The Honeymoon phase is, indeed, dead and reality has settled in. My time here has revealed the spit beneath the shine of Stellenbosch. This town is a haven of sorts. It’s very European and “safe.” In fact, it feels like I could still be in the States. However, there are race dynamics at play here of which I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface. The biggest indicator that there is something awry is the fact that while the Western Cape is made up of 80% Blacks and Coloureds (a number that roughly matches each of the bigger cities within the Western Cape, including Stellenbosch), Stellenbosch University has less than 30% Blacks and Coloureds.
There is both institutional and very personal racism prevalent here.
I have a professor, who shall go unnamed, but suffice it to say he teaches history, that I believe is very much part of the problem. He is an Afrikaner and upholds all traditional Afrikaner beliefs. I don’t recall if I gave a very clear picture of what “Afrikaner” means, but if I didn’t, I’ll do it briefly now. Afrikaners are descendants from the (White) dutch that colonized South Africa. They speak Afrikaans (something I will be getting into in a moment). They intermixed mostly with Germans and French that came to the country, though some also have west-African slave ancestry. Their conflicts with the British are similar to those the British had with people in the American colonies. It would take me much too long to really get into the history of the Afrikaner people, but I will say that there is a history of contention between them and indigenous peoples (mostly those that are Black and Coloured) that has lessened but it still present today. Back to my point though, is that this professor is the most insidious type of racist there is, the kind that doesn’t think he’s racist. And he teaches history. To people who aren’t from South Africa and will believe just about anything he says about it. In an aggravating conversation I had with him, we debated the value of the Affirmative Action system and he calmly told me that the reason it should be done away with was because people of color were lazy and couldn’t do any of their jobs right. He is one of (presumably; I haven’t taken classes from EVERY professor) several lecturers on campus that promote this kind of thinking and inhibit the growth of equality in a country that needs it very much.
An extract from the chronicles of an international exchange student.
Source: http://samcoug.blogspot.com/2010/09/looking-behind-curtain.html
MaNtaka 