Why I Envy South Africa : Our unequal schools, playgrounds, neighborhoods and streets have created an American apartheid.

The world rejoiced last week when Nelson Mandela, erect and elegant, was sworn in as the first black president of a reborn South Africa. As the haunting strains of the new national anthem, “God Bless Africa,” floated across the multi-hued crowd, I was acutely aware of my envy. Because as tortured as South Africa’s past has been, the nation as a whole seems to be moving forward. Its residents have decided, as Ben Franklin is said to have pronounced at the signing of our Declaration of Independence, “we had better all hang together or we’ll surely all hang separately.” With the exception of the fringe element on both sides, South Africans have decided to invest in their collective future by taking the huge risk of agreeing to work with their fellow citizens. They decided that their differences were less important than their similarities, that their common nationality transcends their individual races.

I was envious because South Africa made a decision that we here in the United States apparently cannot or will not make. De jure desegregation does not de facto integration make. We have made progress, but so much more needs yet to be done, for we are still suffering from American apartheid.

Think about it. If a magic bubble could transport you to any major city in this country, you would see:

* Hospitals on one side of town with organized waiting rooms, adequate staff and first-class supplies, and across town hospitals clinics and waiting rooms in chaos, with outdated equipment and scant staff.

* Schools on one side of town with smaller classes, helpful extras provided by affluent parent-teacher-student associations and well-equipped playgrounds, gyms and libraries, while schools in other neighborhoods have larger classes, less equipment in worse shape and less help from economically pinched parents.

* Well-maintained parks and recreational facilities in some neighborhoods and scruffy bare fields in others.

* Markets in some neighborhoods brimming with fresh produce and meats, but fewer, less well-kept markets in other places with higher prices and less variety.

We live with these inequities daily, but we focus on them only after some tragedy has been the angry catalyst. (When Los Angeles blew up two years ago, for instance, a lot of people’s vision was clarified overnight.) We see this, we know this and yet we cannot process it. Far too many of the people who run things in this country operate under the blithe and utterly incorrect assumption that because there are a few African Americans in positions of power and influence in government, politics and commerce, the race problem has been licked. They want so badly to believe that because a gilded neighborhood with 600 households can count among it a black family, or because a corporation that never even hired black clerical staff now has a black vice president of community affairs, that we have overcome.

We haven’t, and part of why is simple: We still have not, as a nation, come to grips with our slave-holding past. White Americans have not, as have white South Africans, taken a deep breath and admitted that there is a certain privilege associated with living inside white skin, even when the person inside that skin is keenly sympathetic to issues involving other cultures, and that this privilege almost always comes at the expense of people who are not white. The connection between our past and present is often lost on white Americans. “I didn’t enslave you--that was 400 years ago,” they point out. “It’s 1994--get over it.”

But American slavery doesn’t only affect the descendants of chattel, it also scars the descendants of chattel owners. And South Africa has realized that a nation cannot come together without some cathartic acknowledgment that to face our future, we must honestly acknowledge our past. So I watched with envy as a blond, bearded young father swayed to the rhythm of a township band in the square before the Parliament building with his 2-year-old daughter perched on his shoulders. “I wanted her to see this,” he told a reporter. “I wanted her to see the day we all became one.”

Black South Africans will, after the euphoria wears off, discover that declaring oneself free does not automatically make one so. Some basic things will have to improve if anger and disillusion are to be kept at bay. I wish our South African cousins well, and hope that they will learn from our country’s mistakes. And that we, in turn, will learn from their example.