Fear and Loathing in South Africa

I have never been mugged or attacked. And I can count on one hand the incidents when I have had property damaged or stolen.

Yet, it didn't take long for me to internalize the fear that seems to dominate the lives of white South Africans. At an intersection, I  found myself rolling up my window as a black man in dirty clothes crossed the street near my car. We went to visit Newtown in Johannesburg the other day, but we didn't stop because Annette wasn't comfortable parking her friend's car on the street in broad daylight. And we shelled out more money than I would have liked for a private tour of the township of Soweto, an idea I was never completely comfortable with.

But the guidebooks, like the white people living in South Africa whom we have met, says nobody should go to Soweto without a guide. And it warns against the various crimes and dangers in Johannesburg, including carjacking. Lee, our host, and my sister, have both been the victims of attempted car jackings or muggings. And my sister was only here for a few weeks. So, the buds are there for fear.

And the seeds have been cultivated for over a century. The Apartheid Museum, Hector Peiterson Museum, and just about any history of South Africa show it. It is a fear of white people being "swamped" by the black majority. Even as Apartheid is history, this fear still seems to permeate the lives of the white majority here in South Africa.

I realized the fallacy of it yesterday as we drove all over Soweto. It was far wealthier and nicer than most of the neighborhoods we saw in West Africa. And it reminded me of New Orleans. I have always had the most fun in the neighborhoods of New Orleans that the guidebooks and tourist offices declare as unsafe and discourage tourists from visiting. Soweto has four million black people living in it. It was a cauldron of the anti-Apartheid protests, violence and riots for more than a decade from 1976 to 1986. And undoubtedly, that legacy still colors people's perceptions of this vibrant community with far less fences than the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

Soweto also has the only street with two Nobel Peace Prize winners who lived on it. Archbishop Desmond Tutu still lives there. Nelson Mandela has since moved away from his home a block away from Tutu's.

I remember a decade ago when I first visited Compton, California. I had the same impression. It was a beautiful neighborhood with row houses each with its own yard. Hardly the scary place depicted in the movies or the news.

Our guide, Elvis, started talking on the way back from our tour about the problems with the Nigerians and Zimbabweans. He said the Nigerian gangs are very sophisticated. He quoted a Nigerian leader as saying all of the bad Nigerians moved away from Nigeria. So now Nigeria is filled only with the good ones. This isn't what the guidebook or my imagination says when I think of Lagos. And that was when it all made sense. The Nigerian leader blames a bad reputation on the people who have left. A black South African blames violence and crime on foreigners. And the whites blame it on the blacks. And none of it is the whole story. It is amazing how much crime and safety is a matter of perception. I would far rather build a world where we know my neighbors and we look out for each other than ensuring safety with walls, barbed wire and electrical fences.