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Sa, 25 November 2000 00:00 |
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Hierdie artikel het in die National Post, Kanada verskyn.....
The new, white, shantytowns
In post-apartheid South Africa, whites are experiencing the kind of poverty
previously suffered by blacks
Corinna Schuler
National Post
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The shabby wooden huts huddle in rows beneath
highway billboards and a giant water tower, appearing, at first glance, like
all the other shantytowns on the outskirts of cities across South Africa.
Families here live four or five to a single room. Most wear the same clothes
day after day, share toilets with dozens of others and dream each night of a
better life. It is a hardship familiar to many among the country's 11.5
million poor.
But something is strikingly different about this settlement: Its 100
residents are almost exclusively white.
Tommy and Sandra Swarts sit with their two children on a sagging bed inside
hut I6, recounting how they -- white, working, proud Afrikaners -- fell
through a crack in their comfortable middle-class life and landed in the
nightmare of poverty.
They are among a tiny but growing number of white households in South Africa
who are enduring a misery that has long been a fact of life for most of the
nation's black people.
"When I saw poor blacks in the shacks before, I thought: Well, they are
lower class," concedes Mrs. Swarts, peering out from behind straggly blond
hair. "I never thought we would find ourselves in the same position.
"We used to have a house, a car, a phone. We used to go out to eat. The
children had toys, whatever they wanted ... Now we have nothing. It is not
like before."
That is to say, before apartheid came to its tumultuous end six years ago.
There have always been white South Africans who did not fit the stereotype
of rich people with palatial homes, a pool and a live-in maid. But apartheid
segregation was born in 1948 to ensure white Afrikaners were protected from
the kind of poverty many had endured in the depression years. The slogan of
the day was: "The white man must always remain boss."
The government preserved jobs -- in the civil service, on the railways, at
post offices and a host of other state enterprises -- exclusively for the
racial minority. Even white men who were reduced to doing basic labour
routinely earned double the salary of a black man in the same job. The few
whites who did find themselves unemployed or disabled in South Africa
received subsidized housing and decent welfare cheques from the state.
Not anymore. Six years of government by the African National Congress has
produced a harsh new reality for whites, especially those on society's lower
economic rung.
Pay equity laws and a push for affirmative action seek to correct injustices
of the past. As black Africans increasingly receive equal education and job
training, many whites feel they are facing serious job competition for the
first time in their lives. A general downturn in the economy has further
reduced their prospects.
The rate of unemployment among whites was at 3.4% in 1995, one year after
ANC came to power. By last year it had doubled to 6.8%.
Statistics released this month show that 2.7% of the nation's white
households are living below the poverty line of $250 a month. Some survive
on less than $5 a day.
"It is impossible to say how that compares to poverty during apartheid,"
says Ros Hirschowitz, at Statistics South Africa. "Prior to 1994, there were
no studies. The government did not measure unemployment and poverty -- it
was hidden."
But many whites insist they do not need statistics to tell them their
fortunes are falling in the new South Africa.
"The pale male is targeted," says Greyling Bezuidenhout, an organizer for
the Mine Workers Union, which represents 65,000 white workers in mining,
engineering and telecommunications.
"We have never denied that whites, even unproductive ones, got advantages in
the past because of the colour of their skin. It was wrong. But there is a
new racism now."
To be clear, white people -- 12.5% of the population -- still retain the
bulk of this country's wealth. Impoverished whites are a tiny segment of the
population, especially when compared with the 54% of blacks in this country
who struggle to survive below the poverty line. Many are rural peasants who
live in mud huts, scrounging for food, walking miles to fetch water or to
reach a rundown health clinic. It has been that way for decades.
By contrast, white people, such as the Swarts family, were largely strangers
to economic suffering.
Mr. Swarts, 41, lost a good job at the gold mines when the bullion price
crashed. But he bounced back by landing an even better one, building boilers
for the equivalent of $2,500 a month. It was a respectable salary, by South
African standards. He was a respected man.
Then, he says, 45 white employees were laid off during a union-employer
dispute over affirmative action. Mrs. Swarts had left her job as a nursing
assistant when she had a baby and could not find another post.
The family survived on savings for six months. When the money ran out, they
sold furniture, clothes, even most of the children's toys.
Eventually, they had nothing left to sell. The rent could not be paid and
the family of four was put out on the street.
They found their way here, to the Kempton Christian Action Centre -- a
refuge set up in 1993 after a local businessman noted that white people had
begun begging on the streets. Supported by the Afrikaner community and the
Dutch Reform Church, this charity project provides the destitute with small
huts and three nutritious meals a day. There is a central television room
for adults, a playground for kids, shared shower blocks and flush toilets.
Mr. and Mrs. Swarts are grateful, but admit their marriage almost fell apart
when they first moved here.
"I couldn't take it," Mr. Swarts concedes softly. "I just wanted to leave. I
couldn't stand to see the children here ... Look at the place."
The children, Chane and Andrew, share a single bed, squeezed in two feet
away from their parents' double bed. The stuffy hut has just one window,
covered by a tattered curtain. Clothes hang from hooks on the wall. A
counter at the end of the bed is stacked with a few pots, some books, cups
and toothbrushes. A few board games and puzzles are stacked in the corner,
alongside a doll in a blue baby carriage -- the few personal possessions
that have survived.
"If you have had something and then lost it, perhaps it hurts more at a
personal level," says Albert van Zyl, a researcher at the Institute for
Democratic Alternatives in South Africa.
He notes that, in the past, impoverished whites and Indians at least
received solid maintenance grants from the state. (Blacks and mixed-race
coloureds were ignored.) Today, welfare grants are being drastically reduced
as the new government cuts up its budget to serve people of all races.
White beggars, unheard of in the 1980s, have become a regular fixture at
some street corners in Johannesburg, holding one hand out to motorists while
clutching a sign in the other. The felt-pen scrawl on one such placard
reads: "No job, no house, no money."
For many Afrikaners, the Dutch descendants who were routinely taught they
were "God's chosen people," the humiliation is unbearable.
"In the past, blacks were pushed aside. I know that wasn't right," says Mr.
Swarts. "But it is the whites who are being put back. I don't think it is
fair. It should be more 50-50."
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