Happiness depletion

Okay, the snow made me happy, but then this made me sad. And frustrated. And a bit angry.

I know he's got a point, hidden deep under the sweeping generalisations. I know that change is, indeed, slow - too slow for most of the population. I know that he does admit "the plural of anecdote is not data" (and what a lovely phrase that is), and that he was only in Cape Town, and so on, and so on.

But, like, dammit!

The situation he describes does not reflect my experience of SA. Certainly it doesn't reflect Joburg, where in my apartment complex, all the flash cars (and there were quite a few) belonged to the black residents. Where there are plenty of occasions to see white staff (probably students) serving black customers in swish bars, restaurants, shops. There's a whole word for that demographic, in fact - buppies - and I cannot believe that he spent a month, a whole month, in Cape Town without clocking this fact.

But the problem is, while he's blithely ignoring a rather significant facet of the South African reality, and taking a rather smarmy tone implying that locals are happy to continue enjoying themselves by climbing all over the downtrodden majority... he's not entirely wrong. Well, he is wrong about the attitude of most SA whites, I think, and he's wrong (or at least, significantly missing the point) about the reasons for the situation. But yes, it's still true that broadly speaking - very broadly - blacks are poor, often dirt-poor, and whites are more or less comfortable. You may see a black CEO - in fact you will see dozens, hundreds, who's counting? - but you won't ever see a white gardener.

Yet despite that, the problem is mostly that there are not enough jobs to go around. The downtrodden majority stay downtrodden because there are no opportunities for them to exploit. Those who are skilled will get ahead - but even so, skills are not enough. I've heard plenty of smart, qualified black South Africans complain that they can't get hired, because "I don't have the right surname." Yes, nepotism is a problem; yes, affirmative action is a problem for many whites; yes, there is plenty of injustice in the hiring market, operating in both directions. But basically, it's not that the cake is being sliced the wrong way. The cake is just far, far too small.

So I dispute the idea that Britain is better, because the racial element of the class divide is supposedly accidental. No it isn't. It's also, I believe, significantly more entrenched than it is in SA, by now. But that's a whole other argument, which I will run far away from because unlike European visitors to my country, I don't feel entitled to perform an ill informed public dissection of the social ills of this country, my host.

Sniff. At least it's snowing again.