”White men are happy in the New SA.” Those banner headlines almost caused me to crash my car in semi-Black Consciousness fury. What was Mondli Makhanya’s Sunday Times trying to tell me?
But I can’t afford to crash my car, no matter what the posters say, because, like those of most black men, my car is not insured.
Ha, ha, ha, that was a joke. In fact it is a lie. I am insured.
But I know for a fact that most South Africans are not insured to drive their motor vehicles. And that makes me, one of the few who take the trouble to insure their valued vehicle, all the more careful about how I drive it.
You never know who is going to hit you, or by what you are going to be hit. But you can be sure that, if you are the subject of an unexpected traffic accident you are going to bear the cost, even if it isn’t your fault. Yes, it doesn’t seem fair.
The average white South African (correct me if I am wrong) seems to think that if he or she is involved in a traffic accident it will be because some stupid black driver of a black taxi from Soweto or KwaMashu or Khayelitsha has pulled out into the traffic lane without regard to what is coming behind him, and caused the rampaging pink 4×4 Jeep or elegant Yengeni to come to a sudden, screeching standstill, oil and steam gushing from its shattered radiators, delaying his or her arrival at an essential business meeting or cocktail party, while poor whites from the southern suburbs rush out from the shrubs to tow him or her away in their souped-up tow trucks.
And who can blame them? This has happened to all of us. Although not all of us to whom this has happened are necessarily white.
Yes, the taxis are a scourge, and the government seems helpless to do anything about it. Yes, we all dread the day when we will have to stand on the sidewalk by our wrecked automobile, arguing with a Zulu taxi driver about right and wrong, and finally have to back off, saying, ”Okay, I’ll pay.” And the taxi driver goes off uncensored on his uninsured way.
But this is not the only way things play out in the new South Africa, after 10 years of democracy. (Which is why, I suppose, that newspaper chose to rub it in our faces that it is the white men of this country who are happier than anybody else — and why they are still, as they ever were, King of the Heap.)
Consider this.
I was motoring placidly in my neighbourhood a few Sunday mornings ago, on the way to get cereal, milk, eggs and the Sunday papers for my family (don’t get me wrong — we are modern people, and don’t eat all of the above food simultaneously).
Anyway, having learned that it is the law of the road in South Africa that you give way at a roundabout to whoever has got there first, I was astonished when a paunchy, yellow-haired young white fellow driving a long white Land Rover that could have swallowed up the whole of the homelands sailed confidently across my path, looking neither left nor right.
I think he glanced in my direction at the last moment, but by that time it was too late. If I hadn’t braked (I, who had the right of way) he would have ridden right over me as if I was a cockroach.
I hooted fumingly, but the arrogant, leonine white fellow sailed right on ahead, as if the whole country was his.
So now you are telling me that I am bitter because I don’t own a Land Rover of my own to drive around in the middle of town. Okay, listen to this.
By some unexplainable logic it turned out that we came across each other a few minutes later at another roundabout four blocks down — only this time he was behind me. I could see him breathing down my rear-view mirror (which I keep there for legal purposes). We had arrived at the same point by different routes.
Conscious of the traffic from my right, I was about to set off when a car shot out of an intersection. So I braked.
Our leonine friend behind, no doubt talking on his cellphone and filing his nails at the same time, failed to see me brake in time and slammed his two-tonne Land Rover right into my rear bumper.
It should have been one of those simple things. ”I’m in the wrong,” he said, climbing down from his military cabin. ”I’ll sort you out. Just give me your details.”
I gave him my insurance stuff, and took his assurances, confident that a white man, at least, wouldn’t let me down. Not like being bumped by a black taxi driver.
Lo and behold, two weeks later, when it came to the reckoning, he blithely said to me over the phone, ”Look here, I don’t actually have insurance for my car. I tell you what, you get your insurance to pay what they’ll pay for the damage, and I’ll make up the difference. Okay, laddie?”
Now, it is not in the nature of my people to rise up in arms against those who have caused them visible injuries — not these days anyway.
But in the old days, it was.
”White men are happy in the New SA.”
I think this young white chap, with his long Land Rover and careless blond head of hair, has got off lightly, because it would take too much time, money and effort for me to take him on at this foolish, flighty, uninsured game at my expense.
Which leaves me very unhappy, and wondering about myself, and the choices I have made.
And which equally leaves him, as I dither about my choices, to be one of those deliriously happy white men who see nothing wrong with the new South Africa.