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The Shifting Horizons of South Africa
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10719 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1986 |
7,547 Words |
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David Yeats-Thomas
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The amphitheatre was crammed with hundreds of teenagers, black and white, gyrating, chanting and clapping together to the earsplitting beat of the popular rock group, "Via Afrika".
Down the road a few miles, within sight of the laser-like beams of the rock band's strobe lights which darted about the night sky of south-western Johannesburg, black school children were rioting; stoning passing vehicles and burning fellow blacks who were thought to be "apartheid collaborators."
They were no different from the black children enjoying the rhythm of "Via Afrika"; they could have been at the amphitheatre that night, reveling instead of rioting, or vice versa.
Most of the black teenage revellers were still in their school uniforms. Some of the white youths were in army uniforms, national servicemen enjoying a weekend pass. They too could have been in the riot-torn black townships, patrolling, if they had been on duty that night.
On the grass tiers of the amphitheatre, older whites and blacks, perhaps parents, were watching. A few of the whites were stony-faced, but most were enraptured by the scene below and seemed caught up in the occasion.
The amphitheatre was in the center of Johannesburg's new fairgrounds built on an old gold mine. The new venue was unique in apartheid South Africa. The facilities were non-racial; the bars, restaurants, toilets, everything, were open to all comers.
I left the fairgrounds with my family on a high note, feeling that maybe there is still enough good will left in South Africa for everyone to resolve their differences before the violence destroys the country. But as we took the ramp onto the "concrete highway," Johannesburg's beltway, my euphoria was dampened by the sight of a car bursting into flames on the edge of the black township.
This happened shortly before I left South Africa earlier this year. The scene remains fresh in my mind; hope tempered by the seemingly endless violence.
America's Perception
In the United States I found there was little hope left for a peaceful solution. The image of South Africa, brought into American living rooms nightly on television, is of blue-uniformed policemen clashing with black youths; of brutality and bloodshed; of a land on the brink of a cataclysm. There is a déjà vu feeling that Americans have seen it all before. They vaguely recall the mob rioting before the fall of the Shah of Iran. They seemed resigned to a similar fate for South Africa.
"Looks like you got out just in time," Americans say to me. They give me a quick look to gauge my reaction, not quite sure they should have said that. I look at them and see the vivid color television clips flitting through their minds. Pictures don't lie. I couldn't compete even if they did. It's a very long story anyway. Rather boring.
The other day I read a review of New York Times correspondent Joseph Lelyveld's "Move Your
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