Recent research from the IRR revealed that despite the efforts of well funded mischief makers, South African race relations are in rude health. No matter how diverse their backgrounds, most of us want the same simple stuff: a safe environment for family and friends; and a bright future for our kids.
Given the toxic political situation in SA, it never hurts to be reminded of this reality. Which is what my Biznews colleague Chris Bateman does so well in today’s uplifting contribution.
Chris writes: Spin-doctored and populist-stoked racial division, feeding on South Africa’s apartheid wounding won’t protect our crony-capitalist ruling elitists for long. Ordinary citizens at work and play show very little racial animosity towards one another as I witnessed recently on holiday in the winter-warm climes of northern KwaZulu-Natal. In fact, the snapshots that stuck have an overwhelmingly familiar theme; the kindness of racially-different strangers.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Picture a sprightly and elderly Indian saltwater angler on the beach turn to a watching white father and six-year-old son, handing his fishing rod to the boy and telling him to reel in. The excited youngster hauls a flapping black-tail onto the beach. Later the angler walks over to my daughter of a similar age, fishing nearby, after she reels in two black tails at once, offering a handshake in congratulation.
As I get talking to him, I bemoan not having brought my surf rod to enable a live-bait cast into the superbly-promising water. He promptly offers me his spare rod and tackle. Later I see he’s given my other daughter a plastic bag containing a beautiful large parrot-fish he’d caught to go and show her mom.
Second snapshot; we’re in a shopping centre restaurant in the fast-burgeoning coastal resort of Ballitoville and the ABSA swipe-card machine won’t process our repeated payment attempts. The young zulu waiter apologises profusely and goes off to call the manager, an Indian guy. He repeats the apology, confessing that on Mother’s Day recently he had a full restaurant and nobody could pay. Like us, he gave them the restaurant’s EFT details and took theirs, risking major loss. They all paid, he says.
As we leave, my wife suggests we try one more swipe at the till. It works. Two of the Zulu waiters follow us out, chatting and offering the traditional apologetic double-handed handshake.
Reel back half a century, to a remote KZN trading store where I grew up. Bleating outside is a large herd of sheep, driven from 10 kilometres away by a local Induna, one Shadrack Mkhize. He wants my dad to pick out the fattest one as a token of gratitude for my dad having injected his cattle and sheep against redwater a month back. Sure, my dad saved his herds, but it was still heart-melting stuff.
Yes, we see what we want to see, but what’s wrong with that? One of the most telling lines I’ve picked up over years of self-development courses is this; we don’t see the world as it is, but as we are. By my reckoning that’s how we change it.
Thanks for the reminder Chris. Our different coloured shells sometimes make us forget all Homo Sapiens have a great deal in common. Including 99.9% of their DNA.
