Elizma is a born free. As old as South Africa’s 15-year-old democracy, she will never carry a pass, be denied the vote or forced to use a separate toilet. Unlike her parents.
In fact, she doesn’t even like to dwell on her parents’ life before the first all-race elections on April 27 1994.
”I don’t really like to think about the past because it’s in the past and it doesn’t really matter to me,” says the 15-year-old.
Elizma is one of few black students at a former whites-only Johannesburg school with rolling hockey-fields and smart brick buildings, marred only by the heavy roll of barbed wire above the
fences.
It’s a breezy chorus often heard in South Africa: the painful past should be left behind in what has become a post-1994 ”rainbow nation” mix of skin colours, cultures and 11 official languages.
Or as Elizma’s white schoolmate Martin puts it: ”My parents taught me all of us have the same organs — it’s just the sheet that covers it.”
As long as there is no interracial dating, that is. Even the question makes the group giggle and shake their heads.
”For me, it looks kinda unnatural,” says Elizma. ”When you look at Adam and Eve, they’re both white. You don’t see Adam black and Eve white!”
With their baby-faces just showing the first signs of the teenage curse of acne, the pupils have no memory of apartheid South Africa which the election of Nelson Mandela ended with a message of reconciliation.
But the shackles of apartheid-era prejudice still linger, even for parents that teach otherwise.
”If you had a situation where you liked someone from another race, you won’t get past your parent. I won’t get past my parents, let me tell you that!” said Martin.
The teenagers study at Linden High School, which only teaches in Afrikaans, once seen as the language of the oppressor for most blacks in South Africa.
Its first black pupil enrolled five years ago and now about 30 of the 600 children here are black South Africans.
”You would find during break or in classrooms sometimes that groups of different culturals sometimes prefer to work together in a group and we don’t discourage that,” said Nico van Niekerk,
deputy head teacher.
”We also don’t encourage necessarily that groups must mix; we want the kids to be as comfortable as possible,” he said.
South Africans went to the polls on Wednesday for a fourth time since the demise of apartheid, handing the African National Congress another five years in power but in a political arena soiled by graft allegations and infighting.
Nineteen-year-old Simone Pillay was born in 1990, the year Mandela walked free after 27 years in prison, and voted for the first time on Wednesday.
”I didn’t really experience apartheid and discrimination first hand so I don’t think it really impacted on me. It didn’t affect me directly,” she said.
Born into change, Pillay has multiracial friends. Her brother dates a white girl and it doesn’t bother her.
But she still believes the rainbow nation has some way to go, citing new race-driven issues such as government’s employment equity and ethnic tensions.
”I think there is still a lot of racism out there,” she said.
The differences show most clearly in dating, the students say.
For some it’s simple laws of nature. ”I haven’t been attracted physically to someone from a different race — I’m going to be honest,” Jacques allows.
And for others, it’s an inheritance.
”Most parents prohibit or warn their kids against dating other races. [Why?] I don’t actually know… because it’s another race,” said Simone.
Pirow, who worries about South Africa’s youth being blamed for apartheid sins, believes the scars of the past have not healed enough.
”It’s still very hard,” he admits. ”It’s a certain mindset that we’ve acquired. It’s kind of depressing actually because it’s a never-ending circle.” – AFP
