/ 23 September 2009

Age of innocence

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line [sic],” wrote US intellectual WEB Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, his famous book of race essays published in 1903. In South Africa, more than a century later and 15 years into democracy, racial tensions have subsided, and yet they remain among the biggest barriers to national cohesion.

Percy Zvomuya spoke to high school and university students born in or after 1987 and asked them about their attitudes to race. Would they date someone of a different colour? Have they experienced racism? What do they think of affirmative action? Would they emigrate?

Sibusiso Sibanda, civil engineering student, Wits University, born 1989
When Sibanda was five, in 1994 — the first year of South Africa’s democracy — he and some friends went the sports fields of his new primary school in Witbank to kick a ball. Finding white school mates already playing, they asked to join them but were rebuffed. “At the time I wasn’t even aware there was racism,” he says, “we never took it to heart.”

Since then Sibanda, whose parents were active in the ANC in the 1980s, describes his experiences of racism as “subtle”. He might be in a photocopying shop, vaguely in search of service, when he will abruptly become aware that white people who come in after him are being helped while he struggles to get the attention of shopkeepers.

Would he date someone from another race? “I don’t have any boundaries when it comes to that,” the dreadlocked Sibanda replies. “It will depend on her, not on whether she’s Indian, African or white. I haven’t put myself in a box.”

The third-year civil engineering student has noticed a softening of attitudes in the students enrolling now at the university. When he was in his first year “our class was divided, seating arrangements were separate. I’ve noticed that’s changing.”

Marthinus Jacobs, grade 10, Helpmekaar College, born 1993
Jacobs, who wants to go the University of Pretoria or Stellenbosch to study veterinary science after high school, sees himself primarily as “an Afrikaans boy”.

His knowledge of African languages, he says, does not go beyond greeting and saying goodbye. He wouldn’t date a black girl. “It’s against my culture; it’s against my principles. And I’m not sure my parents would approve.”

He’s quite pleased with the way the country is at the moment, and if he was old enough, he would vote for the Democratic Alliance. Asked if he thinks racial unity is possible, he says “we’ll always be diverse and at peace with each other”. Would he go to a party in Soweto? “No, I don’t think so —” then he adds: “Not on my own. It wouldn’t feel right.

“Sometimes I feel persecuted when [ANC Youth League president] Julius Malema says something. It seems he’s saying this to get at me,” says the teenager who is already worried about his job prospects. “But I won’t consider leaving.”

Jenna-Leigh de Wit, BA Journalism, University of Johannesburg, born 1987
The University of Johannesburg student worries about affirmative action blocking her job prospects and generally about race relations. In general she thinks “white people are sensitive about race and are careful not to be considered racist.”

This tip-toeing around race relations is needless, she argues. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to say you are black and white.” She thinks friendship across the colour line has become easier because of multiracial schooling, but cultural impediments remain. “It’s difficult for an Afrikaans kid to befriend a Zulu.”

The hope of a racially cohesive nation, she says, is not made easier by the fact that “lots of people are still racist and they are bringing their children up this way”. This is ruining the romantic dreams of some, she says. One of her Afrikaans friends is in a relationship with a “coloured boy” but she’s “scared” her parents will find out. De Wit admits that dating a black person would make her own family “unhappy”.

Noluthando Ngwane, BA Drama, Wits University, born 1989
Ngwane has had a white boyfriend, but she’s not sure her father would appreciate a white son-in-law. “My dad will have one or four things to say, because of differences between black and white cultures.” But she wouldn’t mind doing it again. “If I have feelings for a white guy, let it be.”

The lively, Durban-born student says she’s only experienced racism once. On a school hockey trip to Bloemfontein at age 16, she says she got “funny looks” from white people when they stopped at a mall. “It was like we were not meant to be there. This was the first time I felt uncomfortable around white people.” Otherwise, she says, she’s not overly aware of her blackness. “I don’t walk around declaring I am black.”

Politically, Ngwane says she wouldn’t vote for the Democratic Alliance, “because Helen Zille doesn’t do it for me. And it has nothing to do with her being white. It’s the same with ANC, Jacob Zuma doesn’t do it for me.” The Wits student, who has been to “white schools all my life”, says this has shaped her attitudes to other races — differently from a cousin who went to a township school. “I am cool with them [whites] because I grew up with them.”

Nathan Floor, grade 12, Parktown Boys’ High School, born 1992
Born to Christian missionary parents in South Africa, Floor grew up in Ibo, an island off the northern Mozambican coast. When he returned to start high school in Johannesburg, he noticed that “black people here were more assertive” about their identity. “I was irritated at first because I could see them. They were not invisible.”

The teenager wants to study computer science at the University of Cape Town, but at times is uncertain about his job prospects. He confesses to sometimes feeling “insecure and indignant” because of the affirmative action policy by which “jobs are reserved for African people”. Nevertheless, he says won’t emigrate “because I have never been out of Africa and I really like South Africa”.

He has “never seen black people as inferior” though he would “probably not date a black girl”. Floor says “I have many black girlfriends but don’t have any personal relationships. No. I haven’t got to that stage. I wouldn’t know how to react to that if I ever fell in love with a black girl.”

Zain Naidoo, grade 12, Parktown Boys’ High School, born 1992
A self-described “agnostic”, Naidoo is the son of a Muslim father and a coloured Christian mother. He says he is not conflicted about his mixed identity. “No, it’s easier to associate with Indian and coloured people,” says the teenager who likes House music and Hip Hop. “I can’t say I have ever experienced racism — but there’s a better way of doing affirmative action.”

He says he never thinks of leaving South Africa. “This is a good country; next year is 2010 and everyone will be here.”

He has been in a relationship with a girl from within his own community; he has also “dated a white girl” but says he didn’t like the experience as “she was uptight”. He hasn’t “dated an African girl yet” and he doesn’t expect it to be different. “Girls are just girls,” he reasons. How they behave is dependent on how they were raised and their background. A black girl and white girl from Sandton, he reckons, will behave in the same way.

Nevalia Martins, grade 11, Rand Girls’ High, born 1994
Martins is reluctant to define herself in terms of a race. Being defined racially, she explains, has pitfalls as different race groups labour under peculiar burdens. Some people expect her to act like a coloured, which she finds “restricting”. “We are all Africans,” she says, echoing former president Thabo Mbeki’s famous speech. “I have dated an African and a white,” she says, and they’re both the same.

“You get white boys who act like blacks and the other way round, ” she says, adding that now “there was no difference between blacks and whites”, perhaps because of the multiracial schooling system. A little wistfully she adds, “It’s nicer when there’s difference.”

Sibusiso Khoza, BA student, Wits University, born 1990
Khoza voted for the DA in the last elections even though he says he’s an ANC supporter. The ANC’s majority, he argues, is undermining democracy. “We need to have a strong opposition,” he says, “so I will vote for other parties and yet remain ANC.”

He wouldn’t date a white person. “It’s not what my parents would expect of me. Not that there’s anything wrong with whites or Indians, but I prefer my own race.”

Khoza says he’s encountered racism. “I’ve seen white people who are predisposed to treat you differently because you are black. Some will tip-toe around you. Others believe that we, as black people, are out to get them.”

This animus, he says, is mutual. “In some instances I find that black people tend to be more racist. I know black people who are so race conscious that whites can’t a say a thing without it being interpreted as a racial attack — if you walk into my class on the right you will see white people, on the left you will see black people.”