Sawubona!
I’m writing from the 7th Street Guesthouse in Joberg's Melville. The trip here was quite the trek, involving many layovers (Houston, Jackson, BWI, Dulles, Dakar) and more than one trip in an automobile, but I finally got into my B&B at about 8:30 South Africa time last night.
Not wanting to go to sleep and end up wide awake at about 4 in the morning, I went out and visited some old haunts. One of the striking aspects of Melville, and I think it tells us something about South Africa, for good and ill, is the subtle but definite ways in which it has changed since I first started coming to this little Joberg semi-suburb a decade or so ago. It is still fundamentally the same — a little oasis of affluence and upscale dining, drinking, and shopping options in a village that feels far from the Central Business District that is actually not far away at all. Many of the restaurants and other businesses that were here in the late 1990s are still thriving, though there has also been turnover and there are new places competing with the old.
But what is remarkable, and I think telling, is how much more, well, African, Melville has become. Not so long ago Melville was affluent and white. It was rare to see a black person not involved in labor or else on the streets. But today Melville represents a ployglot mixture of the New South Africa. There is no ideal racial climate anywhere in South Africa yet, but Melville just about qualifies inasmuch as the South Africa tourism board could present a pretty good face with videos and pictures from just about any restaurant in these few blocks.
And yet black, white, Indian, or coloured, the crowds that descend upon Melville do share one thing that separates them from the masses across the country: overwhelmingly they are wealthy. I do not want to quibble about what I mean by wealth. I am not saying that everyone I saw last night is rolling in money, driving BMW's (though many do), and could retire today. But I am saying that they are distinct from the vast majority in this country in that they could afford the R250 dinner, followed by round after round of R25 drinks and R15 beers.
And in a sense this is good inasmuch as the increased black presence in Melville shows that there is a growing black middle (and upper) class making their way in the country. At the same time what it tells me is that South African divisions, which have always been both class and racial, with the latter more powerful than the former, have turned 180 degrees so that while race will continue to be a dividing line in the country, class draws even more permanent lines.
And I have no idea what the solution to this is. I am no class warrior, I believe in at least the fundemental tenets of a capitalist market economy, and I do not resent success. I was, after all, one of them last night, and one of the changes in my own life since 1997, when I first came, and lived, in South Africa is that my own travels have become decidedly more upscale, though I’m still not far from rich. At the same time, believing in the fundamental tenets of market capitalism is far from saying that ours is a system that is unreformable. And in South Africa there is still need for massive reform. The gross disparities of wealth that any society has are acute here and without alleviating poverty the country will continue to see not only the violent crime that South Africa is so well known for, but also the paroxysms of mass violence such as the xenophobic backlash against immigrants that have convulsed the country in recent weeks.
It is good to be back. I’ve missed South Africa in the time that I’ve been away. I’ll post more reflections here — I’ll probably be light on the usual links-and-analysis approach in favor of these more discursive reflections in the weeks to come.
[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.]
