A South African White’s Perspective

Full Disclosure: I am a white male born in South Africa in the late 1970's, at a time when Apartheid (the systematic repression of a black majority by a white minority) was in full swing.

Growing up I had many of the exact experiences that the author expressed, where everything felt a little strange and alien. I would play and have fun with our domestic worker’s (effectively our slave’s) children and it felt pretty normal on the whole. Except when I tried going to the public swimming pool and was told that they were not allowed to go. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that was enforced on us, making us feel inexplicably superior to black people. When Nelson Mandela was freed I was just going into high school and it was a time of extreme emotions. There was extreme fear of retribution and also great hope for a nation to be healed from the sins of the past.

As a young teen I was very optimistic and hopeful for what would happen even though there was terrible violence and everything was on a hair trigger. The country was balancing on a state of civil-war on one side and a fully racially integrated democracy on the other. In the early days the relief of what we could achieve and the fact that we had one of the greatest humans to ever have lived leading the country. Everything was going well and the slow process of transformation started gaining momentum.

Then after a few years everything changed. When Nelson Mandela retired as president and Thabo Mbeki took over things seemed to start changing slowly. A dissatisfaction started to set in on the side of white people who were starting to dissent due to infrastructure and service delivery issues. Previously they lived in picture perfect suburban bliss while the black majority suffered in extreme poverty with no access to basic services such as running water and electricity. Black people started getting a little impatient with the fact that there was not a fast enough transformation and the conditions they had become used to were not really changing for the better, or at least the change was too slow.

Today we realise that we face many of the same issues as in the past but it is a little more complex than before. There is a massive growing black middle class and a few privileged black people are now being put into positions of power with massive incomes to match. Corruption is rife but not more so than in the days of Apartheid. It is exposed with a free media and the ability for all to see what is happening.

Now the point to this background is simple. I agree with everything that the author stated and that we all need to take a long hard look at ourselves, face the fact that due to an unjust, racist past we benefited unfairly with access to good education, healthcare and even basic things like water and electricity. But…

We need to ensure that there is a fair process. That we are not allowing a small privileged few, previously disadvantaged people get unfairly rich and powerful while the majority still suffer. I do not have the answer for how to achieve this, but my gut feeling says that people in a privileged position need to give up some of their wealth and have it distributed into programs that focus on 1. Education and Skills Development, 2. Basic Services such as water and electricity and 3. Job Creation. If we do 1 and 2 right 3 will follow naturally. Instead of focusing on a policy of aggressive affirmative action where there are often limited black people with adequate skills and experience we need to focus on developing skills that will enable a well-equipped workforce. Even though this may seem like a “white” attitude to the problem I think in our case in South Africa it is a class war issue. The healthiest societies have a small disparity between rich and poor. Only through effective programs to build a strong, equal and non-racial society can we achieve these goals. Affirmative action, and aggressive hiring policies are not going to fix the root cause of the issue. It will satisfy short term goals and is totally fair but it is widely open to abuse as has been demonstrated time and again.