, for example president/dictator Mugabe's seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe (although these have the additonal problem in our view of not being done with sincere intentions but rather for Mugabe's own political preservation).

One white resident who, coming back from a hike, gave us a lift back to our lodge in the Drakensberg expressed surprise that the U.S hasn't been able to solve our race "problem," given that the demographic numbers are reversed (with blacks being 12% and whites over half of the U.S. population; and a much higher ratio of blacks to the white minority in South Africa). Maybe these numbers are part of the reason that the U.S. doesn't have quite the same fear--whites are more able to exist in the suburbs, away from inner cities and nonwhite populations, whereas, even with the hyper-segregation of Apartheid, it seems much more difficult for whites to live apart in South Africa. The numbers are not in their favor.

Despite this difference in numbers, what does feel very similar to the U.S. is the vast inequality between people, with much of this based in racial categories. While we don't believe that inequality is the only cause of crime, it certainly seems to be one of the main factors. In South Africa, people committing crimes don't just target whites, they target people who have something attractive to steal, and the majority of these are still white. Although the U.S. has the history of slavery to overcome, even its evils seem less in comparison to the acts of Apartheid. One example of this difference of degree, and still the strongest visual example of inequality in South Africa, is the housing. Blacks and other nonwhites were housed in "townships" under Apartheid, and today structures ranging from flimsy shacks to more solid small houses still stand, usually still completely separated from a nearby town or white residential area. Taking Hartford as an example, the housing of the poorest (and nonwhite) residents is certainly unequal, but even the worst public housing project does not resemble the total segregation of Apartheid townships. Most of the U.S. non-project housing differs from wealthier housing not necessarily in terms of the type of structure, but in terms of upkeep. Again despite its inequality and inadequacy, in comparison the housing for the nonwhite poor in U.S. cities seems like something which developed because of neglect mixed with racism but still in a slightly more organic process, compared to the stark, completely unnatural, hyper-racialized construction of the Apartheid townships. We write this not to excoriate the conditions of race in the U.S., but in attempt to demonstrate the degree of difference in South Africa.

One positive way in which South Africa differs from the U.S. on race is the willingness to confront some of these issues, and the belief that a way can be found to live together peacefully. These beliefs have a long history: in the African National Congress's 1955 Freedom Charter, it rejects the contemporary Pan-African Congress claim of Africa for the Africans and instead resolves that all residents of South Africa can live together. In comparison to leaders like Mugabe, whose attempts to overcome racial wrongs of the past seem to lead only to more problems, leaders like Mandela and now Mbeki have not blamed all the problems of the nation on its history or its white residents. On the Soweto tour, the Colored brother (who also told us that he didn't think blacks should be leaders of a nation!) of an ANC member who hosted secret meetings with Mandela remarked that he was very impressed by a speech Mandela made recently saying that blacks have a lot to learn from the successes of whites. The ANC goes to seemingly great distances to support its rhetoric of forgiveness, to build on some of the successes of the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee: it even offered a state funeral to P.W. Botha, the last hardline Apartheid leader in the 1980s, when he recently died.

South Africa is a place of extremes, simultaneously extreme hope and extreme despair. It has experienced some successes in overcoming Apartheid, and in these we think may provide a model for working to achieve harmony among different peoples and overcome the categories of race by working towards greater economic and social equality.