The Reality of Difference

“Apartheid with its policy of ‘separate development’ and white domination, has long perpetuated the myth that people in South Africa are different, with different lives, different futures, different destinies. But apartheid has affected every aspect of the lives of all the people of South Africa,  black and white. We share the same history, and the same future.”

-Post found at Mayibuye Archives at the University of the Western Cape

     This quote about South African unity is sandwiched between photographs of those who suffered because of bigotry and injustice and the stories of those who fought to overturn or to uphold corruption. While I believe that the writer’s declaration of sameness is useful, I do not believe that difference is merely a myth. The majority of individuals and communities who make up South Africa have suffered and continue to suffer in wildly different ways while others have lived with privilege that often goes unacknowledged.  As I have seen throughout my time here, many people, particularly white people, live within gated communities, hardly venturing outside to witness how other people live. Some gates are so high and the number of locks so numerous that those enclosed within them do not even know who their neighbors are or where they are from.  In other neighborhoods, improvised shacks are stacked against one another and it seems that people are not simply individuals but communities. These differences are not because of any innate deficiency or superiority but because of the continued belief in these distinctions. That is the myth. I believe that only when the distinction between the myth and reality of difference is acknowledged can South Africans begin moving forward.