There’s a lot of chatter in South Africa at the moment:
offensive paintings, tweeting imbeciles, money-grubbing football coaches, and
the usual day-to-day pillaging and looting that is the spirit of modern
democracy. The media packages it all and we read and re-tweet it, but the real
conversations are the ones that take place between actual people, like the one
I observed last night.
Once in a while I stand in with a blues band down on
Wilson’s Wharf in Durban. Tuesday nights in the city are nothing to write home
about for white people anymore, and those that venture out aren’t exactly your
typical Investec suburbanites. Last night, the white guy on the left in the
picture, with all the grace and social skills of a failed sprocket salesman,
downed goblets of red wine at the bar
and then turned his burgeoning invincibility on the black guy to his right.
The black guy was sitting quietly by himself two stools down
sipping a draught and reading, of all things in a city bar on a week-night, a
pocket-sized edition of Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War”. White Guy noticed the title
and pounced.
“ ‘The Art Of War’, hey? You fucking ANC guys…”
What followed was a loud stream of invective accompanied by
wine-induced slouching and gesticulating (see picture), all from the white guy and all based on two
assumptions: 1. This particular black guy was responsible for the the state of
the country at the moment, and 2. ‘The Art of War’ was some kind of ANC/black
terrorist text.
The black guy, to his credit, just sat and listened. The
white guy got louder and louder, throwing out phrases like “fucking kaffirs”
etc. The bar staff in the immediate vicinity started paying very close
attention in case it started getting nasty.
Then, inexplicably, the white guy goes, “Well, fuck it, I’m
leaving anyway. Soon as I can get out of this bladdy country I’m gone”. After
complaining and accusing, he’s leaving anyway? Then, even more inexplicably,
the white guy and the black guy, unable to continue the one-sided conversation
because of the barrage of white-guy blues rock from the guest band, get up and
go outside to share a smoke and carry on their fireside chat. They came back in
a few minutes later practically arm-in-arm, all national issues resolved.
As much as people like Julius Malema may make it
embarrassing for some black people to be black, white guys like this make it
excruciating to be white in a country like South Africa. When
previously-advantaged white people show themselves to be more ignorant and
uninformed and just plain dumber than their previously-disadvantaged
countrymen, it’s teeth-clenchingly awful.
Somewhere down the line, though, this belligerent drunk
smirking racist and this graceful, thoughtful quiet African man found some
common ground, shared a drink and a smoke, and the staff reported back that
they were ‘friends now’.
National Democratic Revolution be damned: this is the real
South Africa.
