My last visit to South Africa was in 1989 when apartheid was in its death throes and Mandela was about to be freed after 27 years of incarceration. At that time, I was accompanying the late Archbishop of Glasgow, Cardinal Thomas Winning, to show solidarity with the churches opposing apartheid. In one of the iconic sites of the anti-apartheid struggle, Regina Mundi Church in Soweto (site of Madonna and Child window, pictured), he preached about freedom. Outside, my abiding memory is of his beaming face in a sea of joyous African women, ululating to heaven.
The Cardinal's joy returned to me when I went back to a renewed Soweto where small but decent houses had replaced many of the shacks and where memorials to the struggle peppered this home to one and a half million people. The atmosphere of fear and oppression had been substituted by one of limited hope – 'limited' because a democratic South Africa is still faced with huge challenges. Dehumanising poverty is still endemic. Half of the young people between 15 and 24 are unemployed. The only difference between then and now in the gap between the poor (mostly black and so-called coloureds) and rich is that some blacks have become the 'nouveaux riches' of the new South Africa.
Xenophobia against those fleeing war and oppression in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and other African states on the verge of failing is widespread and deaths have resulted from clashes. Many young, professional whites whose parents fought against apartheid in the ANC are leaving as positive discrimination for blacks in white collar jobs limits their chances of employment. 20% of the population is living with HIV or AIDS. Corruption is, Italian-style, everywhere – from the top echelons of society to the humble worker. Crime is so bad that thieves even stole cables from the new train to the airport, grinding the service to a halt.
Education as a source of empowerment has not been stressed. One student in a shantytown showed me his science assignment from his teacher – impossible for him to do without a computer (they had been stolen from the school months earlier) and a laboratory (not existent). I naively said to him that he should