An encounter with racial prejudice

It was quite a sunny day, Sunday 1st of March, my spirits were high and excited that after a long time I was able to speak to people I could identify with; I had just arrived home from visiting some Malawian friends in Musgrave area, this time it was around five in the evening. The moment I opened my door, my mind went back a hundred steps back to where I started my day- in the morning before I went out, I was feeling down about my inability to make a break through on some of my major issues like literature review for my dissertation and my assignment for HIV/Aids and Gender was complete only in my head- it was this feeling of not having the power to do anything that made me to think that may be I needed to cool my head off by doing something totally off books, that was when I called my folks in Musgrave. However when I arrived home, the laptop on my bed, papers strewn all over, brought me back to the same spot I stood in the morning.

However, I realized that my life was much larger than these little things that were worrying me and I just needed to summon my energy from where it lies hidden somewhere in me. At that point I told myself that Durban weather, with its cool humid breeze at times provides a nourishing cool brush with nature and it could provide me with the possibility to allow myself to get the best out of myself if I went and submerged into the spirit of the calming winds. I decided to get down onto the road for a walk, with as little covering on me as possible to allow the fresh breath that nature provides to soothe my being and calm my nerves. When I opened the gate, the first thing I noticed was that some dude was reversing his car into our drive, the moment he saw me, he pulled his windows up. I did not mind him; I just went on with my objectives. After walking for about five minutes I saw a white car in front of me with a guy and possibly his gal, however when they saw this ‘black’ guy walking aimlessly towards their direction they appeared quite apprehensive, the immediate thing that I saw them do was to pull the windows up.

This is South Africa in 2009, being a black man in Mzansi is a challenge. I recall one of my friends from Kimberley saying that I should reflect seriously on one of my hobbies, running, this is a sport that is close to my heart, it shapes my whole life. On this day, he told me “hey wena, if you want to keep on running like that make sure that you do it at the sports ground because in South Africa a black man rarely does that for sports and if you see one it is possible that the person might have mugged someone of precious items, a thief. It is true that the crime in Mzansi is mostly committed by our brothers who we share the skin color. Like in the past week more than thirteen people have been short dead by the police for various serious crimes, out of this figure no white face appears.

Thus the apprehension that people express when they see a black dude walking up the road in the suburb could in a way be justified. However for someone from Malawi, a country in which racial issues do not even make headlines, it sounds quite a hectic thing to comprehend. That you always have to justify that you are not a threat as people think, I remember telling some white lady, last year, she had come out of her house to pick an umbrella that had been blown outside by the wind, when she saw me she dashed back inside the fence, but I had to shout to reassure her that I was just a guy from across and she can just get her thing. Although I could see her embarrassed but I felt this is a challenge that South Africa still has to carry.
I am writing this article after reading Obama’s Dream from my father, in which he illuminates some of the challenges that he encountered because of his skin color, while that was in the 60s and 70s, in South Africa this is now in 2009 almost a decade and a half after democracy and the demise of apartheid, while it is easy to say that the nation is still young, I believe that the country has enough capacity, its economy, the human capital and the infrastructure on which to implement programmes that will allow for inclusively sharing the spaces on which as human beings we interface each other without being apprehensive or looking behind your back. Coz it sulks that you always have to explain yourself, it’s terrible!!!!!

NB: After talking to some friends over this issue in the past week, they made me realize, the other aspect which i did not depict in the foregoing paragraphs. On our reflection on this issue it became apparent that as black people in South Africa, we tend to fear each other more than other races, one of my friends made it a point of asking me, if i would not be afraid when i see another black fellow walking aimlessly like i was doing. Ofcourse, i would. Most of the times when i am sitting at home, it does not take more than five minutes before i check who is walking outside and i get threatened when i see a suspicious figure. This has especially increased in this week when some students from Botswana were atacked in their apartment at seven in the morning. Some gun trotting fellows went broke into the house and beat up the students, taking with them their precious items. The issue of crime in South Africa makes the fight against racialised biasses very difficult to deal with. But i still am of the opinion that the government is to blame. Poverty, though not a justifiable reason, is making the lives of the people very difficult to negotiate. If we had a pro-poor mindset in the formulation of policies, we would have a deliberate strategy to minimize the poverty levels. One question that i alawys ask is- If the government says that it does not have enough economic capacity to deal with the peoples socioeconomic situation, how did they mobilize the resources to construct a new satdium in Durban at a cost of (in 2006) 1.83 billion rands, which now might have risen to some greater heights due to the economic melt down on the global market? The answer to this questionb lies in Growth Employment and Redistribution a macro economic policy that the government introduced after Nelson Mandela's Reconstruction and Development Programme, from building people's welfare and capacity shifting to economic growth at the expense of the people. Although GEAR failed, it has been recast as Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA) the motive is still GEAR's objectives but it has just been burried in different words and style of presentation- It is like painting a hyena white to look like a sheep.