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.