One of the cool things about traveling abroad is that it can really alter the way you view your own country. I spent a lot of time in India--a place we Westerners like to paint as a horrible place for social inequality, where poverty is everywhere and no one has a chance at improving their situation. While I did notice poverty a lot in India, the experience of being there actually just caused me to spend more time thinking about social mobility, or lack thereof, in the USA.
In South Africa, the issue that's been on my mind the most is, perhaps unsurprisingly, race.
I've been highly aware of racial issues since I stepped off the plane here, but I haven't written anything on the subject yet. That's mostly because I have no idea what to say. I've been spending all of this time trying to come up with something insightful, but it hasn't happened.
People call South Africa "the rainbow nation" because of the amazing diversity here. But while it is a diverse place, and that diversity widely celebrated, racial issues in this country did not just dissolve with the Apartheid government in 1994.
South Africa has some pretty distinct racial categories. The categories don't necessarily stem from the attitudes of the people here, but from the country's political history. Apartheid, a system of government which was based entirely on race, had to define race very categorically in order to work. As a result, anyone in this country born before 1994 still knows in a deep, intimate way which category they fit into.
The basic breakdown is White, Colored, and Black. White people basically have entirely European heritage while Black people identify as entirely African. So that leaves "Colored." It's hard for us Americans to wrap our minds around, first of all, because in the USA, obviously, "colored" is an extremely derogatory word. Secondly, in the USA we don't really differentiate between someone who is of African descent and someone who is mixed race. Our half-Kenyan, half Irish-American president, Barack Obama, for example, we call "black." Here, it would be a lot more complicated.
Colored most often means mixed race, but racial mixing has been happening in South Africa since the 1600s, so while many Colored people are, technically "mixed," many have only a vague idea of what their racial mix is, and while they don't identify as "Black African," their ancestors have in most cases, been in Africa for hundreds of years. Racial heritage among South Africa's Colored population can include Dutch, English, Indian, Pacific Islander, East Asian, African, and any other combination of the many many cultures that have passed through South Africa due to colonization, slavery, and trading. Traders and colonizers who passed through Cape Town did not enslave the native people they found here, rather, they brought slaves from all over Asia and other parts of Africa. Most slaves they brought, however, were men. So the gender imbalance inevitably lead to some racial mixing. Indian, Asian or East African slaves would marry native South African Khoi Khoi women and white men would frequently impregnate the rare female slaves they owned. As a result, Cape Town became an extremely interracial society until Apartheid outlawed interracial sex or marriage in the 1950s. Interestingly, hundreds of years after slavery, South Africa's Colored, mixed race population still generally only lives around Cape Town in the provinces known as the Western Cape and Northern Cape. Here in Cape Town, the population is largely Colored, but in the rest of the country, Colored people remain a small minority.
Another hard thing for Americans to conceptualize about race in South Africa is that there are two pretty distinct groups of White people here in South Africa. Afrikaners are descended of Dutch settlers and speak Afrikaans, a dialect of Dutch (mixed with African and Asian languages). They have a strong history of farming and make up the biggest population of white people here. But then there are also the English. You might meet one White person here who sounds like they're speaking English as a second language (because they are) and another White person who grew up in the same city whose accent sounds vaguely British or Australian. Afrikaners and English people, of course also, have fairly different customs, family names, favorite recipes, and whatever else defines culture.
The Black/African population in South Africa is just as diverse as any other grouping. A person who identifies as Black might be Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, or one of many other tribal groups. Nelson Mandela came from a Xhosa tribe, while Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa is Zulu. Of course, each group also has their own language and cultural heritage. Almost 80 percent of South Africa's population identifies as Black, though here again, this varies widely region-to-region. Here in the Western Cape, Black people are a minority.
Beyond those three big groups there are many other ethnic and racial groups in South Africa as well. There is a huge Indian diaspora here, especially in the city of Durban. Gandhi even got his start in politics fighting for the rights of Indian people in South Africa. There is also a huge refugee population in South Africa. This country takes in more refugees than almost anywhere else in the world. Many of them come from other African countries. As is the case in many countries with large immigrant populations, these newcomers don't always receive a warm welcome.
As I mentioned before, Apartheid called for strict divisions among the races. Your social standing was defined by your DNA. But of course, there are always gray areas. South Africans will tell you all kinds of stories--from amazingly recent memory--about a time when two brothers might be legally classified with one as White and the other Colored or one Colored and one Black, or when a government bureaucrat would run a comb through your hair to see if your locks were straight enough to "pass" for "White."
What's eerie is that many of the racial divides set up by Apartheid have had long lasting effects. Black people in South Africa, though the largest group by the numbers, still experience hugely disproportionate poverty. White people, making up less than 10 percent of the country's population, still seem to be the wealthy ones. People still identify certain parts of town as a "Black township," or a "White suburb." Most employees in the shops at the mall attached to the apartment where I have been living are Black or Colored while most of the shoppers are White. Riding in the elevator in my office building the other day, I heard a White woman mistake a Black woman who is an employee of the building who was carrying a tray of food for a delivery person. And the list of examples goes on.
Race also comes up frequently in conversation. Almost every person I met in South Africa had something to say on the subject. There was the highly educated Colored man who works in city government and admitted he still feels nervous speaking in front of his White coworkers. There was the White employee of the national park who I interviewed who said improving outreach efforts to other populations (implying beyond just White) of the city was a major concern for her. There were the many many conversations about race as it relates to politics.
It all seems eyebrow-raising, but on the other hand, familiar. After all, don't I live in a diverse city where city government is still largely white? Or where sections of town are strongly associated with certain racial populations? Recent events surrounding the Trayvon Martin case in the USA serve as reminders that racial conflict is still very present in American society.
My time in South Africa has certainly taught me a lot about the history of race here and the remaining issues surrounding race in this country, but I think in the long run, my South African experience will also help me look at racial issues in the USA with a little more perspective.
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