Fear Factor

School has been on holiday this week, and I have been busy enjoying my free time and being somewhat lazy, so I apologize for the time between posts.  During such leisurely days, though, I have definitely come across a mother lode of material for my writing.  One such experience occurred yesterday.

As I was walking into town from the township to have lunch at the local café, I noticed a small gym and DVD rental shop.  Given that my movie watching has gone to zero since arriving in South Africa, I stopped in to inquire and ended up meeting an Afrikaner bodybuilder and his very sweet wife.  Wouldn’t you know it, they love country music and are currently saving up to take a vacation to Texas, so they were very interested to meet one of the natives.  We had a good little chat that ended with them inviting me to have a braai (South African English/Afrikaans for cookout or barbecue) at their house later that night.  For all the Peace Corps staff that I know monitor our blogs, you will be happy to know that I informed them that I could not walk at night, so they offered to pick me up later and drop me off after the festivities were finished.

Giving directions to my house in the township is a bit problematic because most of the streets do not have street names.  Navigation usually involves commands like “take a left at the lightpost, then when you see a bunch of tires go right, etc.”  For that reason, the Afrikaner wife drove me back home so they would know where to pick me up later in the evening.  As soon as we crossed the highway, there was, for me at least, a noticeable fear that appeared on the woman’s face, and she informed me that she had never actually been to the location before (location is South African English for Black township).  She inquired about my safety, and I replied that one did have to be careful, but especially now that many people knew me, it was not something that I was worried about every minute of the day.

Later, when it was dark, she came back, picked me up, and took me to their cute house in town where we had an absolutely delicious dinner.  The wife prepared salad and other small sides while the husband grilled meat on the braai (Braai, in addition to meaning cookout, also signifies the grill itself).  Being a foreigner in this country, I try to make a point of staying away from discussions of South African politics as much as possible, but this couple was very interested to know the American perspective while telling me their own views.  This was the first time that I finally got an insight into how the White and Afrikaner population take a look at things, and it was quite eye-opening.  The various topics discussed will probably occupy my blog posts for a month, but for today I will just mention the issue of fear as it seemed to come up again and again.

It seems that one of the main reasons for the continued separation of the Black and White populations here is a result of fear.  I was told story after story involving Whites that had been raped, killed, and butchered by Blacks with such criminals many times not being punished by the justice system.  The couple were very interested in the Peace Corps and what we were doing but also agreed that they would never allow their daughter to live in such places among Blacks for security reasons.  I was told that the Black on White violence was sometimes approaching genocide status, and the wife inquired as to whether I thought that foreign countries would ever help if the Black population decided to declare all out war on the Whites.

Such fear is especially compounded because of one of the political leaders here by the name of Julius Malema.  Mr. Malema apparently made some comment that they would kill every White man, woman, and child if they needed to and still enjoys singing an apartheid-struggle song that has the lyrics “Shoot the Boers” (Boer is South African English for Afrikaner).  The husband made the statement multiple times that he believed that Mr. Malema is going to cause a war within the country within the next 5 years.  Obviously, it was difficult for me to make any comments on such statements because I have only been here for 3 months and have not read and researched the specific stories that they referred to.  It was just poignant how afraid these people were for themselves and the future.

I could not help but think that some of the comments made by the Afrikaners, were reminiscent of those made by some White Americans, though many of the statements made were more common closer to the abolition of slavery and then even the civil rights movement.  Perhaps some of my older readers can let me know if they remember similar comments made in the past.  Even so, America is not South Africa, the two have very different histories and populations, so one has to be very careful about drawing correlations between the two.  Regardless, it was just amazing how deep-seated the fear of this nice Afrikaner couple was towards Blacks and what the Blacks might do in the future now that they have control.  

Based on my experience so far, it seems that such fear is a bit exaggerated and I hope that perhaps I can work to promote a bit better understanding during my time here.  That being said, crime is a problem in the township and in other black populations, especially robbery and burglary.  I would be lying if I said that I do not worry about my house being broken into sometimes for the reason that people might think as a White American, I am rich and have lots of money in my residence.  Ultimately, though, as I muse over all of this, what I come back to is that I am here to help kids get an education that will hopefully turn them away from such criminal activities and engender the type of upstanding Black citizens that demand respect from all elements of society.  That is the ultimate way that I can help promote a better understanding and respect between Black and White populations.