Hope Tempers Poverty in New Racial Era

Marc Beavon is 31, unemployed and hasn’t washed himself or his clothing in a very long time. He would be homeless and hungry, too, if Doris Mnengi hadn’t taken him in.

Beavon the tenant is white. Mnengi the landlady is black. They both are poor but are finding their way, together, in post-apartheid South Africa. And while they represent the potential of racial reconciliation that is emerging seven years after the end of apartheid, they also illustrate the crushing poverty and unrealized dreams that have left many South Africans bitter and disillusioned.

“At the moment, blacks and whites are together,” Beavon said as he stepped early Wednesday from the home he shares with Mnengi for $25 a month--a rundown hut with no water, electricity or sewer service in Coednorn Park, a squatter camp in the port city of Durban.

As host to the World Conference Against Racism, South Africa has emerged as a key player in the diplomatic war that has broken out over two extremely contentious issues: the battle between Israelis and Palestinians, and the legacy of slavery. There was still no agreement Wednesday night over how the conference would deal with either issue, leaving the possibility that the world gathering will end in a stunning failure.

But behind the scenes, South Africa has been working to calm emotions on all sides, trying to position itself on the slavery issue as a bridge between the developing nations in Africa, which want an apology and reparations, and the West, which is resistant to both ideas. On the Middle East, South Africa has tried to present itself as a model of hope, suggesting that even the most intractable problems can be overcome.

“We are not gloating, but we are saying something exciting has happened in this country,” Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Wednesday at a news conference at the convention center in Durban. “We expected black people to be baying for blood of whites, seeking retribution and revenge. It has not happened--it is, in fact, a fact that you are sitting here in this country after apartheid and you see most whites are all right. The indication seems to be we are moving in the right direction.”

Representatives from 163 nations and thousands of nongovernmental organizations have descended on Durban to try to develop a united front and an action plan for fighting racism the world over. From the start, speaker after speaker has hailed South Africa as the perfect location for such a conference because it offers the promise of developing a color-blind democracy.

But while that concept may be enshrined in South Africa’s constitution, this remains a country very much defined by race, the inevitable legacy of nearly half a century of state-sanctioned segregation. People still think along racial lines, and inequities continue to define the races.

But increasingly, the fight is being redefined from a race struggle to a class struggle.

“This conference projects South Africa as a very wonderful country,” said Virginia Setshedi, a community organizer from Soweto, a black township outside Johannesburg. “But it is not true. We are poor and dying.”

Blacks, who make up about 75% of the population of 44 million, remain mired in poverty, captives of inferior schools and exposed to racism in many ways. But as affirmative action programs work to reverse decades of discrimination, a white underclass is emerging that is having difficulty coping without the extra benefits once provided by the white government.

“We have a form of democracy in South Africa, and in many ways it is a hell of an advance,” said David Hemson, a sociology professor and former anti-apartheid activist in Durban. “But it is very limited.”

Some of the disillusionment comes from the inevitable realization that the end of apartheid, like the end of communism in the former Soviet Union, marked not just the death of one system but the beginning of a new one. Its growth is impeded by a bureaucracy that has lagged in addressing issues as basic as restitution for land claims and building housing, sewers and other infrastructure.

The government, for example, promised to compensate all families and their descendants who lost their property under apartheid. But of the 68,878 claims lodged so far, only about 12,000 have been resolved. In KwaZulu-Natal province, where the conference is being held, just 300 of 14,500 land claims have been resolved. That is partly due to the complex nature of researching land records and finding family members, and partly the result of government inefficiency.

“The government has ambitious plans, but the process has been slow, in part because the systems and processes are not strong enough to make things run,” said John Ohiorhenuan, the resident representative for the U.N. Development Program in South Africa. “In a lot of rural areas, they are starting from ground zero.”

But even with the problems, many people say life is better now.

Clive Cerfantyne, who is white, lives in Sea View, a Durban neighborhood that had been Indian, became white and is now becoming a suburb for working-class blacks. Cerfantyne’s white neighbor is trying to run him out because his wife is Indian. The neighbor throws bricks on his house and garbage on his lawn and uses racial slurs to refer to his children, Cerfantyne says. But under apartheid, Cerfantyne and his wife, Grace, weren’t even allowed to live together. They couldn’t walk in the street together, go to a restaurant together or even sit on the beach together.

“It is all a bit better,” said Cerfantyne, 49. “They [whites] still want the community all to themselves. They’ve got to change. They have got to live in today, not in the past.”

Enoch Mvinjelwa, 50, lives in a poor black area outside Durban and survives on odd jobs. He says the irony of the new South Africa is that during apartheid he had to sneak into the city because he didn’t have a legal pass. But once there, he always found work. Now, he said, he can travel freely but often cannot find work.

Nevertheless, he said, there is no question which situation he prefers. “Things are 100% better,” he said. “I may be poor, but I have my family and my church. I pray for God to give me a long life.”

In the squatter camp, which runs along railroad tracks and is permeated by the odor of human waste, more than 300 people have found that, if nothing else, blacks, whites, Indians and people of mixed race can live side by side and struggle together.

Ronnie Steenkamp, 64, who is black, lost his leg a year ago when gangrene set in and a Zulu healer cut it off above the knee. He is confined to a small mattress and wouldn’t even have a blanket if not for a white neighbor, he said.

“At the moment, racism is still rife in the country,” said Jeffrey Morlock, 50, whose mother was Zulu and father Irish. “At the moment, we still think of each other by race. But it is better. We are beginning to come to terms with each other.”