-Driving past the old Boer War battlefields, where the English put my ancestors, women and children, in concentration camps, to deprive the men of supprt, while they burned their farms and slaughtered their animals. I still, bizarrely, feel a strong sense of patriotic support for the Boer's (although in my head, I'm more English than Afrikaans), fighting against their colonial oppressors, despite the fact that they were the same people that soon after created the system of Apartheid.
-Reading a few South African classic novels by white authors, including some of J. M Coetzee's work, and The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner and flinching every time the word "kaffir" is used.
-Staying the night in some fuckhole small town, in a white owned pub and B&B. The owners' child had been murdered a few years ago in a gay massage parlour- a case that was in the headlines for months. I heard the word "houtkop" used for the first time in my life, to describe black people. It was said to their coloured employee, or "boy", as they would probably call him.
-Arriving in Johannesburg, and staying a few nights at my wealthy relatives houses. Listening to them complain about their servants for hours, while sitting in stupendous, opulent luxury in one of Johannesburg's richest areas, cramped in by nine foot walls, electric fences, security guards, alarms systems and panic buttons. "They're just so ungrateful! I offered to pay for university, but they're just hopeless." I call it the "It's so hard to find good help these days " talk.
-Going to the Apartheid Musem in Johannesburg, where the R50 entrance fee ironically puts it out of the reach of the average South African citizen, who is still desperately poor even 16 years after Apartheid officially ended. That said, the experience was humbling, and not easy to digest. Memories flooded back of SADF Casspirs racing down the streets, of teargas and riots on TV, things I couldn't have understood then.
-Arriving in Maputo, and having a good old think about the Portuguese colonial era, and the decades of South African backed destabilising, infrastructure destroying "civil war" that followed. Mozambique was crippled economically, and 900,000 killed, for daring to give shelter to the SA's ANC and Rhodesia's ZANLA rebels, both fighting against white minority governments.
-Going to Malawi, where mzungu's like me are almost always from Europe. Many locals wouldnt believe I was born in South Africa, and when I had convinced them, they seemed thrilled. "We're both Africans!" The unspoken tension between races disappears, and even the cultural gap seems to vanish. White girls get black boyfriends, black men make white friends, and it feels totally normal. I couldn't think why SA isn't like this. Why do I have hundreds of black friends in Malawi, but none in South Africa?
-Speaking to an American guy who lived in some of Johannesburgs worst areas for a while, as well as Bellville's dodgy bits for six months, I realised his perception of Cape Town, and South Africa was totally different to mine. Even though I've lived here for 24 years, I have never seen some of the things he described to me, and I probably never would. I'd simpy be too scared to go near those places, or I'd feel self-conscious of my white skin. He said, having travelled far and wide for many years, that South Africa was the most markedly different place he had ever been to, because of the legacy of Apartheid. I found, overall, that foreigners who had been to South Africa had a far more refreshing and interesting perspective on it, as they were free of the Fear that locals have. They dont have the associations, the worries, and most of all, the shame, that so many white South African's still have.
-In Malawi, it is still considered normal for a person working in South Africa as a gardener to be called a garden boy, a housekeeper a girl, no matter what their age. You might meet a 45 year old man who proudly describes his profession as "boy".
-Arriving back in Johannesburg, and within a few hours hearing rich white kids complaining about the "ungrateful blacks" and "how lazy they are", again, the "Its so hard to find good help these days" talk. Another piece was from a white, Afrikaans, apartheid generation guy who warned me about the Transkei, where "the local blacks are so flippin' lazy".
-Coining the word "Condescenglish" for the peculiar habit that many white South African's and Zimbabweans have, when talking to a black person. It refers specifically to the speaking in a pastiche of an African language accent, presumably so the other party can understand them better. Its almost like a compromise- "I know English isn't your first language, so I'll speak to you in what I think your accent sounds like." Condescending English. Get it? Im sure if you did that to an Irish person they'd hammer you in a few seconds.
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