-Caveat Lector-
The article is fairly accurate in describing how whites feel.
The feelings are not without foundation. For instance, At the place where I
work a white(Danie Du Plessis,white male with 2 young children aged about 8
and 10) has been retrenched. there are plenty jobs in the company which he
is very competent to fill, but he is the wrong colour.
He goes off into a labour market in which there are quotas against whites
and about 500 000 jobs have been lost since the ANC came into power.
Also about 134 000 people have been murdered since tha ANC came to power,
350 000 women (officially--unofficial figures much higher) raped and Aids is
running rampant.
Some groups have done very well(see article below) and for many rural
blacks, the government has done many useful things and among blacks there is
a mood of optimism. However a multi racial countries economics tend to be
based on zero sum gains and the whites(and to a large degree) indians are
suffering a sense of alienation and although not expressed quite like this a
sense of persecution. At the moment whites are retreating into shell,
building the walls higher and hoping they are not the next crime or
unemployment statistic.
John
Business Day
23 April 1999
Class lines will divide SA's Indian vote
The middle class has benefited under the ANC government, but many workers
fear majority rule, writes political correspondent Farouk Chothia
THE Indian middle class is likely to vote for the African National Congress
(ANC) in the June 2 election, while the Indian working class will cast its
vote in favour of various opposition parties.
The reason for this is quite simple: the middle class has benefited since
the ANC took power, while the working class believes it is worse off than it
was under apartheid.
University of Durban-Westville political scientist Sanusha Naidu says that
parties, including the ANC, incorrectly see Indians as being a homogeneous
community.
However, Indians are divided along class, language and religious lines, all
of which shape voting patterns.
Contrary to popular perceptions, about 60% of Indians in SA are
working-class people who earn less than R2500 a month. It is their vote that
the ANC needs to capture.
According to Naidu, Indian workers feel alienated from the ruling party and
fear majority rule. "Despite the ANC's declaration of nonracialism, the
Indian working class sees the party as preserving the interests and needs of
black people," she says.
Other observers say that the ANC's campaign to garner Indian support has
revolved around two things: sentimentality and culture. ANC leaders
highlight the prominent role of Indians - like Monty Naicker and Yusuf Dadoo
- in the anti-apartheid struggle, and the presence of the new generation of
leaders - like Kader Asmal and Jay Naidoo - in government. In this way, the
ANC touts its nonracial credentials and hopes that Indian voters will see
the party as their natural home.
The ANC also tries to project itself as a party promoting culture: sari-clad
girls dance at ANC rallies, and garland Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.
Sentimentality plays on the emotions of Indians, who will be moved, for
example, when ANC activist Babla Saloojee's death in detention is recalled.
However, neither sentimentality nor culture is the key to winning the
support of the Indian working class. "Within the hierarchy of interests,
material gains and security are of primary concern (to them) while the
preservation of culture remains secondary.
"For the Indian working class, the vote is a symbol of improving a despaired
existence, but it is also a way of protecting its own fears against
Africanisation," Naidu says.
One senior ANC member in KwaZulu-Natal says that Indians have a strong
presence (50% to 60%) within the Congress of SA Trade Unions in the
province. They are concentrated in affiliates like the SA Clothing and
Textile Workers' Union, the SA Municipal Workers' Union and the SA
Democratic Teachers' Union. With the exception of teachers, many Indians
within these unions are unlikely to vote for the ANC.
"They join the union for material benefit, but they do not believe there is
material benefit in voting for the ANC."
The ANC members say a major concern of Indian workers is competition from
blacks. "The Indian worker feels threatened by the emerging African worker.
The Indian worker is the supervisor, and the African worker is now
clamouring for the position. Companies are also under pressure to employ and
promote more Africans. The market is now less secluded for the Indian
worker.
"When it comes to housing, there would be, in the days of the House of
Delegates, a waiting list that was 2000 long. Now, there will be a single
housing list (for all race groups) which is 15000 long. The prospect of an
Indian getting a house is more limited."
Naidu says that black workers are poorer and have a greater claim to
resources. However, she says, the ANC should place more emphasis on
projecting itself as a representative of the working class if it wants to
increase its support among Indians.
"It needs to articulate and implement policies along these lines, instead of
closely attaching racial identity to the allocation of resources," she says.
Other observers say that many members of both the Indian middle class and
working class harbour racial prejudice towards blacks. However, the middle
class, made up primarily of professionals and businessmen, feels less
threatened by majority rule.
The new SA has paved the way for them to improve their lifestyle. They can
purchase homes in leafy suburbs once reserved for whites. Professionals can
secure senior managerial posts in the public and private sectors, and
businessmen can trade with the rest of the world. As a result, they are more
likely to vote for the ANC.
"If there are instances where blacks are given first preference, the Indian
professionals would still get other jobs, jobs that they could not access
under the National Party (NP) government. As for the Indian worker, he finds
that jobs of the past are no longer accessible to him," one observer says.
Gauteng has a larger Indian middle class than KwaZulu-Natal. This might
explain why the ANC did well in winning Indian support in Gauteng in the
1994 elections, while the NP trounced the ANC in the Indian community in
KwaZulu-Natal. In the local government elections, the NP failed to win a
single ward seat in Johannesburg's Lenasia township - where the middle class
forms the majority - while the ANC failed to win a single ward seat in
Durban's Chatsworth township - where there is a large working-class
population.
Personalities might also be a factor. Some ANC members say the party has a
better Indian leadership in Johannesburg than in Durban. The ANC has
retained former Transvaal Indian Congress activists in Johannesburg, while
former Natal Indian Congress activists are less active in Durban.
Naidu says that ANC leaders like Mbeki spend too little time in areas like
Chatsworth and Phoenix. "When they went to these areas recently, they did
not sit and talk with people about their problems. They were there for a
while, and then they were whisked away to the city hall for a function
attended by the Indian middle class."
She says there is also a perception that the ANC's Indian leaders have
become detached from the community. "Mandela can go with Jay Naidoo to
Chatsworth and say that we are brothers. But the people there ask: who is
Jay Naidoo? They will tell you that he has forgotten them, and that he lives
in a mansion away from them."
In contrast, opposition leaders - like the Minority Front's Amichand
Rajbansi - have remained in touch with voters. "He still lives in Arena Park
(which is part of Chatsworth), and he will personally get involved in things
and take up issues," Naidu says.
One observer says that the Democratic Party (DP) is making inroads in
Phoenix, largely because it has a good councillor, Omie Singh. "If you
complain to him about street lighting, he will go straight to the
electricity department and nag the people there to make a plan. If you go to
our councillors, they will promise to write a letter to the department and
try to have the budget reprioritised next time around."
One ANC member says that party structures in Indian areas have collapsed.
One sign of this is the almost total absence of election posters in
Chatsworth. The township is flooded with posters of the New National Party
(NNP), DP and Minority Front.
Predictably, their campaign has focused on issues like crime, jobs and
affirmative action. The University of Natal decision to deny an Indian
student, who excelled in matric, entry to its medical school has bolstered
their campaign.
It is unclear which of these three opposition parties will win the most
support among Indians. In 1994, the NP won 65% of the Indian vote. However,
the NNP is likely to shed electoral support to the DP, which projects itself
as the champion of minorities.
The DP, though, will find it difficult to win support among Indian Muslims
because of its image as a Jewish party, something that Willie Mnisi, who
defected to the NNP, brought into the spotlight when he described Tony Leon
as a "little Jew" concerned only about Israel. On the other hand, many
Muslims are impressed with government's foreign policy.
The Inkatha Freedom Party's support in the Indian community has always been
negligible, and the party's chances of making inroads on June 2 were dashed
by the recent editorial in the pro-IFP Ilanga newspaper calling for the
birth of an Idi Amin in SA.
Registration in the Indian community is the lowest, standing at 38%. This
suggests that most Indians, who make up only 2,5% of the population, have
withdrawn from politics. The parties do not appeal to them, and they feel
that their vote is meaningless.
White Anxiety: Tensions Manifest in a South African Minority
AP
28-APR-99
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- The adults balanced on tiny chairs, knees
sticking up awkwardly like the legs of a praying mantis.
Seated in a classroom where their 5-year-olds squirm and chatter all day,
the
parents in a white neighborhood of Johannesburg were holding their annual
meeting -- discussing curriculum changes and whether to end the school's
policy of wearing smocks. On the walls around them, construction-paper
Easter
bunnies and glittery collages hung gaily.
So to an outsider the level of tension among these mainly white South Africa
moms and dads was startling. It was the kind of white anxiety that
frequently
confronts an observer here ahead of South Africa's second all-race election
on
June 2.
We are in the new South Africa and must adapt, some parents said. Others
worried that traditions and academic standards are being threatened. Left
unsaid was that the new South Africa is governed by blacks, and the new
government-mandated curriculum is aimed at the country's black majority.
Speakers interrupted each other. Voices rose in anger. One mother said she
made a mistake in sending her child to the private nursery school.
Since the 1994 elections that ended apartheid, one therapist says she has
seen
an "exponential increase" in white anxiety. Such stress is typical of a
society in change, said Natalie Edkins, who practices in Johannesburg's
northern suburbs.
"Very often people feel angry when they are out of control of their
circumstances, and I think white South Africans feel this way," she said.
White anxiety surfaces in the constant episodes of minor road rage along the
tranquil streets of all-white suburbs. Or in the passenger loudly denouncing
the lack of luggage carts at Johannesburg airport as typical of South
Africa,
as though no other airports in the world run out of carts. Or in the
resentful
tone of voice in dealings with black bureaucrats.
The impressions can't be quantified. But the tension seems more palpable
among
whites used to privilege and control than the less affluent black
population,
which has shown a remarkable patience in waiting for their lives to improve.
Many whites, to be sure, display pleasant behavior, and people tend to be
more
serene in the coastal cities where the pace is slower.
But the sense of a white society on the edge is inescapable.
Such anxiety is not entirely new.
Before the end of apartheid, there was the constant fear of black rebellion,
of losing power to the majority. Belonging to the oppressor group -- whether
guilty of specific acts or not -- also can twist psyches.
In his 1986 book "Waiting," a study of whites in South Africa,
anthropologist
Vincent Crapanzano wrote of the "primordial fear that comes from the absence
of any possibility of a vital relationship with most of the people around
one."
Marthinus van Schalkwyk, leader of the New National Party, put in this way
in
Parliament last month: "Apartheid was the Afrikaners' self-imposed
concentration camp of the mind." The party imposed and maintained apartheid,
and was dominated by Afrikaners, who make up 3 million of the country's 4.5
million whites. Whites comprise 11 percent of South Africa's population.
White anxiety past and present, of course, is an insignificant burden in the
face of what the nonwhite population suffered _ systematic deprivation of
the
most basic of freedoms and services, violent repression, strict segregation.
Millions of blacks today still live in terrible poverty.
For them, change usually means hope. Not so for many whites.
More change is on the way. The June 2 election will mark the departure of
the
familiar, conciliatory Nelson Mandela. The African National Congress will
win
overwhelmingly and promises to accelerate the pace of promoting black
opportunity and ending white privilege.
Afrikaners were always assured of jobs for life in the bureaucracy. That
certainty is over.
Crime, often gratuitously violent, has moved into formerly immune white
neighborhoods with a vengeance. At virtually every all-white social
gathering,
people talk about the latest assaults on friends or family like
Manhattanites
discussing co-op prices.
The parents at the nursery school were no different. The committee chairman
started off the meeting with the announcement that the principal's house had
broken into the night before and her 60-year-old housekeeper raped.
As more and more whites emigrate, those left behind see their peer group
shrinking and, according to Edkins, ask themselves, "Are we staying behind
on
a sinking ship?"
One place where the anxiety level seems to be low, not surprisingly, is
among
young people who have come of age in the post-apartheid world.
An Afrikaner student, talking recently with an American about going to
college
in the United States, showed a refreshing bit of optimism about his country.
"I really believe we will get there," he said.
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