Student needs help for project about Coetzee/Disgrace

[Elephant]

Hi!

I found this site and hope to get some information here.But lets first introduce myself: I'm a 19 year old student from Germany.I choosed to write some Kind of a big essay in my main Course English about Apartheid in South Africa and Coetzees Novel "Disgrace" dealing with this topic.

One part of my project is to sum up Apartheid,especially the situation after the official abolition of Apartheid up to today.The other part is to work out the Themes of Coetzees novel "Disgrace and his description of apartheid.

So I would involve in my project the Opinion of people who live in South Africa and were/are confronted with Apartheid.

I have especially 3 questions,but I also will be thankful if you write down any idea which comes into your mind thinking about Apartheid:

1.)How do teenager think about Apartheid?Do they care about what happend in your History and still seperate between Whites and Blacks (friendships?)?

2.)Are there differences between inhabitants in big Citys like Capetown and in contrast inhabitants in Countrysides thinking about Apartheid and dealing with it?

3.)Although Apartheid is officially abolished,how far do People in South Africa still "Seperate" in their minds.


I really appreciate every answer,comments and links concerning my project!

[ches]

Elephant,

First of all, many of the users here are older than you (i.e. not teenagers) and live outside of South Africa. Some of the users here are not even South African and haven't even visited the country. Chances are, most of us haven't even read the book your project is based on. Still, we'll do our best to help you.

Under apartheid, schools were segregated. Schools became integrated in 1991, so I was lucky enough to be in an integrated school for two years, and to attend an integrated university. Teenagers today are blessed in that they never experienced segregated education.

When I was in university, I did experience unforced segregation, but it was not by race, rather by language. The Sotho speakers hung out together; the Nguni-speakers hung out together and the English speakers - which included whites, mixed-race people and Zimbabwean black people - hung out together. There was, of course, no animosity to people transcending the language divide. We all worked together in groups and helped one another with school work.

I had a friend who was from a small town and her parents grounded us for being seen in town with mixed-race friends. It is a generalisation that the rural areas are more racist than the urban areas. When you visit a rural town, however, you will of course meet many non-prejudiced people, just as you will meed prejudiced people in big cities.

Apartheid was able to perpetuate through a totalitarian, censorship-society. The government kept people in ignorance and fed them lies. Now that schools are integrated and people are being taught their real history; now that we have the internet and it's not possible to keep people ignorant of the outside world, segregation is disappearing. I have witnessed a transformation in one friend, who after meeting non-white people on a level platform for the first time in her life suddenly realised how wrong her previous opinions were.

Unfortunately, problems like unemployment and affirmative action (meaning that for the first time, white South Africans are experiencing unemployment) are leaving racist feelings lingering in some white minds. Similarly, there are a collection of black "Africanists" who still believe that South Africa should be for the black people only. The even refuse to acknowledge the birthright of some "mixed-race" people whose ancestors have lived in South Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, whereas the Bantu people only moved south around a thousand years ago.

Good luck with your project!