Will the REAL South Africa please stand up?

There’s this big debate here as to what the real South Africa is. Now, by “debate” I don’t mean that South Africans are sitting in coffee shops everyday pondering over this question, but there’s an underlying tension that is impossible not to feel when moving around from place to place within this nation. The debate is, in a way, a microcosm of the argument that South Africa is not real Africa: it’s white, it’s European, it’s just different. Similarly, within South Africa, there’s a sort of discomfort that comes with moving from the townships to the touristy or ritzy areas. You go to the waterfront and you say this is not real South Africa. You go to Longstreet and think to yourself “I must have been teleported to a strange Victorian party-town…” but this is not real South Africa. You go to Claremont Mall or Canal Walk, which resemble literally any super high-end mall in the states, and say this can’t be real South Africa. You get the point. But then what is so-called “real” South Africa? The thing is I realized that I need to stop trying to classify what is or isn’t real South Africa, because the fact is it’s all real; all of what I see is here, now, as it is, everybody is here living together, Black, White, Indian and Coloured… or rather South Africans… and this is how life goes. Everything that I see, that’s it: the real South Africa. The way my mind has been justifying seeing such stringent dichotomies in South African lifestyles has been to align more with the rugged experience and shun the manicured one; however, both are equally a part of what it is to visit here, to make a life here and build a home here. It’s navigating between the overlapping worlds, attempting to bridge the gaps or, for some, avoiding the “other” that makes this place what it is, and thus it’s simply ignorant to deny or privilege one part over the other.

Long Street

 Canal Walk Mall

 The Waterfront