Crossing the (color) Line

Prior to preparing for and coming to South Africa, I wasn't a South African history whiz, and have spent a lot of time trying to piece together the complex web of what it means to live and work here in the post-Apartheid era. Because I don't want to assume that everyone who reads my blog is familiar with the political ins and outs of South African history, I want to give you a brief attempt at a summary for context's sake (and please, this is not a perfect piece of historical writing, feel free to correct any of my mistakes!): 

In the late 1700s, the Dutch East India Company came to South Africa and immediately began warring with native South Africans- Zulu and Xhosa tribes specifically- for land and resources. This war lasted for decades, and whites established settlements near Cape Town and beyond. This group of Dutch immigrants who settled in South Africa became known as Afrikaners, and came to power in the late 1800s, forcing most black South Africans into servitude and persecution. This segregation and abuse became systematically and legally enforced through the creation of Apartheid, the legal separation of blacks and whites, assuring that blacks would always be a class lower than Afrikaners. The violent, oppressive Apartheid regime, against which Nelson Mandela fought and was imprisoned for 30 years because of, only fell in 1994, leaving South Africa to piece back together a country that was divided along color lines for centuries. Apartheid had displaced hundreds of thousands of blacks, relocating them to shantytowns known as townships, and severely disadvantaged them in terms of health and well being, employment, education, and so on. Though great progress has been made in the country, much is left to do. 

NMMU, the university in which I've been working for the past week, is the product of a three-university merger in 2005. Each university was formerly segregated by Apartheid, and in NMMU's short history, they have made tremendous progress in breaking down walls between racial groups, and begun the seemingly insurmountable task of fully integrating these institutions into a single entity (imagine taking MSU, U of M and K College and being forced to put them all together, retaining the staff and student bodies of each. yikes). 

Today we met with an institutional research director, who has been tasked with examining residence hall life. NMMU has 24,000 students, only 2,500 of whom live on campus. The residences used to be all-white, as they were part of the all-white institution during Apartheid. Post-Apartheid, said residences are now entirely black; there is not a single white residential student. Imagine this at an American institution- a campus with a monoracial residential component. The researcher we met wanted feedback and ideas about how to attract white students to campus residency. She said that often, white students do put deposits down to live on campus, then arrive for orientation and see that they are a tiny minority (and perhaps one that is not desired by the majority), and leave immediately for off-campus living options. I am entirely baffled by the complexity of this situation. How can NMMU become a fully engaged and integrated institution with these types of challenges? The resilience and effort of their faculty and staff to overcome these issues is admirable, and I know I will continue to think about this long after I leave here. 

When Apartheid fell, racism, both overt and covert, in South Africa did not. And parallels certainly exist between Americans and South Africans. I am reminded of the commentary during and after the election of President Obama, that we were entering a post-racial society era, as if an bi-racial president means all of the inequalities and injustices racial in nature could suddenly be erased. I hope to continue to engage in dialogue around racial issues like this when I return, and in my academic research.