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As mentioned in my previous post, we are vacationing at Margate, which is located in the Kwazulu-Natal province on the east coast of South Africa. I live in the south-western part of our country, where the seawater is cold, where you get a lot of wine, wheat and shrubbery as the typical plant life, coloured people, wet (and snowy) winters, and blistering hot summers. I've been living there for most of my life (19 of my 32 years). 
So Kwazulu-Natal is a bit of a culture (and geographical) shock to me. Here you have warm seawater (warm enough for year-round swimming), bananas, sugar plantations and lush, tropical foliage, Zulus (black people), and a year round temperate climate. A veritable paradise. Sure, its got its problems (high unemployment, crime, and the highest HIV/AIDS ratio in the country, but what a place. No wonder its the holiday destination that it is.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. On 18 May we again had nationwide municipal elections. Some wards changed hands, but in general the status quo was maintained. But in general it doesn't feel that people's perceptions are keeping up with the times. At the moment I am at a holiday resort in Margate on the east coast of South Africa, a well known holiday destination for the (predominantly) white portion of the inhabitants of the northern parts of our country. Maybe its because I come from the south, where racial groups are (a bit) more tolerant of each other, but it feels to me that, when you walk in the street here, there is a quiet contempt between black and white here, and that people do their best to look past each other. It feels like the whites still cling to their 'good old days' of white racial supremacy (and still using terms like 'kaffer' (black), 'koolie' (indian) and 'hotnot' (coloured)), and that the blacks still do their utmost best to try and disrupt the whites' comfortable lives through arrogance, feigned stupidity, or simply preventing things from happening (quickly and/or efficiently). 
Listen, I understand that these things take a long time to change (look at America where racism, especially in the south, still exists, hundreds of years after the abolition of slavery), but it would have been nice to see more obvious signs of people's will to change and accepting a better way of things. I suppose I won't see significant change in my lifetime. Which makes this time I'm living in an uncomfortable time, where no one is really sure what the proper way is to act, where 'political correctness' is the best plan we could come up with, and where far-left and far-right political figures still manage to upset the rest of the population from time to time. But I expect things will improve, so for now I think we should do the best we can, and 'do unto others as we want them to do unto us'.
So Kwazulu-Natal is a bit of a culture (and geographical) shock to me. Here you have warm seawater (warm enough for year-round swimming), bananas, sugar plantations and lush, tropical foliage, Zulus (black people), and a year round temperate climate. A veritable paradise. Sure, its got its problems (high unemployment, crime, and the highest HIV/AIDS ratio in the country, but what a place. No wonder its the holiday destination that it is.
Listen, I understand that these things take a long time to change (look at America where racism, especially in the south, still exists, hundreds of years after the abolition of slavery), but it would have been nice to see more obvious signs of people's will to change and accepting a better way of things. I suppose I won't see significant change in my lifetime. Which makes this time I'm living in an uncomfortable time, where no one is really sure what the proper way is to act, where 'political correctness' is the best plan we could come up with, and where far-left and far-right political figures still manage to upset the rest of the population from time to time. But I expect things will improve, so for now I think we should do the best we can, and 'do unto others as we want them to do unto us'.
