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Thought of the month ...

March 2013: Mandela's rainbow country is a checkerboard: The idea of a rainbow country where all races and colors are equal is fascinating and intriguing. The first president of Trinidad and Tobago promoted the idea. Having spend much time in T&T, I can appreciate the vision, and seeing people of all colors mix and lime together is promising.

Nelson Mandela promoted the vision and wanted South Africa to be a rainbow country. Many seemed to support him. But apartheid is like a cat: it seems to have seven lives. Every time I go out and sit down in a restaurant in Johannesburg, I cannot avoid to think of a checkerboard: there are table with whites only and tables with blacks only. Very seldom can we see a table with mixed races. And couples of mixed races have a hard live and get many negative reactions.

The other day, in a presentation on the geometry of immigration from Zimbabwe, I could read the sentence "Apartheid is back. But now it is black." I commented that Apartheid never left, but now it has the new facet of black South Africans also keeping apart from the black immigrants.

It is amazing, and also frightening, to what extent the society in South Africa is segregated, separated into small ghettos of whites separating themselves from the allegedly dangerous (poor) blacks, larger ghettos of rich separating themselves from the informal settlements of the poors, and the (poor) black South Africans separating themselves from the (poorer) black immigrants. We keep ourselves separated in our private space but also our public spaces. We even keep out car windows closed to be separated from the poors begging in the streets.

It is, however, good to see that the younger people, those born after Apartheid ended, start to make progress towards the rainbow vision. When will the checkerboard turn into a rainbow? It may take several generations, unless the young generation one day gets up and tells the older generation: enough, get over it, we all are equal.


If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.