His Point of View

As many of you know, I took a trip to Cape Town, South Africa in March, 2009.  If you don’t know, South Africa was under a system of legalized racism called Apartheid until 1994.  Apartheid ended just 15 short years before my visit, and it was clear to me that the racism is still alive and well in South Africa ( I can only speak of Cape Town and its surrounding region, as this was the only metropolitan area I visited during my stay.  Please see my previous post regarding my interactions which some of the citizens of South Africa here)  I saw that darker colored people held very few client facing jobs (such as waiters, hostesses, cashiers, etc).  I saw that coloured people drove nice cars, while most of the black people walked or took public transportation, I experienced hesitation to serve me in retail establishments until the shop keepers realized that I was not a local black or coloured person.  I won’t even mention the German owned book store which featured writings by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi (continue reading…)