Verswart
ver · swart
[fir – swahrt, roll Rs]
Today, it is one week since we arrived in South Africa. For those that didn't read Third World, we've been staying in Bellito Bay, just North of Durban. I haven't had any Internet, and thus cannot check my statistics, but I'd guess that Durban is one of South Africa's five biggest cities, next to Johannesberg, Pretoria, Cape Town, and Port Elisabeth. Today we drove through downtown Durban, and it was amazing. I've never seen these Big Five, and rarely see any cities at all, to tell the truth (Seattle, Portland, um... Vancouver...?). Last year, I decided to push a little to get my parents to take us to the downtowns of Cape Town and Pretoria. Cape Town was particularly amazing: it is clean and beautiful and huge and has tons of old buildings... (As a resident of Seattle, I rarely see anything built before 1960. And that's no exaggeration.) I enjoyed Cape Town immensely, despite the fact that we were only there for an hour or two. It's ridiculous to attempt to see the entire Cape in one day, by the way. I spent quite a bit of time thoroughly regretting our inability to stay longer.
This year I discovered that even with more time available, it may never have been taken. What I mean to say is that there's a very definite reason my parents have avoided the cities for the past 17 years of my life: the cities are “te swart.” Too black. They didn't use to be “so sleg,” “so bad,” but over the last twenty years, they “het al so verswart,” have gotten so black, that whites no longer want to risk going there. Like downtown Detroit or Manhattan, my parents explain. Last year in Cape Town and Pretoria, it was the same as this year in Durban: put your bag under the seat, don't get out of the car, don't have any valuables in sight... dit het hier so verswart.
I understand and frequently make the argument affirming South African whites' “racism,” Apartheid, so-called superiority complex, etc. It's not racism. It's a thoroughly-engrained and very negative cultural stereotype that was proven to them – to us – over and over and over again for hundreds of years. This is the stereotype: that blacks cheat and steal and rape and murder and are stupid and lazy as heck when they're not in the midst of huge corruption. They hate white people because they think we haven't earned what we have, and use that as an excuse to oppress whites on their way to the top, even if they don't deserve to be there at all. I can give you a thousand examples illustrating the relevance of these statements: well-educated men getting kicked out of high-ranking positions to make way for unqualified black females just because the BEE quota had to be satisfied; top-notch white students get failed while mediocre black ones pass. I don't recall having seen any recently, but I remember as a child for it to have been very common to see blacks selling falsified passports on the streets, others walking around wearing extra layers of clothing in the middle of the summer to keep the heat out; crazy 1960's VW vans would race down the highway at 150km/h, packed full with poor-looking black people; whites often bring seawater home for their black maids because they believe it has some magical medicinal quality; my parents were able to keep burglars out of our house and even reroute the path the blacks would take past the house every morning just by hanging a plastic snake in the window and keeping a black dog (her name was Donna); the ANC is kept in power despite ridiculous corruption and literally idiotic leaders because these leaders hire Shangomas (witch doctors) that tell the people they'll be cursed if they don't vote for them. It's not the color of their skin that makes blacks scary and untouchable to many whites; it's their worldview and culture, which is said to be rapidly undermining the country as a whole. I'm used to giving this rant, making this argument, because it's made to me frequently by my family, and accurately explains the rational behind an extremely controversial viewpoint. I reproduce these rants to other people because I like being a voice for the unspoken argument, even if I don't completely agree with it. Yesterday in a bookstore, I heard this view, the view that South Africa is doomed to become Zimbabwe, called “Afro-pessimism,” and I rather like the name, because it helps me identify what it is I dislike about the viewpoint. I'm not much of a pessimist, and I'm certainly no Afro-pessimist. I have never been. See Seuth Efrreekeh if you doubt.
All this I say to make it very clear that I'm not going all politically-correct on you all. 'Cause I hate political-correctness, practiced for its own sake. But good gosh, people, is it really just to avoid cities and become completely paranoid while driving around in them just because the people in the streets are black?! These black people are largely clean, neat, business types, students, professional people. I'm not sure about the whole Shangoma thing, but these definitely don't seem like the same type of people that keep seawater in their pantries or are afraid of snakes and black dogs. I find it utterly sad that no one I've talked to knows enough about non-white culture to tell me anything at all about the blacks' points of view, their cultures, their ways of life, as they are NOW as opposed to to thirty years ago. I haven't talked to very many, but everyone I've spoken with should have been able to. I'm tempted to say that everyone should be able to. It has been such a drastic, obvious change; I know because I have only witnessed it partially and it has been apparent to me. The World Cup alone transformed this nation. There are new streets, there are new buildings, there are new parks and shopping centers, and, from what I can see, a completely renovated sense of national pride and unity and self-respect. It's quite likely that everyone over the age of 35 or 40 still thinks within the realm of Apartheid, but so many of the rest of us don't. Over the past year or two, as I've tried to milk what I can of South Africa out of the web, I have found so many kids my age, 20-somethings, early 30-somethings, that have an attitude that says something like, “come on, people, just freaking get over it! We are truly a Rainbow Nation now.”
I am not going to pretend that South Africa has no crime. I am not going to pretend that South Africa has no poverty. I am not going to pretend that it'd be completely safe for me to walk around every part of downtown Durban. But neither will I pretend that it'd be completely safe for me to walk around every part of downtown Seattle. I don't have the statistics to prove anything, and I admit to be writing solely from experience and opinion. But there is no way to justify skirting around cities and skooting uncomfortably out of them just because the place is full of black faces. Just because “dit het verswart.”
As to Durban: the place is absolutely gorgeous. It's much like a tropical Cape Town: it is also clean and huge and has tons of old buildings. What I assumed to be the city hall was a gigantic, 5-story-high mass of highly ornamented 19th-century British architecture, complete with little statues of fairy-like women on its corners. This building was surrounded by a garden, replete with palm trees of equal hight and blooming flowers, though it's the middle of our winter. Admittedly, there are a couple sketchier streets, plastered with tacky signs and peeling paint and worn window frames, and with delivery trucks containing open pig and cow carcasses... But for the most part, the city is built of stately 21st-century-looking office buildings and bank buildings and even more stately 19th-century-looking ones. Churches, firms, theaters. Life goes on.
There isn't any garbage in the streets, and the place seems well-kept besides. The people are the same. There are perhaps one or two white faces to every hundred black and Indian faces, perhaps even less. That's quite strange, given that about 10% of the country's population is white. But despite this, the people are as sharp and well-kept as the city itself. It's certainly no less scummy-looking than any city I've ever been to. There was a university somewhere close, as evidenced by the many kids hanging around in the parks or on street corners. For some reason, it gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction and defiance to see those kids talking and laughing, from behind my tinted window, dressed nicely and combed neatly, in a city that used to be an all-white British colony. They're only a couple years older than me, and wouldn't have any recollection of the Apartheid era, either. Their parents are likely educated, decent, well-off people that have given them the opportunity to do something big with their life. Those kids study the same stuff I do; we have the same World History, we have the same Classics, we all use the Scientific Method, and 1 + 1 still equals 2, here, I think. (Never been much good with numbers.) There is something about that moment, that picture, frozen in my memory, that says, there is nothing scary about this city being black.
The condo across the street from ours is called “La Casa Blanca.” I smirked, driving past it on our way home that night, amused by the extent of that understatement. That's not the only “Casa Blanca,” this whole coast is littered with them. There is not one “Casa Negra” in sight. Just like the city “het verswart,” in the same way, this place “het verwit” - there is not a single dark face in sight here. The only ones are those selling drinks to the whites on the beach. I cannot help but wonder if that's the reason we're here.
I have grown up colorblind. I have also grown up relatively genderblind. My five years in the Issaquah School District made me pretty religionblind. And classblind. Personality is often influenced by those things, but I have never tended to see any one of those things as some determining fact of character. They're no different from what colors you like or what music you listen to or what TV shows you watch or what your hobbies are. I certainly keep a collection of stereotypes, but they are stereotypes and no more: not prejudice, not racism, not discrimination. From my perspective, if the South African white's “racism” truly deserves those quotation marks, cultural stereotypes should be able to be defied. So, yes, every time I receive truly professional service from some black waiter or Lost Baggage agent, every time I see blacks going about their business the same way whites do, with that same human decency that's so often assumed to be absent from them, the boxes they've fit in for fifteen years get more and more degraded. I hope to see within a few more years that they have dissolved completely.
[fir – swahrt, roll Rs]
Today, it is one week since we arrived in South Africa. For those that didn't read Third World, we've been staying in Bellito Bay, just North of Durban. I haven't had any Internet, and thus cannot check my statistics, but I'd guess that Durban is one of South Africa's five biggest cities, next to Johannesberg, Pretoria, Cape Town, and Port Elisabeth. Today we drove through downtown Durban, and it was amazing. I've never seen these Big Five, and rarely see any cities at all, to tell the truth (Seattle, Portland, um... Vancouver...?). Last year, I decided to push a little to get my parents to take us to the downtowns of Cape Town and Pretoria. Cape Town was particularly amazing: it is clean and beautiful and huge and has tons of old buildings... (As a resident of Seattle, I rarely see anything built before 1960. And that's no exaggeration.) I enjoyed Cape Town immensely, despite the fact that we were only there for an hour or two. It's ridiculous to attempt to see the entire Cape in one day, by the way. I spent quite a bit of time thoroughly regretting our inability to stay longer.
This year I discovered that even with more time available, it may never have been taken. What I mean to say is that there's a very definite reason my parents have avoided the cities for the past 17 years of my life: the cities are “te swart.” Too black. They didn't use to be “so sleg,” “so bad,” but over the last twenty years, they “het al so verswart,” have gotten so black, that whites no longer want to risk going there. Like downtown Detroit or Manhattan, my parents explain. Last year in Cape Town and Pretoria, it was the same as this year in Durban: put your bag under the seat, don't get out of the car, don't have any valuables in sight... dit het hier so verswart.
I understand and frequently make the argument affirming South African whites' “racism,” Apartheid, so-called superiority complex, etc. It's not racism. It's a thoroughly-engrained and very negative cultural stereotype that was proven to them – to us – over and over and over again for hundreds of years. This is the stereotype: that blacks cheat and steal and rape and murder and are stupid and lazy as heck when they're not in the midst of huge corruption. They hate white people because they think we haven't earned what we have, and use that as an excuse to oppress whites on their way to the top, even if they don't deserve to be there at all. I can give you a thousand examples illustrating the relevance of these statements: well-educated men getting kicked out of high-ranking positions to make way for unqualified black females just because the BEE quota had to be satisfied; top-notch white students get failed while mediocre black ones pass. I don't recall having seen any recently, but I remember as a child for it to have been very common to see blacks selling falsified passports on the streets, others walking around wearing extra layers of clothing in the middle of the summer to keep the heat out; crazy 1960's VW vans would race down the highway at 150km/h, packed full with poor-looking black people; whites often bring seawater home for their black maids because they believe it has some magical medicinal quality; my parents were able to keep burglars out of our house and even reroute the path the blacks would take past the house every morning just by hanging a plastic snake in the window and keeping a black dog (her name was Donna); the ANC is kept in power despite ridiculous corruption and literally idiotic leaders because these leaders hire Shangomas (witch doctors) that tell the people they'll be cursed if they don't vote for them. It's not the color of their skin that makes blacks scary and untouchable to many whites; it's their worldview and culture, which is said to be rapidly undermining the country as a whole. I'm used to giving this rant, making this argument, because it's made to me frequently by my family, and accurately explains the rational behind an extremely controversial viewpoint. I reproduce these rants to other people because I like being a voice for the unspoken argument, even if I don't completely agree with it. Yesterday in a bookstore, I heard this view, the view that South Africa is doomed to become Zimbabwe, called “Afro-pessimism,” and I rather like the name, because it helps me identify what it is I dislike about the viewpoint. I'm not much of a pessimist, and I'm certainly no Afro-pessimist. I have never been. See Seuth Efrreekeh if you doubt.
All this I say to make it very clear that I'm not going all politically-correct on you all. 'Cause I hate political-correctness, practiced for its own sake. But good gosh, people, is it really just to avoid cities and become completely paranoid while driving around in them just because the people in the streets are black?! These black people are largely clean, neat, business types, students, professional people. I'm not sure about the whole Shangoma thing, but these definitely don't seem like the same type of people that keep seawater in their pantries or are afraid of snakes and black dogs. I find it utterly sad that no one I've talked to knows enough about non-white culture to tell me anything at all about the blacks' points of view, their cultures, their ways of life, as they are NOW as opposed to to thirty years ago. I haven't talked to very many, but everyone I've spoken with should have been able to. I'm tempted to say that everyone should be able to. It has been such a drastic, obvious change; I know because I have only witnessed it partially and it has been apparent to me. The World Cup alone transformed this nation. There are new streets, there are new buildings, there are new parks and shopping centers, and, from what I can see, a completely renovated sense of national pride and unity and self-respect. It's quite likely that everyone over the age of 35 or 40 still thinks within the realm of Apartheid, but so many of the rest of us don't. Over the past year or two, as I've tried to milk what I can of South Africa out of the web, I have found so many kids my age, 20-somethings, early 30-somethings, that have an attitude that says something like, “come on, people, just freaking get over it! We are truly a Rainbow Nation now.”
I am not going to pretend that South Africa has no crime. I am not going to pretend that South Africa has no poverty. I am not going to pretend that it'd be completely safe for me to walk around every part of downtown Durban. But neither will I pretend that it'd be completely safe for me to walk around every part of downtown Seattle. I don't have the statistics to prove anything, and I admit to be writing solely from experience and opinion. But there is no way to justify skirting around cities and skooting uncomfortably out of them just because the place is full of black faces. Just because “dit het verswart.”
As to Durban: the place is absolutely gorgeous. It's much like a tropical Cape Town: it is also clean and huge and has tons of old buildings. What I assumed to be the city hall was a gigantic, 5-story-high mass of highly ornamented 19th-century British architecture, complete with little statues of fairy-like women on its corners. This building was surrounded by a garden, replete with palm trees of equal hight and blooming flowers, though it's the middle of our winter. Admittedly, there are a couple sketchier streets, plastered with tacky signs and peeling paint and worn window frames, and with delivery trucks containing open pig and cow carcasses... But for the most part, the city is built of stately 21st-century-looking office buildings and bank buildings and even more stately 19th-century-looking ones. Churches, firms, theaters. Life goes on.
There isn't any garbage in the streets, and the place seems well-kept besides. The people are the same. There are perhaps one or two white faces to every hundred black and Indian faces, perhaps even less. That's quite strange, given that about 10% of the country's population is white. But despite this, the people are as sharp and well-kept as the city itself. It's certainly no less scummy-looking than any city I've ever been to. There was a university somewhere close, as evidenced by the many kids hanging around in the parks or on street corners. For some reason, it gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction and defiance to see those kids talking and laughing, from behind my tinted window, dressed nicely and combed neatly, in a city that used to be an all-white British colony. They're only a couple years older than me, and wouldn't have any recollection of the Apartheid era, either. Their parents are likely educated, decent, well-off people that have given them the opportunity to do something big with their life. Those kids study the same stuff I do; we have the same World History, we have the same Classics, we all use the Scientific Method, and 1 + 1 still equals 2, here, I think. (Never been much good with numbers.) There is something about that moment, that picture, frozen in my memory, that says, there is nothing scary about this city being black.
The condo across the street from ours is called “La Casa Blanca.” I smirked, driving past it on our way home that night, amused by the extent of that understatement. That's not the only “Casa Blanca,” this whole coast is littered with them. There is not one “Casa Negra” in sight. Just like the city “het verswart,” in the same way, this place “het verwit” - there is not a single dark face in sight here. The only ones are those selling drinks to the whites on the beach. I cannot help but wonder if that's the reason we're here.
I have grown up colorblind. I have also grown up relatively genderblind. My five years in the Issaquah School District made me pretty religionblind. And classblind. Personality is often influenced by those things, but I have never tended to see any one of those things as some determining fact of character. They're no different from what colors you like or what music you listen to or what TV shows you watch or what your hobbies are. I certainly keep a collection of stereotypes, but they are stereotypes and no more: not prejudice, not racism, not discrimination. From my perspective, if the South African white's “racism” truly deserves those quotation marks, cultural stereotypes should be able to be defied. So, yes, every time I receive truly professional service from some black waiter or Lost Baggage agent, every time I see blacks going about their business the same way whites do, with that same human decency that's so often assumed to be absent from them, the boxes they've fit in for fifteen years get more and more degraded. I hope to see within a few more years that they have dissolved completely.
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