OPINION: The ANC’s 1994 win may have ended apartheid’s entrenched racial segregation, but the past 28 years of democracy have shown that the change in power merely created a Black political elite, rather than abolishing the supremacy of whites.
By Simone Reid
When I decided to study abroad, I set my sights on Africa, hoping to explore my cultural heritage and to critically confront the comforts of my American life more critically.
I was very against studying in Global North – I desired an experience that centred non-Western culture and tradition.
When I told a friend I would be studying in South Africa, I was met with unexpected derision: “So, you’re going to Europe.” Naturally, my heart sank.
In truth, my friend gave a voice to a lingering concern that South Africa wouldn’t be able to give me the authentically African experience I craved.
I had an image in my mind of Cape Town that I couldn’t shake, reflecting a common narrative that South Africa is a lone nation of white settlers on the African continent.
On my plane from London to Joburg, the other, mostly white, passengers followed me with suspicious eyes.
Within the impressive compound of the airport, I saw more evidence to support my preconceptions.
Too in Durban, the aesthetics of wealth echoed American tastes: often, beachside, I felt a distinctly Los Angeles energy. I could feel, when in classed spaces such as Umhlanga, that the American in me was the intended audience.
At the same time, I still felt a distinct outsider-ness as I often do in the US when presented with white, wealthy spaces.
In one Afrikaner-owned beach side café, I saw how race unfolded in South Africa as the gatekeeper of opportunity and wealth.
The white owners worked the front, taking orders and making conversation.
They curtly gave orders to the sole cook and sole black worker, never once speaking to him how they spoke to each other or to customers.
As he worked, they stood and chatted.
When he handed me my food, he seemed stoic and dejected in a way that disturbed me.
My Americanness, it seemed, allowed me to escape the treatment those Afrikaners reserved for him. In my soul, I was unsettled, feeling distinctly like a traitor, as I chose, in that moment, class over race.
Race in South Africa seems to be constructed quite like how it is in the US. As a black American in South Africa, I am simultaneously constructed as both local and foreign, where people are often thrown by my unfamiliarity with isiZulu.
Though I intended to connect more deeply with my African roots, I instead entered an elite, foreign class that is difficult to faithfully navigate.
As I toe this line, I can frankly view the contradictions present in South Africa today.
Here, there is both impressive development and shocking poverty juxtaposed, in one of the most unequal countries in the world.
My preconceptions of a European South Africa reflected a mythology carried over from apartheid and the Natives Land Act of 1913.
Still, there is no denying the presence of such a large population of white settlers had lasting effects on the social, political, and economic context of South Africa.
In the Midlands, they protect their British-descended wealth with posh accents and rolling hills, while in Cato Manor, homes slope down the hills, nestled together.
As class is propelled to the forefront of the national conversation, its necessary to interrogate continuity in South Africa: how wealth has remained concentrated in white hands, while poverty continues to have a black face.
The ANC’s 1994 win may have ended apartheid’s entrenched racial segregation, but the past 28 years of democracy have shown that the change in power merely created a Black political elite, rather than abolishing the supremacy of whites.
The people remain hungry, as the Constitution promises them substantive rights that they are unable to access.
The ANC’s radical age and scientifically Marxist approach to countering apartheid manages to sanitise the truth of their electoral transfer of power.
Though tasked with liberation, the ANC failed to create the economic restructuring that would lead to true integration of the masses and lasting freedom for the black population of South Africa.
The late black consciousness founder Steve Biko was right in his prediction:
“If we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie… For meaningful change to appear there needs to be an attempt at reorganising the whole economic patter and economic policies.”
This is the exact story of South Africa today, where the settlers’ logic of racial capitalism remains intact, and the ANC failed to deliver on a lasting freedom.
* Simone Read is a study abroad student on an SIT programme on Social and Political Transformation in Durban.
**The view expressed here may not necessarily be that of IOL.