Racial segregation still visible in S. Africa
By Hans Brandt
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (DPA): When Frederik de Klerk, South Africa's last white president, announced the dismantling of the pillars of apartheid to parliament in Cape Town, blacks did not celebrate euphorically, nor did whites take to the streets in protest.
De Klerk's formal step came only after a long development the people themselves had forced. But even today, 10 years later, the traces of racial segregation are still visible.
Two key apartheid laws were officially repealed in 1991: the 1950 Group Areas Act, which segregated residential areas by race, and the Population Registration Act.
The latter provided the basis for classifying all South Africans by race and was the precondition for racial segregation in buses, restaurants, schools and clinics. But not even de Klerk himself mentioned the abolition of these laws in his autobiography.
Other developments from the same period seemed to have a longer-lasting impact. Political violence, fanned by de Klerk's security forces, cost thousands of human lives.
Preparations for formal negotiations with Nelson Mandela, who was released from prison in 1990, and his African National Congress (ANC) were a continuous source of public debate.
By contrast, racial segregation in living areas and in daily life had shown signs of deterioration for years. Housing crises in black townships and empty flats in white urban centers led to thousands of blacks moving to the cities illegally.
White landlords turned two blind eyes to the situation, bribing police and lining their own pockets with rents that were drastically overpriced. Everyday discrimination in public transport or on beaches had already been ebbing for some time -- both officially and unofficially.
Yet a decade after it was abolished, the structures of apartheid continue to shape the country. Soweto remains a black city of millions in which at most only a handful of whites reside. Although prosperous blacks have moved to the wealthier suburbs around major cities, whites continue to call the shots there.
That blacks and whites eat in the same restaurants and attend the same schools is totally taken for granted. "Mixed" couples are commonplace. But as in the past, so is racism.
Nelson Mandela led the first government to be democratically elected, in 1994. Thabo Mbeki has since succeeded him as president. The political leadership has had to realize that exercising power is far more difficult than it seemed 10 years ago. The exultant dreams of justice and a modest level of prosperity for all have been forced to give way to a harsh reality. While poverty and unemployment remain widespread, failures can no longer be blamed on the white minority.
Many ANC politicians are by now more concerned with personal ambition than idealism.
Yet despite the trials and tribulations of normality, South Africa can still be proud of its peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. The country is a respected member of the international community and is widely viewed as the bearer of Africa's hopes. It was de Klerk and Mandela, both of whom have since made their exit from the political stage, who laid the foundation for these developments 10 years ago.