South Africa: Country of Contradictions

We are away, 30,000 feet above the South Africa countryside as we head on to the next phase of our adventure, Madagascar (much more on that to come, I promise). The last ten or so days have been a whirlwind, very full and enjoyable. Mu did a nice job summing up 24 hours in Cape Town, and it just kept going from there. With daylight running from before 6 am to around 8 pm, there is so much time to enjoy the outdoors and great weather, both of which South Africa does in great style during their summer.

Sunset on the Garden Route, Wilderness - WC

In many ways, the parts of South Africa we got to see reminded me of the West, and specifically California. The coast on the Garden Route is rugged with big long beaches that have relentless swells coming in off the Indian Ocean. Elsewhere, we got in some climbing, on both sandstone and limestone, all of which was quite good. It felt great to be doing a sport we love dearly and the settings within river canyons at all three crags certainly justified lugging our gear down in the Rig from Nairobi.

View from the crag, Kliemond, WC

We also realized first-hand how large the country is, with some long drive days at pretty high rates of speed, especially when compared to many of the countries we went through on the overland trip. Here Mu was ripping along at 120 kph (over 70 mph) on a country road with no shoulder, and was still the slowest car on the road. Even at that quick pace (sometimes up to 80 mph) it took hours upon hours to make our way up from Cape Town to Jo-burg. The 20 hours or so of countryside that we saw sometimes recalled the grand vistas, distant mountains and vastness of Wyoming, and other times the flat agrarian nature of Nebraska. All the while, I held out hope of seeing more Kudu, the massive antelopes that can jump at least ten feet in the air. No dice on the kudu, but I did get to see some last sprinkboks and a foot long tortoise meandering its way on the side of a hectic country roads.

Heading up the N9, EC

Road tripping on the N2 - WC

Oh The Food!

Farm fresh bread, stone fruit and strawberries from the local fruit stand, corn on the cob from stalks right in front of us, cheap and delicious seafood, boutique little microbrews, fresh cheeses and all kinds of succulent cuts of meat. We did not go hungry. Not by a mile. This is a culture that intuitively adopts and embraces the locavore movement, so the local palette is right in our wheelhouse. The results are consistently yummy and with the Rand currently being weak against the dollars, it all felt like a deal. My personal favorite meal was yesterday's lunch at a local little deli/brewery in the funky artist community of Niue Bethesda. We sat by a little stream/fountain, had a glass or two of the local brew with a huge hunk of rosemary farm bread and a black pepper crusted chevre, with dates left over from a previous farm stand. Simple with every component pitch perfect.

But.

The 'apart' in apartheid is still sadly alive and well in South Africa. Apartheid only ended in 1994, and with such a broad human rights violation the tail of its impact will be long. In my view and very small sample size, there is still not much mixing of the races, nearly two decades hence. That is barely a generation, and the impacts of a systemic discrimination would seem to be embedded so deeply that it is hard for me to even predict when those endowments and privilege will be spread more diffusely across the society and races. There are many that argue, and i think compelling, the U.S. culture still carries the stigma and impact of slavery, nearly a hundred and fifty years after the Civil War ended and fifty years after passage of the broad Civil Rights Acts under LBJ. If that holds true for South Africa, we are looking at material impacts from apartheid out to at least 2144.

Disappointingly, we constantly found ourselves in settings that were just white, despite wanted to have a broader connection to people and places and the fact that whites constitute a small minority of the population (approximately 10%). All throughout our travels here in Africa, we have gotten right into areas that we are not always comfortable, be it the bustling market, or the overcrowded combi van. Here in South Africa, those opportunities never presented themselves. The few times i had a more than superficial conversation with a non-white, it felt like an oasis in the desert. I was often referred to as 'boss'; a term that offends me because of its racist history where any white was the 'boss' to a black african.

In the NYE post, mu talked a bit about celebrating on Long Street in Cape Town, and how the multi-racial crowd was one of the few times we were in such a setting in South Africa. That proved consistent throughout our time here, as we only found ourselves in that kind of place a few times in the 9 days that we were there.

At the very real risk of painting with a broad brush, I sensed many overt signs of wealth displayed by predominantly white elites, from the multi-million dollar Architectural Digest homes along the beaches in Cape Town to the countless new Mercedes, Jags and Range Rovers we saw hurdling down the highways, the inherent inequity of this society is clear to see. Of course, not all of these super-machines was piloted and owned by whites of British or Afrikaans descent, but the vast majority were from those minority segments of society. These brand new luxury cars were often barreling past black hitchhikers on the side of the road, pitifully holding up a ten rand note with the hope of a ride. We never saw anyone being picked up. I am embarrassed to report that we never picked anyone up either, being too fearful of security with all our electronics, cash and passports.

Since South Africa has a larger minority population of whites than other Southern Africa countries, their wealth creation and retention is more obvious. From a numbers perspective, there are more rich whites, and their wealth level is higher. I am honestly surprised that there has not been more actions like those in Zimbabwe, with land takeovers and other direct appropriations from the clearly impoverished sections of society. In setting after setting, blacks were doing the dirty work while whites reaped the vast majority of the financial gains. I can't recall a single instant where I saw someone who looked white getting their hands dirty, but this is an impossibly small sample size to make any grand judgment.

I am even a bit surprised that the African National Congress, the party of Mandela, has not tacked in this direction, as it would surely be a populist move with the strong supermajority of non-whites. Keeping this impulse at bay is surely a great accomplishment of Mandela and other ANC leaders, as you only need to look to Zim and its terrible problems stemming from the unraveling of the rule of law and the complete distrust of its institutions. The ANC is smartly playing the long game, one that preserves the existing capital, human and otherwise, and it must be painful for those leaders to see so many people still living in abject poverty after 18 years of freedom. Overall, across Southern Africa, I have been amazed at the ability of the tiny race-based minority to retain their privileged position in the face of the poverty so many fellow citizens struggle with daily.

In sum, our very brief and enjoyable time in South Africa was a never ending contradiction. We had a great time but were always aware that that enjoyment made us a little bit complicit in the inequality and racism that we felt omnipresent here. This was a duality that i don't want to be able to ever comfortably accept and was too close a reminder of Dr. Martin Luther King's words from Birmingham jail in 1963 as he struggled against America's gross injustice and racism: Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

 

Last sunset in South Africa @ 120 kmh - EC