Siphumelele Zondi
@SZondi
Recently I was in a pub in Johannesburg’s leafy suburbs
of Parkhurst. My friend and I were the only two black people there and everyone
else inside this popular pub was white. I overheard a conversation taking place
across from us where young white people were discussing how trust funds their
parents had set up were helping them get started in life. Another also spoke of
the property his parents had bought for him.
I later had a conversation with a white friend of mine
who acknowledged that a lot of benefits white people have come as a result of
apartheid and other policies that existed before apartheid was formalised which
ensured that black people would be near-slaves for white people. My white
friend mentioned that he has a grandfather who owns a fruit farm in the Eastern
Cape and knows that those that work on the farm are uneducated black people,
who are uneducated because policies of the past made sure of that. He mentioned
that his grandfather would never find labour that cheap if he was in Europe as
that kind of exploitation would never happen there.
