Lucky 6: Black Racism

BLACK RACISM

We have a holiday apartment in Plettenberg Bay on the south coast of the Cape.

The entrance to the town’s supermarket leads directly onto the parking area. The parking area is littered with street-children. I don’t use the word street-urchins because it is one of those euphemisms of the English language that implies beauty where there is no beauty to be implied.

As well as the street children there is also a collection of the local coloured population hanging around, often drunk – mainly because the local liqour store also faces onto this parking area.

The street children make money of the holidaymakers that shop here in two ways:

1. When you come out of the store they will offer to push your trolley to the car and unpack it for you, in return for a gratuity (tip);
2. When you have pushed your shopping cart to the car and unpacked they will appear and offer to return the empty cart to the store – 10 meters away – for a gratuity.

Not unexpectedly the latter option is the one that most of them prefer – it involves less actual work, and generally gets the same pecuniary reward as one gets for the first option, which involves work.

I went shopping, and came out with two trolleys. Charl and Lucky having accompanied me, I asked them to push the trolleys.

As I was unpacking the trolleys a drunken coloured man came to me and confided that I should in future not allow Lucky to push my trolley because “he is a known criminal in the area, and the police were there just that morning trying to find him.”

Since we had just arrived in Plettenberg Bay I knew that even if Lucky (age 8) was a known criminal, he could not have committed his crimes in Plettenberg Bay. So I invited my new confidant to accompany me to the police station where we will deliver Lucky to justice.

He declined this offer, but not before he again advised me not to have any further dealings with criminal types like Lucky.

As it turned out he viewed the parking area as his franchise. All the street children that ‘worked’ the area had to pay him a hefty commission on their earnings. He believed that Lucky was an outsider trying to move into the territory.

Lucky was standing next to me. He was born with naturally large round white eyes. These were growing larger and rounder as he heard himself being accused of being a major criminal, being sought be the police and then me, whom he trusted, offering to deliver him to the police.

The rest of our stay in Plettenberg Bay became a nightmare for Lucky. The street-children gangs started to terrorize him. Where-ever he appeared alone on the streets he could be sure of black street-children shoving him and trying to provoke fights – and fighting is something that Lucky is ill equipped for.

Racism is not skin colour related. Racism extends between self-perceived classes.

Lucky certainly came from much worse conditions than what the street children found themselves in. But Lucky found himself now living in much better conditions. He was living the life of a well to do white child.

There was no charity to be found in this by these street children. In fact, there was absolute jealousy. A jealousy that does not extend to white children. It was natural, and ‘even’ right for white children to live in the luxury that Lucky was living in. But they perceived it to be wrong that a black child should live in that luxury.

This might be where the whole ‘New South Africa’ will break down.

The politicians like to talk about the new deal for the masses. But, in effect they are the people that gain from the whole new deal. As far as the ‘new deal’ for the masses are concerned the politicians are first in the queue, and having satisfied their needs the rest gets distributed to the masses.

Politicians labour under the mistaken belief that if they can show the masses how blacks (saying the masses, but meaning themselves personally) have achieved things, then this will satisfy the masses.

Everybody looks at life only from a personal perspective, never from the view of ‘the masses’. Even if you are part of the masses.

ADDED in 2009: I wrote this mid 1990. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that what I predicted did come to pass. A super-wealthy black class arose from the ashes of apartheid. This was achieved by a well conceived Black Economic empowerment program of the government. Unfortunately this did benefit only a small portion.

When Bishop Tutu criticised the program for not benefiting the masses the Black Business Forum was the first to criticise him. Obviously these were the beneficiaries of the program as it was implemented, they did not really want everybody to benefit.

The government extended the program titling it Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). There is a lot of evidence that this is working much better.

The way that the implementation of this program is to work in the future is part of the debate for the coming election, and it will be interesting to see how it is implemented in the future.

Personally I see a lot of evidence that after 15 years of government by the ANC that there is a much greater interest in merit promotions rather than skin colour promotions. The accent shifting to creating situations where black people are in a situation where they can compete on merit in the job market.