Spheres of South Africa: The Legacy of Apartheid and the Death of Madiba

A few weeks ago, I had a Skype date with my good friend (and constant inspiration) Rohini Bhatia who is currently a Fulbright Scholar in Delhi, India.  She was sitting in a posh café which led me ask her about her transition into the “developing world” as she sipped on a latte and used the café’s wi-fi which was good enough to sustain our Skype conversation.  She went on to tell me about her reservations about her time in India thus far, her work and her leisure being centered around a specific “sphere of Delhi,” as she called it.  It was the sphere of the new, young, modern, cosmopolitan, and most importantly, wealthy elite.  She shared with me her frustrations, expressing that she would soon have an “expat-free” week where she tried not to indulge in comforts of home that she was able to find, even in one of the countries that many people would imagine to be as different from America as you can get.

I let her words fester for a bit, but I knew immediately that she was explaining something that I similarly felt here in South Africa.  It’s funny because I’m currently writing this in Como Caffe, a New York Italian-themed brunch place that I frequent for its awesome red rooibos cappuccinos and the fact that it’s the only place in this city where you can get bagels (and they’re pretty decent, I might add).

I recognize that I, too, have been stuck in a “Sphere of South Africa.”  It is the sphere of the rich, in both monetary wealth and social status.  It is the sphere that is virtually synonymous with the white that excludes everyone else.  It’s the sphere of South Africa that’s defined by nice restaurants with white patrons and black servers, where even though I’m paying 7 bucks for a meal for myself, that could very easily feed a family a few kilometers away in a township.  It’s the sphere of South Africa that is full of adventurous excursions like petting cheetahs, swimming with seals, and bungee jumping that most other South Africans would never imagine doing.  It’s the sphere of South Africa that still benefits from the legacy of apartheid, an apartheid that still exists but is now wearing a different guise.  Most importantly, it is the sphere of privilege.

The spheres of South Africa are heavily segregated, separated by money, which is incredibly influenced by race.  It has been over 20 years since the end of apartheid, but the same social structures remain mostly intact.  There are no blatant laws that ban black people (or coloured people, or any race, for that matter) from navigating the social strata, but there still remains an unspoken code.  The remnants of a previous hierarchy still persists, however dismantled the system may have become.

The fact remains that you can change laws, you can create policies, have one of the most liberal constitutions in the world, but that means nothing if people on the ground continue to perpetuate now-archaic ideals of social structure.  It just comes to show that policy is useless unless people enact it; policy and culture often differ, and when they do, culture always prevails.

This modern-day apartheid, if you choose to call it that, may be an unwilling, unintended continuation of the past, and I honestly don’t think that people are actively keeping these destructive structures afloat.  However, the truth is that apartheid is still alive in a non-formalized, and because of that, possibly more harmful way.

It used to be accepted that Black people got the short end of the stick because of apartheid.  Now, they get the short end of the stick because they just do.  No explanation needed other than that: it’s because it’s what they’ve always gotten.  And nobody quite knows how to fix it, and that’s probably because there’s no quick, easy, put-a-bandaid-on-it solution.  So Black people keep getting the short end of the stick but are content because it doesn’t have to be that way.  There’s nothing that’s keeping them down anymore.  But there’s also nothing bringing them up, either.

This country has seen a lot of change in the past two decades, but it has not seen nearly enough.  I understand that change takes time, and I have faith that the country is continually improving itself and becoming more equitable.

This comes in light of the death of Nelson Mandela earlier this month.  The country has been (to me) pretty calm about the situation, probably already expecting for the past few months starting when Mandela was first admitted to the hospital.  With the possibility of the national hero’s death looming in everyone’s mind, it didn’t quite shock anyone.

Now is as good a time as any to assess Nelson Mandela’s accomplishments.  Though we all know that he has been an incredible, powerful voice for disenfranchised South African people, we cannot be satisfied with his accomplishments (and those of his contemporaries) alone.  He has contributed a lot to the fight for justice in this country, but as we can see in contemporary South Africa, the war is not over.

What gives me hope is that his death has paved a way for new, young leaders to emerge, to take his life as an example, to create change because more change is direly needed.  We need not mourn Mandela; rather, we must cultivate the Mandelas of the future.

Stories from the Field: Lira

“Sometimes you want to cry, but you have to stay strong,” Lira tells me.

“There was one girl, the oldest one in the class.  So beautiful.  Her hair, her nails, everything was so nice,” Lira begins to retell, unexpectedly telling me the most impactful story she had encountered in her two years as a Grassroot Soccer SKILLZ Coach.  Lira is very quiet but very thoughtful.  You can always tell that she’s thinking just by looking at her.  When she musters up the courage to speak, rest assured that it’s something worth sharing, and you darn straight better be listening.

“She was so confident.  You could see it, you could feel it.”

Lira goes on to tell me that the female student, the perfect prototype of young South African woman, was willingly abused by her older boyfriend.  She would often get beat by her older boyfriend, often as much as three times a day.  The young girl was complacent about it, and was actually quite proud of it, telling an entire room of her female classmates. 

“He gives me money, so it’s okay,” the girl announces to the class, as Lira stared, dumbfounded.  The young participant was only 15 years old.

It was heartbreaking, Lira expressed, that someone so young has already been a victim of domestic abuse and culturally-ingrained gender based violence.  Moreover, the teenager had been impressionable enough to feel like her treatment was warranted and that this kind of behavior is acceptable.  Already, she has been exposed to engendered inequalities and has developed habits that may be hard to break.

What was most heartbreaking to me was what Lira told me next:

“Since she was the most beautiful, smart, outspoken girl in the class, everyone looked up to her.  And they didn’t see anything wrong with her story.  They think, ‘Well, if she got hit and gets something out of it, then I can be hit and get money, too!  Look at her, she’s perfect!’”  As if perfect was defined by a broken statue of a black goddess, crumbling from the inside, as long as it maintained its outer luster.

“What if that girl stays in that relationship?,” Lira asks me.  “Even if she moves on, what will she expect from her next relationship?  She may never have a good man who will treat her right because she’s expecting money.  How was I supposed to change her mind?”

These were questions I had no answers to, yet they were questions that Grassroot Soccer coaches face on a regular basis.

Our coaches are sent to be role models, to create dialogue, to ruffle some feathers.  And sometimes that’s hard to do in situations like these.  To be a role model for those who already have them.  To create dialogue about topics that nobody wants to discuss.  To ruffle feathers where the feathers are unmovable.  It’s a much harder task than what we read on paper.

Coaches, like Lira in this predicament, felt like they’ve needed to back-track; they want to erase all the things that young people have seen (or sometimes have experienced firsthand), but they know that isn’t possible.  Instead, they have to challenge firmly entrenched ideals, to dig deep into the core of people’s attitudes, and try to make impactful change in their behavior.

The question this posits is how early we need to start tackling issues of sex and domestic violence.  “We need to start younger,” Lira shared, thinking that the vital conversations she had with this particular participant in that classroom was already too late.  If there’s anything I’ve learned from public health, it’s that it’s way easier to prevent something from happening than to stave it away it once it’s already happened.

Grassroot Soccer provides a safe space for important conversations to occur, to curb harmful habits before they develop, and to empower a generation of young people not only to stay HIV-free and healthy in the biomedical sense of the word, but to also have healthy relationships with one another.  This is something that is often overlooked in the Grassroot Soccer model: that SKILLZ Coaches are promoting healthy lifestyles (physically and emotionally), of which being HIV-negative plays vital a part in the reality of young South Africans today.