[lbo-talk] 'neo' South Africa

[Joseph Wanzala]

Clearly the apartheid system was an obsolete sub-species of capitalism, the 
much vaunted 'end of apartheid' was not, it turns out, a political victory 
for human liberation, but the harmonization of South Africa with the 
dominant global regime of neo-liberalism. Americans of course are quite 
familiar with the illusory nature of civil (human) rights struggles which 
fail to address the core issues of capitalism and imperialism.

Joe W.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1426767,00.html

Now everyone lives in the townships

In South Africa, say the residents of Dainfern, it's no longer about colour 
- just money. Their money buys them a space in an idyllic carefree community 
protected by guards and a four-metre high electric fence. Their servants - 
all black - live in the slum next door. Christopher Hope asks if this is the 
future of his country

Monday February 28, 2005
The Guardian

A great silver pipe in the sky runs above the heads of the residents of an 
estate called Dainfern, a walled fortress-suburb in the northern stretches 
of Johannesburg. Set among fields, nature trails, and wooded suburbs, it is, 
inch for inch, probably the most costly secure space in Africa. And one of 
the most successful. The pipe carries sewage between the different 
communities that throng the flat veld outside Jo'burg. It is not that 
Dainferners are embarrassed about the pipe; it goes with the territory, and 
anyway now and then it springs a leak and everyone knows what Jo'burgers 
know anyway: shit happens. So people hardly notice the shining viaduct slung 
high overhead, much as Berliners didn't really "see" the Berlin wall, and 
for much the same reason - they really don't want to know what it is there 
for.

But then you can't do much about aerial sewage - what you can protect 
yourself against is crime and fear. The hijacker who wants your car will 
shoot a black businessman as easily as a white housewife. Jo'burg is the 
city of beautiful walls where people fortify their houses, barricade their 
flats, electrify their fences, buy dogs and guns. Or they move into 
cluster-villages, gated, guarded and patrolled round the clock. They all 
sell freedom from fear - but Dainfern does it better, and does it with 
style.

What segregates South Africans these days is security, and how much of it 
you can buy is what separates the saved from the servants. Dainfern is the 
answer to the Jo'burgers prayer - to live an unlocked life in a safe place 
where no bullets fly and hijackers fear to tread.

(snip)

It is not always remembered that, in South Africa, it is blacks and not 
whites who are most at risk from shootings, rapes and robberies. Given the 
choice, I have no doubt Diepsloot would opt for the hermetic happiness of 
Dainfern. Anyone who imagines that Dainfern represents some kind of 
short-lived aberration has not been looking hard at South Africa.