Race in South Africa
When dogs don’t bark
Aug 30th 2001 | JOHANNESBURG
From The Economist print edition
As South Africa plays host to the third UN conference on racism, how much progress has it made itself?
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UNLIKE people, a dog that is a racist cannot hide the fact. Your correspondent’s dog, without any encouragement from past owners, barks ferociously at black people but merely slobbers at whites. Ingozi—the name means “danger” in Zulu—guards a house in a wealthy, mostly white, suburb of Johannesburg. In common with many South African dogs, he has inherited the assumption that any approaching blacks may be robbers.
Ingozi’s instincts are a reminder that old racial animosities still fester in South Africa beneath a brighter surface. In many ways, since the first all-race elections in 1994, the country has made a remarkable transformation from the world’s most openly racist society into a tolerant and democratic one. These days, instead of waving the old (apartheid) South African flag, Afrikaners at rugby matches paint the rainbow flag on their faces. A new black elite mingles with other races in Johannesburg’s malls and restaurants. Television dramas, comedy shows and newspaper cartoons all dare to poke fun at race relations, a sign of a society now a lot more at ease with itself. (more…)
