a Cape Town, Saturday, 19.9.2009 @ round about 10 am in the morning. With a friend of mine I visit the FNB Bank in the pedestrian zone and we have to wait quite a while until somebody attends to us. Everybody needs some time to resolve his or her problem. Looking around in this big room, I suddenly realise that I am the only white person in the crowd of customers. I realize it and I find it amazing. When I arrived in Cape Town in 1997 the city was known for her “white colour”. Coloureds where common, but not so many black South Africans. The first time I experienced me being a minority was in Johannesburg a couple of years ago, when I went to Hilbrow and the muti market.
This country is really transforming, but race remains an issue. Most applications, most forms have a space where you must identify yourself either as black, coloured, white or asian/indian. Knowing the race means knowing a bit of the history of the family the person is coming from. It is knowing a bit of the trouble, this person, if old enough, had to go through in life.
In Germany, where I was born, race was never really an issue when I was young. As Bitburg, where I grew up, had a big US base, the colour black was rather associated with “having money”. So here in South Africa I had to learn to appreciate this race issue – and I struggled with it. Because for me, so i always argued, race does not matter…
Well, I had to learn here, that it does matter, one or the other way, in the past of South Africa, in its present times and it looks like this will still go on quite a while. I must admit, I am getting used to it – and do not understand anymore, when visiting Europeans start arguing about it.. I guess, I am becoming more and more a real South African; or should I say: a real Capetonian?? 🙂
Filed under: Reflection, Society and living environment, apartheid, cape town, hilbrow, history, johannesburg, muti, race, south africa, white
