Global
Lay-Correspondent Report on South Africa
3
Culture Shock
While my sisters
were swiftly enrolled in Catholic convent schools, gratefully, I
was allowed to go to a public school, Capital Park Primary
School. South African society in 1971 (in accordance with the
apartheid government) was brutally segregated along racial, as
well as, nationalistic lines. By law, South Africa was a
bilingual country, requiring that both English and Afrikaans
were official languages. Afrikaans (derived mainly from Dutch)
school curriculums were taught entirely in Afrikaans, with one
required English class. English schools were taught entirely in
English, with one required Afrikaans class. Being the youngest
in my family and due to recent foreign student government
legislation, I was required to learn Afrikaans; however, my
sisters were not. I was fluent in Afrikaans by the time we
returned to the United States six years later. In comparison,
the Bantu Education Act of the 1950’s was designed to stifle
Black education, specifically to provide Blacks with sufficient
education which would not allow “a future without back-breaking
labour.” Today, South Africa is a multilingual country with a
progressive constitution that guarantees equal status to eleven
officially recognized languages; Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele,
isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda
and Xitsonga. English, however, remains the language of
business, politics and the media.
While my mother spoke with the librarian on my first day of
school, I stood before the collective gaze of my new classmates.
English speaking South African public schools were very much
influenced by the British school system. Standard uniforms for
my age group in winter were shorts, knee socks, white long
sleeve shirts, a tie and a blazer, all of which were riddled
with the school colors. On the other hand, in the summer, we
wore classic safari suits with knee socks. I did not have my
school uniform yet, so my mother dressed me as best she could to
match the other children. I wore slacks, a white shirt, some odd
tie and a cheesy gold blazer with a crest on the pocket. I stood
out like “some new American kid” (I was told later by a
classmate), which I suppose was inevitable.
Since we lived in the sticks, past the end of any school or city
bus lines, I was driven to the bus stop every morning. Here is
where I learned to play marbles in the dirt, and we took it very
seriously indeed, very competitive. I soon carried my own bag of
choice marbles and “goonies” (ball bearings) hard won from
others while we waited for our ride. My school bus picked up
students from two schools, an English school and an Afrikaans
school. Because we were the last pick up, the bus was mostly
already full. Once inside, I would squirm my way past the
Afrikaans kids to where my English speaking school mates sat.
The bus was divided down the middle, on each side were two long
bench seats, front to back, facing each other. It was intended
for the Afrikaans students to sit on one side and the English
students on the other, but we always ended up crushed into the
back of the bus, and there was only one way to get there … run
the gauntlet! I was immediately picked out as a foreigner by the
Afrikaans who held sway on the bus, and they would harass me
relentlessly, stand in my way, and yell at me. I instinctively
stood my ground and just plowed through them without hesitation.
I couldn’t understand their words yet, but I certainly
understood the sentiment (I didn’t like them much either), and
that was that.
Jeff Spahr-Summers
1:
On the Move—December
2007
2:
Rain—January
2008
3: Culture
Shock—February
2008 (This Page)
