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Black elite mostly benefit from deracialised SA

OF THE many examples of this phenomenon [of using black consciousness to attack whiteness] the relationship between the black professional and the "township" is for me one of the most fascinating.

Apartheid intended townships to be demarcated areas where blacks lived for the purposes of providing cheap labour to business and white homes.

In Europe and elsewhere these were called ghettoes. In the South African context they enforced adaptation to a hybrid form of urban living while retaining some cultural identity. In the process, a hybrid culture emerged, a mix of the realities of urban life, economic marginalisation and various black African cultures.

Since the formal abolition in 1991 of the Group Areas Act and other laws designed to segregate races, black people have been able to live in formerly white suburbs and send their children to formerly white schools, as long as they have the financial means to do so. It is the new black elites who are best positioned to benefit from a de-racialised statutory framework.

This has given rise to a new family phenomenon: a child who does not sound like the children in a rural area or township. This is a child who is heavily influenced by a combination of Western television and other cultural content now available on satellite television and the cultural alienation of his environment at school and in the formerly white suburbs. In essence this child is undergoing the same behavioural and cultural transformation that his forebears experienced during the growth of the township phenomenon.

Such children are often called "coconuts", black on the outside but white on the inside. They effectively suffer alienation from two fronts. In the early years of democracy especially, the whites did not regard them as their own and blacks outside of the suburbs resented them for being like white people in many respects.

Even when these children visit the township regularly because they have family there and are fairly comfortable being in this environment, their lack of township cultural edge is seen as a problem by their fellow black peers who do not exhibit similar traits.

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