From the grey zone

Last 36 hours of our holiday. I can't say we're particularly looking forward to going back to Kinshasa, but nor will we have to be dragged back. Two weeks is just about right.

Hanging out in Observatory, aka Obz, the Brooklyn (or dare I say, Camberwell) of Cape Town. After the luxury and playing grown-up, we're back to our old backpacking ways, which means we get to crash in the bohemian, racially mixed part of town - a so-called 'grey' area in capetonian speak. After spending ten days in areas that, despite the end of apartheid, remain predominantly white, this is refreshing.

It is striking, to us as naive visitors, how much colour is still an issue in South Africa, even among people of our generation and younger. On several occasions we found ourselves unsure how to react to openly racist comments being made to us unapologetically by white South-Africans. Of course, there is a huge amount of racism in our countries as well, but we are used to at least some level of political correctness, however hypocritical.

According to Allister Sparks, whose book I am currently reading, foreigners make the error of equating the end of apartheid with the civil rights movement in the US, when in fact it is closer to the struggle for nationhood between Israelis and Palestinians, or between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. As such, we should be amazed at the level of cohabitation that there is, not criticizing how slowly it is happening.

Nonetheless, sixteen years after the Group Areas Act was repealed (the act that assigned races to different urban areas and the cause of the infamous forcible relocations of non-whites) and thirteen years since Mandela became president, it is still shocking to drive through posh white areas - akin to some of the nicest suburbs of Los Angeles - then turn a corner and find yourself in front of a huge expanse of derelict shanty town - poorer and more shoddy than anywhere I have seen in Kinshasa.

According to our (self-defined) 'coloured' taxi driver yesterday, all eyes in South Africa are turned towards the ANC's elective conference in December, which promises bitter in-fighting. The current ANC leadership has secured its own comfort and forgotten about the blacks in the townships, he said. If the wrong politics are used, South Africa could yet go the way of Zimbabwe.

Thankfully, this seems as yet unlikely from where we are today. Tonight, we hope to visit one of the black townships.