Alan Cameron is a BPhil journalism student at the University of Stellenbosch. He says meeting people and getting to write about them is why he loves journalism. He is also very keen to write about science and technology and plans to specialise in that field once he has had a few years of “real-world mileage under my takkies”. This essay has the slight echo of a punk song he heard on the radio, “Let me tell y’all what it’s like/ Being male, middle-class and white”.

My experience of apart-hate

Alan Cameron

Apartheid might have officially ended when I was 13, but now that I am 21 my generation is reaping what the emergency years of the 80s had sown. Despite the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, individual poverty grants and a fair democratic government, Apartheid stares at me every time a child asks for food.

Warm, dry after a bath, alone in my room. The snow on the Stellenbosch mountains has never been as thick as over the last weekend. It’s still cold outside though, as the snow receded before another cold front, with renewed chances of rain dropping the mercury. Not that I mind — a duvet is never as warm as in winter.

In 1994 I was thirteen. Big things happened that year. Most of what I remember is the school headmaster telling us not to be afraid of the changes and that the school would be a safe place to be if anything went wrong. Strange thought, something going wrong.

The Primary School hall was used as a registration and voting station during the election long weekend. The reason so many boys had dropped out of school, to fight for freedom, for dignity, for work to feed their families, to protest the injustice of it all — was coming to a close that 27th April, in my school hall.

I learnt about it later, of course, once the school history syllabus was adapted and the eternal “Groot Trek” ended. Just across the Rhine River the calls for liberty, equality and fraternity were answered 145 years later with the war to end all wars, and then again when the concepts of “Lebensraum” and genocide became Nazi Germany’s national policy. Fat Man and Little Boy followed each other in quick succession and all the while South Africa worried about the gold price and the increased reliance upon cheap unskilled migrant labour for the mines. My matric history teacher attempted to instil perspective when reviewing her subject; most of what I noticed was the reason history repeats itself is that man does not learn.

The system of apartheid attempted to maintain white political and military power, no matter the cost. South Africa’s increasingly capitalistic economy ground ever more slowly as Group Areas Act-like laws and migrant labour practices destroyed families and eventually forced industries to train workers to a previously unheard of skills level. Internal economic pressure mixed with sanctions and sports boycotts started to hurt South Africa. The government’s reaction was an attempt to divide the black peoples into Urban and Rural — to create a black skilled middle class that had lost its traditional connection to their homeland states and initiate a capitalistic mindset.

Now it’s 2003. The ANC strengthens its alliance with the Communist Party as well as with the trade unions ahead of next year’s election. The ruling party does this to prevent the left wing from taking votes from the disillusioned poor. It appears as though the ANC government is weathering some of the backlash of a “too little, too late” Apartheid economic policy.

Apartheid might have officially ended when I was 13, but now that I am 21 my generation is reaping what the emergency years of the 80s had sown. Despite the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, individual poverty grants and a fair democratic government, Apartheid stares at me every time a child asks for food.

The only time I have seen a “Slegs Blankes” sign has been in Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum. Grand Apartheid may no longer be with us, but the signs of our past remain in our collective consciousness. The fact is that I am warm and dry while the wet wind blows, while the Stellenbosch homeless freeze, that I have seen only black petrol pump attendants, that the “K” word exists, that people start sentences with, “You know I am not racist but …”, that non-white parents of current students could not study here, that so much hate exists, that many family members of “previously disadvantaged” friends are reacting the same way many Afrikaans people reacted to the Boer War — they refuse to speak the language of the oppressor.

I will vote for the first time next year in the general election, knowing who will be the victor before I cast my virgin vote. Much like most of the participants in 1994. Films like Amandla remind us that 15 years ago the great miracle of our land was still a pipedream and the poor people outside the cinema are not white. This reminds me about the previously privileged few, and the responsibility that South Africans have toward each other.

History has a way of repeating itself. South Africa’s economy is once again the main concern ahead of human development. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity still need to be instilled in many parts of our society. As our democracy is strengthened through strong economic policies, seeds of a new type of equality are being sown, those of freedom, experienced not just before the law but before the bread bin and under the duvet as well.

Until then, as apartness and financial inequality encourage resentment, perhaps a more accurate term for today’s social inequalities would be Apart-resent.

boontoe

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.