Apartheid in South Africa

According to Dictionary.com the definition of apartheid is: “a rigid former policy in South Africa of segregating and economically and politically oppressing the non-white population.”

I lived in Johannesburg for much of the 1980s and experienced this separation of races where the 10% white minority exploited the 90% native majority. Black Africans and Coloreds (so-called mixed-races and Indians) were forbidden to live in the white cities, unless their identity cards confirmed their status working as a nanny, maid or some such “domestic.” Restaurants, theaters, sports, public transportation, education, employment, etc. were off-limits to “non-Europeans,” much like here in our southern states at one time. My own Texan grandmother fervently supported this protocol and bigotry.

Soweto, the township outside of Johannesburg.

Once a friend took me up in his tiny two-seater airplane and we flew over Soweto, the black township about 20 miles from Johannesburg. From my airborne vantage the city looked like a bomb site: open fires, broken down shacks, abandoned vehicles. This is where the people who serviced the privileged minority lived.

I innocently made a comment to a South African friend, a sophisticated and cultured woman, pointing out the inequities in her country. She immediately shot back, “You’re right. We should have killed them all off, like you did in the States with the Indians.” That shut me up and made me realize I was a guest in her country. If I had a bone to pick, do it back home. So, I left and returned to the US.

Children playing in Soweto