This is a journal entry I wrote after my 2019 trip to Cape Town and Johannesburg, Africa.
The angry elderly white woman stands up from her booth, throws her arms in the air, and yells, “Where’s the service?”
I imagine this entitled woman has been getting served by black people her entire life, and she cannot stand when her servants aren’t up to her standards. She was no doubt getting served by black people before Apartheid. And again after Apartheid. She probably voted to keep Apartheid in the 1994 elections and voted for de Klerk over Mandela.
I’m just guessing at all of this. Maybe she’s actually a really nice woman who’s just having a bad day. But after a week in South Africa, and especially two days in Johannesburg, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the racial tension constantly simmering beneath the surface.
I’m hardly an expert on racial progress, nor on South African society. I will simply state what I’ve seen. During my time in Johannesburg, I saw nothing but segregation. Aside from the Apartheid Museum and a couple of shopping malls, it seems that white, black, and coloured folks (“black” and “coloured” are considered distinct races here) rarely mingle on even terms.
When they do meet, it’s black people serving whites. The affluent white people who owned the Airbnb I stayed at had black servants (and a wire security fence around their housing complex, something that was common in white areas all around Johannesburg.)
When I walked around the neighborhood around 5 pm, I did not encounter a single white person, but I saw lots of black folks, most in labor uniforms or housekeeper uniforms. Their day of serving white folks was over, and they were heading home, in the buses/colectivos that bring them to these rich neighborhoods from their townships or poorer hoods.
At the mall, every server, cashier, or retail associate position was held by a black person. Every single one. Every gas pumper, every construction worker. Even every worker at the airport was black. There were simply no white people serving other white people. (I have since learned that Johannesburg is 76% black, so that adds some context to this.)
Of the 10 Uber drivers I had in South Africa, only one was white.
I’m happy these folks have jobs. But I couldn’t get over the reality that, 25 years after the end of Apartheid, South Africa is mostly still black folks serving white folks. It was unnerving and uncomfortable.
Sure, the U.S. and other countries have similar issues — we have lots of Mexican housekeepers and construction workers, for instance. But I’ve never seen such a disparity as I did in South Africa.
And in the U.S., when I go to a coffee shop or restaurant, it’s a complete toss-up who will be serving me. The Starbucks barista could be absolutely any race (or gender, or sexual orientation.) In South Africa, there’s no doubt: That server will be black.
Given the country’s embarrassing racial history, that made things awkward as hell as a visitor. I always cringe when people say South Africa is their favorite country in Africa. I did enjoy the penguins at Boulders Beach, and the hike up Table Mountain. But South Africa was my least favorite of the eight African nations I spent time in.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the incredibly racist college students we met in the wine town of Stellenbosch. These kids casually asserted that white people were intrinsically and biologically smarter than black people. They stated it matter-of-factly, as if it should be obvious to everyone. Then they looked at us like we were crazy when we dared to question that belief. It felt like we were talking to time travelers from the 1940s or something.
Again, this is all just my opinion as a tourist. But I’m hardly alone. The Independent Institute recently published an article called “Johannesburg: Where Apartheid Never Ended.”