Race relations in South Africa
By Luke
I am hoping to draw on my earlier and very positive experiencing dealing with the major groups in South Africa society to fully understand the current status of race relations in South Africa.
Almost 7 years ago now in June of 2012, I travelled to South Africa for a month-long research project. The project was based on studying the impact of elephant local overpopulation on the habitat by recording data on vegetation and bird species in a private game reserve in rural KwaZulu-Natal. We flew in and out of Johannesburg, but immediately drove 9 hours east to this game reserve. The closest civilization was the town of Pongola (population 1,403) and we didn’t venture off the drive from the reserve and our lodging 5 minutes away. Days were spent out in the hot sun with about 100 times more antelope spotted than people.
To educate myself for this trip, I read “The Covenant” by James Michener, a historical novel covering the entire history of South Africa through the start of Apartheid. This gave me context around the constant battles over land and resources between races from early settlement by the Dutch and slaughtering of small tribes, rise of the British regime and their early missionaries, and the great success of the Zulu from a no name tribe to the most powerful in South Africa. In our little world next to the game reserve, we were exposed to all of these peoples, but didn’t see any of the tension I had heard and read about. Our lodging and was run by Zulu, our naturalist was English, our security guard (providing protection from animals in the field) was Afrikaans. Our guide and security guard would speak in Zulu whenever they didn’t want us to understand, which is not a practice I expect in a former colony. Our weekly trip to the bar to see the rugby series, South Africa versus England, saw everyone in the area, of all races, gather to cheer on their diverse group of countrymen beat the English.
This was clearly not even close or accurate to the whole picture of race relations in South Africa. On our drive out of Johannesburg there were slums leaving the city like I had never seen before. When someone from our group befriended a local Zulu man our age and was given a small rack of horns from a klipspringer as a gift, we were told that he couldn’t bring it home because it would probably be classified as poaching and confiscated. There were subtle undertones of distance and between the races.
I am expecting this time to South Africa, spending almost exclusively all my time in Johannesburg and Cape Town, for these tensions to be a lot more explicit and obvious. In such a confined space with lack of resources, there is no escaping it like people could pretend while watching the rugby match outside a town of 1,000 people. Hearing people directly address these issues at some of the non-profits we will visit will be in stark contrast to the zero mention of tensions. I am hoping to draw on my earlier and very positive experiencing dealing with the major groups in South Africa society to fully understand the current status of race relations in South Africa.