Apartheid, the white South African attempt to control the majority black population via identity cards, is fascinatingly contemporary. By this I mean that without the technological advancements of the modern age: computers, instant communication, high speed travel; apartheid would not have been manageable on a nationwide scale, and allowed minority control for a decade longer than otherwise would have been possible. In fact, apartheid is probably the difference between the chaos of black-asserted control of the Zimbabwean flavor, and instead allowed the remarkable restrained South African power turnover. This isn’t to excuse the excesses or moral inethicality of apartheid but it is of interest to twenty-something South Africans whites and blacks who are only a single generation from full racial recovery instead of two or three like in other emerging African nations.
I visited Johannesburg, “Jo’burg” in the modern parlance, in 1983 when apartheid was just entering its stride but before the rebelling and struggle was organized against it in earnest. What I saw was a remarkable African city that competed in modernity with the major cities of Europe and America: the transportation infrastructure was robust, tall buildings were architecturally mature, and fashion and fads in sync with the ultra-civilized world. One of my most enduring memories of that time was the number of red double-decker buses caring the multitudes of blacks into the city every morning – the proletariat workforce behind the modern empire – the buses were made ironic by their uniformity, part of which was the billboard for “Kentucky Fried Chicken” on their sides, including The Colonel’s smiling white face.
When I revisited Jo-burg twenty-five years later, I had been warned that it was but a shadow of its former self – the downtown abandoned and lawless, an “Escape From New York” atmosphere. I hired a man, an older, white Romanian emigrant who’d only been in the country for eleven years, to drive us around downtown at night and leave us at a downtown restaurant. I’m now happy to say that the reports of Johannesburg’s decline are greatly exaggerated. My goodness, there are trash bins along the sidewalk that people choose to use rather than discarding their garbage on the streets, and a trash truck was doing its route at midnight – this is not something that does or can occur in many parts of Los Angeles. The restaurant was excellent, crowded, and served the dinner crowd for the live theater next door. The National Museum was clean, attractive and inviting – even when closed for the night. Vendors left their “handmade African crafts” unattended in their umbrellaed stalls for the night.
Though the last white generation to know apartheid, people my age, still bear a provincial resentment to the changes that dramatically affected their lives, especially the ones who fought in the Civil Defence Force during the long decades of The Troubles, and a remaining distrust between the races of that age group, the children of those people are almost free of prejudice. As far as relatively non-violent revolutions go, South Africa is probably the most remarkable in history because of its unique time and place in technological advancement.
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