Destiny's Children
10 Years After The End Of Apartheid
For this generation, "whites only" park benches and schools are fading memories. But the guilt of the apartheid system, created by their parents and grandparents, lingers. "This is our inheritance," says Anton Van Oosthuizien, 27. "I have to pay for my parents' sins."
They spoke their first words in Afrikaans at the same moment in history when young black schoolchildren in poor townships were shot by police for demanding that the language be scrapped in schools. They became eligible to vote just as their vote became worthless--its power diluted by millions of newly enfranchised black voters who outnumbered them more than 10 to 1. Now, they look for jobs as unemployment climbs and both companies and the government try to hire from the long-neglected black community.
While they don't pine for the return of white privilege, many young Afrikaners are greeting the 10-year anniversary of South African democracy with mixed emotions. "When I was young, I thought I had a bright future," says Louise Steyn, 21, a self-described member of the Zoid generation. "But then 10 years ago my future fell on its face. My parents had no education and got good jobs. Me, I have to go to university, and even then I might not get a job."
Even though whites here still hold overwhelming economic power--they occupy 75 percent of top private-sector management positions, are still overrepresented in government, and earn on average seven times what blacks earn--many, like Steyn, feel threatened. Part of this is the natural result of losing power, which they used not only for their own enrichment but also to promote and protect their language and culture. The fear sown during apartheid that whites would be overrun by blacks also plays a role. And part of this may be because of an overdeveloped sense of privilege. "Our parents see no good opportunities for themselves or their children," says Zoid. "What's happening to us is quite sad."
Frustration. Many are simply choosing to leave. Afrikaners constitute almost half of the 20,000 to 30,000 South African emigrants each year, though they make up only about 5 percent of the nation's population. Others have retreated into towns like Orania, a defiant all-white town built on private land in South Africa's desolate center. Still others have tried to reclaim what was theirs by force. On trial in Pretoria now are 22 Afrikaners accused of plotting to overthrow South Africa's black, democratically elected government. They are accused of detonating a dozen bombs in the Johannesburg area in 2002, killing one woman. They aspired to chase all of South Africa's blacks across the border into Zimbabwe and pack all of South Africa's Asians onto boats headed east.
Most Afrikaner youth, though, take up neither arms nor suitcases. Instead, they resign themselves. Like Zoid, many say they don't bother to vote. In the 1980s, Afrikaner jazz and blues musicians urged their white audiences to vote for ending apartheid. They did, and now, they don't have the political power to vote more than a few white faces into the nation's Parliament. All of South Africa's whites together--Afrikaners, along with whites of British, Portuguese, Greek, and Italian descent--constitute less than 10 percent of the population.
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