A letter from South Africa

In January 2010 I arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, to study at the University of Stellenbosch, for what eventually lasted a whole academic year. It was an amazing combined experience of studying, research and a new lifestyle. Although South Africa is, in certain areas, a very westernized and urbanized country, it has nevertheless a very different society from the Netherlands. It has been torn apart by a devastating history of gross human rights violations, due to apartheid, and centuries of racial segregation and discrimination. Racial segregation, or at least racial separation, is still strikingly apparent  and the result is a sort of alienated society. Despite being Dutch, I was still recognized as the negatively connotated “white man”. Uncomfortably often, individuals of black or mixed race would address me as “boss”, “chief” or “boer”, referring to the old days when white supremacy was ruling in an unprecedented manner over all non-whites.

As an exchange student, I was motivated to integrate in South African society. By joining the University Football team, committing to community service in a township and following mainstream courses with South African students, I was able to meet many South Africans and engage into hopefully life lasting friendships. These experiences deepened my view on South African society and produced the first real data for my master thesis. Due to the fact that I am enrolled in the Master program International Crimes and Criminology and my interest is in participant observations/research, I chose the most appropriate country. What started as  mere observation of an “unreconciled” society developed into a thesis proposal and research. I was able to obtain my data while living among South Africans, which I consider to be a distinct advantage. First hand data is, to my mind, something every criminology student would want for his or her thesis. Nonetheless, this type of research was also completely new for me.

After the installment of Mandela as the new President in 1994, he labeled South Africa as a “rainbow nation” due to its diversity in race and ethnicity. Quite soon I became aware of the fact that the South African society was not so “colourful”  at all. It seemed to me that people in society were so widely alienated from each other that every different race or ethnicity sees the other race or ethnicity as a stranger or even foreigner despite sharing the same nationality. Consequently, a climate of mistrust bordering on Xenophobia exists between South African nationals. In order to empirically underpin the aforementioned hypothesis I tried to obtain data by conducting in-depth interviews in the area of Cape Town and Stellenbosch. In addition, I made observations in my everyday life, held informal conversations and studied South African literature on this topic. I divided my potential respondents into two distinct groups;  the research group “general population” and the control group “experts on the topic of reconciliation”. The latter would control for the error of an unrepresentative research group. Furthermore, the former group was distinguished by race, namely white, mixed race and black. The respondents were socially  diverse e.g. township inhabitants, racial activists, students, diplomats, policemen, politicians and even a former Deputy Minister who served Presidents Botha, De Klerk and Mandela. Almost 11 months of friendship, integrating and networking opened doors with regard to valuable information. Practical research at this level was a new process for me and therefore challenging in such an unfamiliar environment. Eventually I was able to conduct 27 in-depth interviews of almost 1,5 hours each. It was a very educative experience which opened my eyes regarding methodological implementations like the use of translators and interviewing in Afrikaans. 
 
My general findings entail that 16 years after the end of Apartheid, whites and blacks hardly ever socialize with each other. The economic and educational factors seem to be the core issue(s). The large amount of unskilled poor people contain predominantly and disproportionally black people, while most whites are educated and relatively rich. This results in lack of contact between classes, encouraging prejudice and stereotypes and possible conflict. This aspect is particularly evident  in poor township inhabitants. They predominantly blame their problems on the rich and thus white people. On the other hand there is the white, mainly Afrikaner group who seems very afraid of the black man and his policy of affirmative action that tries to balance the enormous economic difference between rich and poor. Moreover, national unity is an unknown concept and one rather relates to its ethnicity than to a shared South African identity, making South Africa a country of strangers.

Jasper  L. De Bie
ICC student
VU University Amsterdam
December 2010