In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome - Foreign Affairs - Nairaland
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| In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by black247: 3:11pm On Oct 09, 2014 |
In a Divided City, Many Blacks See Echoes of White Superiority Per-Anders Pettersson for The New York Times Black and mixed-race commuters go to a taxi and train station. Many nonwhites live in distant townships. More Photos » CAPE TOWN — For countless foreign visitors, Cape Town is an indelible symbol of the beauty and promise of post-apartheid South Africa. Beyond its gorgeous scenery and great wines, its very logo — an outline of majestic Table Mountain superimposed over a rainbow — emphasizes its historic mix of races and cultures, and its most famous resident, Desmond Tutu, is revered as a symbol of tolerance, inclusiveness and forgiveness. Multimedia Slide Show In Cape Town, Apartheid’s Scars Run Deep Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors The New York Times Apartheid left deep scars that still demarcate Cape Town. More Photos » Enlarge This Image Per-Anders Pettersson for The New York Times Cape Town’s racial divisions are reflected in places like restaurants. More Photos » But for many black South Africans, this city represents something very different: the last bastion of white rule. “No matter how famous/rich u r, ur still a 2nd class citizen if ur Black in Cape Town,” Lindiwe Suttle, a singer and performance artist, wrote in a Twitter challenge to Helen Zille, the white leader of the party that governs this city. After the post drew a chorus of support from black celebrities and others in the echo chamber of Twitter, Ms. Zille shot back, “What complete nonsense.” But that was hardly the last word. The Twitter battle, which broke out a few months ago and featured dueling hashtags (#capetownisracist and a countercampaign, #capetownisawesome), has given way to soul-searching in this city of 3.5 million people at the southern tip of Africa: Does this nation’s celebrated rainbow end where the mountain meets the sea? This is the only major metropolis in South Africa where black people are not the majority, and it remains deeply divided. The particularly harsh legacy of apartheid as it was carried out here has left especially deep scars that still demarcate the geography: whites in the city center and its mountainside inner suburbs, nonwhites in the distant townships on the Cape Flats. Apartheid policies effectively barred blacks from living or even working in the city, giving so-called colored, or mixed-race, people, today the city’s largest ethnic group, priority over blacks for jobs and housing. Beyond history, there is present-day politics. Western Cape is the only one of the country’s nine provinces not run by the governing African National Congress. It is run by Ms. Zille’s Democratic Alliance, which grew out of the white anti-apartheid movement but ultimately came to include remnants of the old National Party that created apartheid. In a speech last year in a black township near Cape Town, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, said the city had an “extremely apartheid system,” according to local newspaper reports on his remarks. The African National Congress is trying to win the province, and the Democratic Alliance has dismissed the assertion that Cape Town is racist as a political ploy. “It is labeled a racist city by the A.N.C. because it is the only metro in the country they don’t control,” said Patricia de Lille, the mayor of Cape Town. The city government is trying hard to change what Ms. de Lille calls “the spatial development of apartheid.” It has renamed two major boulevards in honor of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, and Helen Suzman, an ardent white opponent of apartheid. The two streets converge in the center of the city, a merger meant to symbolize the hope of integration. But a study completed by researchers at the University of Cape Town in December 2010 found that black residents saw few business opportunities for themselves in Cape Town, and that companies struggled to recruit and retain them. It concluded that in Western Cape, “African people are almost always less successful than white people in moving up career paths, creating an ‘ebony ceiling’ effect.” The office is not the only place where blacks feel unwelcome. Many of the more exclusive Atlantic coast beaches, which used to prohibit blacks, still tend to attract almost entirely whites, reinforcing the divide. “I hate going to Camps Bay because everyone there is white,” said Yoliswa Dwane, referring to an upscale seaside suburb on the Atlantic coast that was once reserved for whites. “You don’t get the perception that this is an integrated country.” The discrimination black South Africans describe experiencing here is not the iron-fisted kind that marked the apartheid era. It is more subtle and sometimes hard to pin down. Some report being told that there are no tables available at an empty restaurant, or no cars at a well-stocked rental car office. Others recount being warned by white neighbors not to slaughter animals for festive occasions, or being mistaken for a prostitute simply for having drinks in a bar full of white patrons. And in a city where economic inequality yawns wide, class has in some ways become a proxy for race. Osiame Molefe, a journalist, recently wrote about being turned away from a nightspot. “The third (and final) time I was turned away from Asoka, a bar and lounge in Kloof Street, a representative of the establishment wrote, ‘I can inform you that Asoka does not have a racist door policy! We will be the first to admit that our policy is based on class and superficiality — unfortunately that is what our regulars expect and want. And realistically this is the unfortunate reality of the society we live in!’ ” Left unsaid is how, exactly, one determines “class.” It is hard to reconcile Cape Town’s deep racial divides today with its history as one of the biggest melting pots in the world. Beginning in the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company brought slaves and prisoners from Mozambique and Madagascar, as well as from India and Indonesia. These groups intermarried. White blood inevitably entered the gene pool, too. In the 17th and 18th centuries, racial barriers existed but were not terribly rigid, historians say. “Pigmentation wasn’t an absolute barrier to changing your station,” said Vivian Bickford-Smith, a historian at the University of Cape Town. “There was a saying: ‘Money whitens.’ ” One of the Cape’s earliest governors, Simon van der Stel, was of mixed race. But by the end of the 19th century, pseudoscientific attitudes about race had come into vogue, along with the popular notion of a hierarchy among races, with black Africans at the bottom. When the National Party came to power in 1948 and declared its new policy of apartheid, the separation between the races was etched in stone. People who lived in mixed communities like District 6 near the center of the city were forced from their homes and moved to desolate, segregated towns and townships on the Cape Flats, far from the city. Blacks were so unwelcome in Cape Town that it was often assumed that no blacks were actually from the city. Geoffrey Mamputa’s family has been in Cape Town since the middle of the 19th century, but people still ask him where his home is, even though blacks in the city outnumbered whites by almost two to one in a 2007 count. “When I say I am from Cape Town, the response is always, ‘No black person is from Cape Town,’ ” Mr. Mamputa said. “African people add to the discrimination in the sense that they see themselves as outsiders. They are creating that sense that we don’t belong here.” The racial tensions grew deeper as colored people received preferential treatment, part of a divide-and-rule strategy. During the 1970s and ’80s, when the fight against apartheid heated up, many colored people rejected the label, choosing to think of themselves as black. Students and professors at the University of the Western Cape, which the apartheid government had designated as a colored institution, used this self-identification to reject apartheid’s labeling. “One of the responses to the imposition of race categories is to reject racial categories,” said Suren Pillay, a professor at the university. But that moment was short-lived. In 1994, the colored vote in Western Cape largely went to the National Party, the architect of apartheid. And today, on the campus of the University of the Western Cape, a kind of voluntary segregation has re-emerged, with like sticking by like. “There is not a lot of mixing,” said Nokwanda Khanyile, 21, a business student from Durban. “The coloreds stick to themselves. The whites, too.” Like many young black people, Ms. Khanyile would not consider remaining in Cape Town to pursue a career in business. “Cape Town is racist,” she said. “Everybody knows that.” A version of this list appeared in print on March 23, 2012, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: In a Divided City, Many Blacks See Echoes Of White Superiority. Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 4:53pm On Oct 09, 2014 |
What's with you & South African issues? Does it get your nipples hard or something? The western province is one province out of 9. Those people can either choose to relocate elsewhere or just ignore the living crap out of anyone who has a problem with them being there. You cant force anyone to like you, all you can do is keep living your life. Most black people living in the western cape are Xhosa & Xhosa people are good with "talk to the hand". We dont care for acceptance or being liked. I'm sure many living there dont give much of a rat's ass, except when it comes to jobs & whatnot. White people & the Xhosa have an old beef. Remember, we're the 1st blacks they met when they arrived. We gave them the longest resistance etc. Fact is we dont care. If the blacks there are whining, it's probably for economic reasons other than wanting love or whatever. Old enemies like I said. Tis old news. Didnt even read it. 3 Likes |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by paniki(m): 5:22pm On Oct 09, 2014 |
LaBellaMafiaZA: I think that you are wrong. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 5:24pm On Oct 09, 2014 |
paniki: Elaborate. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by iconize(m): 6:57pm On Oct 09, 2014 |
Xenophobia and laziness doesn't pay. Imagine, only 15% of blek south Africans belong to the middle class society. 1 Like |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by black247: 4:31pm On Oct 10, 2014 |
iconize: They best wake up, eh! As long as they are not watchful..Nigeria is in danger. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 8:39pm On Oct 10, 2014 |
black247: It's an aphrodisiac to you, aint it? S.A making people feeling all tingly for no apparent reason. That's hawt! |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by black247: 8:53pm On Oct 10, 2014 |
LaBellaMafiaZA: It is called foreign affairs. If you are too defensive to see your country being talked about, too teary eyed, too thin skinned, or cant take it...feel free to go to a different forum dear. Otherwise, I will discuss any issue that I think impedes or slows down the black Africans progress as a whole, that includes the soil that you are standing on. Dont take offense. People discuss Nigerians all day..we battle it out and move on. But seeing that this IS a NIGERIAN forum love.. you should probably avoid this forum, especially if you suffer from hypertension.   5 Likes 1 Share |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 12:14am On Oct 13, 2014 |
Actually this is very true. My family from my mom's side are from Cape Town. It is racist city to the core I so hate going to their restaurant and hangout places it drives absolutely crazy. It is made worse by thes whites using foreigners to do their dirty work and promoting more xenophobia and black on black hate. They employ a mainly Congolese and some Nigerians as bouncers to intimidate and push local blacks away from these posh hangout places. I have a serious and deep love and hate relationship with the mother city. I once went to Cubana in Greenpoint to fetch a visiting friend from Namibia. He was flastered and these bouncers refused him taking his R5000 whiskey with him when he only drank a quarter of the bottle. Only for one of the bouncers to take the bottle into his own car. I called him out and made him fetch the bottle infront of his white manager. He started threatening me saying he will not allow me access to Cubana again not knowing I was visiting. The last straw was when he boldly said " this is not Kayelitsha,you must go to Kayelitsha" which is a statement he adopted from his white master i believed. I turned around and said " yes my friend, this is lagos, dummbo". Everyone packed up laughing including the manager. I spilled the whisky, as if my friend couldn't leave with it no one will have it. It was his money. Bback to the topic, anyone who thinks this is a bad reflection on black South Africans is on long thing. The past does not disappear at a flip of a slate it takes time. South African democracy is still in its teen years not fully matured yet. White people will try everything to resist the change but as one can see it is coming like a flood. Just two decades ago, there were not black millionaires or black diamonds as they called in advertising industry and today tons a many more a creeping up from every where. One cannot expect things to change overnight unless you do a Mugabe which is not in the interest of both white or black South Africans. People forget that Apartheid was one of the most successful strategies ever designed with the Nazi system coming second. This was evil supported by the world for years which mostly only black South Africans fought directly laying the lives on the line with no arms but stones & petrol bombs. Lest people forget, if change was that easy we would not have tribal arguements among Nigerians because of wars that happened almost 5 decades ago. Cape Town is only city out many in South Africa that is resistant to change. But change it will by fir by force. 5 Likes |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 3:07pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
BluIvy: OMG, say what now? I didn't know things were that bad eKapa. I got some relatives eGugs & none of them ever mentioned how bad things were. That's truly disgusting. As for Congolese & the rest of them, put them in their place, sana. The nerve of some people! |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by morpheus24: 3:55pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
BluIvy:On average Congolese and Nigerian men are larger in size and have similar body types compared to your average Xhosa man, who is usually short and scrawny so please its not our fault you southerners have been on a diet of pap and cabbage for centuries. Do you want the manager to go hire some midget chap who they will intimidate at the door, plus most of them are still waiting for their government check to come in the mail. BluIvy: PS, I don't recall any Nigerian bouncers when I visited Cubana in Capetown so you might be fibbing there Ms. Motswana, all I remember were some ladies at the door that ushered you in and a couple of White dudes standing around managing the place, plus plenty of locals at that joint but of course with a mix of coloreds, white and black foreigners alike BluIvy: Cape town is the last enclave where Whites dominate both politically and economically which is why they are hostile to the dominant black group in other parts of the country. THey will not give it up any time soon. Please stay in Botswana and leave them alone there. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by khukhi(f): 4:59pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
Pap and cabbage diet for centuries....really now. lol! That's really harsh hey  |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by khukhi(f): 5:04pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
I have to say that I've been in cape town and I personally have not experienced all of the above.  Maybe its because I mind my business and pay very little attention to other people in general. Sometimes Southies just feel uncomfortable around a whole lot of white people. Imagine avoiding a certain area cause its full of whites as one girl mentioned on the article!  I personally love how clean cape Town city is compared to JHB and I am all for The DA's management style. Society needs discipline to function well. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 5:42pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
Hehe @ Morpheus dissing my handsome Xhosa brothers. Xhosa men aren't short & scrawny lol. How dare you! |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by morpheus24: 6:26pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
LaBellaMafiaZA: Imagine these guys serving as bouncers at the door. Except for the painted faces, not really intimidating at all, don't ya think
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| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 6:30pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
morpheus24: These arent grown men, they are teenagers lol. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 6:40pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
Grown & sexy
|
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by morpheus24: 7:41pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
^^^^ still not bouncer material. they need a little more fufu, isi ewu and kpomo |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 7:55pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
morpheus24: Mnxm. Bouncers always look beastly & king kong ish anyway, so it's okay-alright if my homeboys don't fit the criteria lol. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by paniki(m): 9:06pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
I doubt that morpheus24 fits his glorified version of west African build. Listening to morpheus24 will lead the uninitiated to believe that the average Nigerian guy is a big beast, but some of us know that to not be the truth. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by nellyelitz(m): 9:10pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
khukhi:but cabbage is nutritious |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by morpheus24: 9:12pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
paniki: I can bet some good money, I look a lot better than you, statistically speaking. I am that confident. paniki: Compared to a South African man, on average a Nigerian of any ethnic group would be  1 Like |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by nellyelitz(m): 9:13pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
LaBellaMafiaZA:bouncers ain't sexy... |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by paniki(m): 9:38pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
morpheus24: HAHAHAHA. Philosophers would have quit their inquiry into aesthetics long ago if it could be settled by statistics. But maybe you mean something different. Anyway, I believe that if you and me were to stand side-by-side we would more or less be the same height, same build. Compared to a South African man, on average a Nigerian of any ethnic group would be You like using your experiences and observations(all anecdotal) to make sweeping generalisations and conclusions that have no real link to reality. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 9:43pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by nellyelitz(m): 9:53pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
LaBellaMafiaZA:from the pictures they're, they can't make a bouncer because even a lady can hit them hard. |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by morpheus24: 10:02pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
paniki: Anecdotal as these observations may seem, when you can see pass the heads of 95% of SA males you come across and this is not easily replicated when compared against Nigerian or West African males for that matter, That's saying something, Chommie! |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by paniki(m): 10:45pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
morpheus24: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Average_height_around_the_world |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by morpheus24: 10:55pm On Oct 13, 2014 |
paniki: Remove the white and colored population, they are skewing the male's numbers( Netherland average 6 ft). You and I know, Those pure bred Afrikaners are some big mofos. lol at average height of Nigerian men at 5ft 4 ''. Imagine that, on average Vietnamese men are taller than us. Please, trash that rubbish stat . |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 1:29am On Oct 14, 2014 |
morpheus24: lol Morpheus, you're talking about being big and mascular not height, I went to a nigerian gathering and most of the guys were midgets though some were towering trees, have you seen those nigerian traders in cape town? I checked the height studies because of all the constant disputes between ghanaia ns and Nigeria ns about who's shorter, and the average Nigerian is below 1,67m, y'all are stocky the guys in the pics aren't that tall compared to the Chinese midget bride. I can't find the pic i saw of all of them Standing side by side  As for SA, the average height is 1,69m for black Africans, 1,73m for Whites and 1,66m for coloureds |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by Nobody: 4:44am On Oct 14, 2014 |
nellyelitz: But I thought we were discussing bouncers & not these guys. Do you find bouncers hot? Personally, I'm not into muscles & stuff. I like em lean & mean |
| Re: In Cape Town, Many Black South Africans Feel Unwelcome by EMANY01(m): 1:33pm On Oct 14, 2014 |
BluIvy:[/size] I think the emphasized part of the post above explains the phenomenon.Attitudinal change to issues of race and ethnicity is a slow process,it's not always the case that trying to force change makes things better as that could drive the practitioners to device more subtle but potent attitudes of discrimination. I believe constant engagement (dialogue) would be more effective. |
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