It's not black and white

South Africa isn't Black and White. It's Grey. Foreigners have asked me numerous times for clarity about some or other issue (which never arises where they come from) and I find myself juggling wildly different responses in an attempt to explain the "local" viewpoint. There is no clear answer to many questions.

For one, how do you describe a typical South African to anyone? We are such a hodge-podge of cultures, religions, traditions and value systems and it is going to be a while before we breakdown into that "melting pot" that everyone calls our country. You may eat pap and vleis or curry, live in the country or at the sea, click or bray through a language, speak loudly on buses or genteelly drink tea at the Nellie. We once met a group of wealthy young Americans on our travels through Italy. They immediately assumed that we were of those South Africans who didn’t know how to use a washing machine because we have legions of servants. Wonder who they had been hanging out with.

And then there are more serious issues. Someone pointed out to me that nowhere in the world does the government provide free housing for people. I agree hat you value something more when you have worked for it, contributed to it and earned it. But on the other hand, we have such a huge backlog and people in such dire need of a basic roof over their heads (never mind an enclosed toilet) that we really need to just pitch in and get them housed. How else will we level the playing fields?

Similarly, I listened while a foreign friend had a little rant about why South Africans have to qualify people according to race as in "a Black guy came walking into the room". I'm afraid, this has been ingrained into our brains and vocabularies - a person's "race" put him into a box that described everything from the language he spoke, the place he lived, maybe even his job and the car he drove. 

So having come this far without a “Hotel Rwanda” or a “Holocaust”, I think that we should get on with making this a great country and find our own identity. We cannot be neatly boxed (in spite of the previous regime doing their utmost) – indeed we probably won’t fit into that melting pot without boiling over. But we will be proudly South African. Already the next generation is moving away from the labels. I have never heard my children refer to their friends as a white kid or a black kid; they seem to have little difficulty finding other adjectives.