From: mokaba@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Subject: If Gavan was black!! chapter 3
Reply-To: mokaba@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 15:16:19 GMT

Although it is not neccessary to have read my last two posting
it would help the reader to do so. In those posting I addressed
the experiences that Gavan would have had were he born an African,
and idicating some of the likelyhood of him moving up the SES ladder.
This rather poor analysis (or role reversal if yopu may) is directed 
at indicating some of the direct and indirect benefits that White
people enjoyed over the years juxtaposing them with their african counter
parts. I hope with this analysis some of the direct and indirect,
monetary and non monetary benefits that accrued to avarage white
people in South Africa, while their black couterpart carried 
burdens from the past and present laws.

If Gvan was and african that graduated from the university of the North
he is likely (70-90% chance) of having tasted tear gass, had no family
doctor, eaten low quality food at the university that what he had in the
white schools. Well, Gav do you remember the room mate you had and the 
group of friend that were so good, interesting and came from welloff
families, or were they just from families strategical situated in the
industry, the army the university community and for that matter the government
structure.. Were they perhaps from abroad on some exchange program.. 
This would no be the case this time... you roomate is the son of a poor
unemployed domestic servant who is on the Lutheran church scholarship-
oops! its a catholic scholarship.. Not nonly do youm laugh about you
experience at high school where you were asked in the exam to write an
essay on the blue train, but you find it funny that you always though that
train had tires...well leaving far from the station did not help here...
You have also laughed at the name that you (as a black) person has been 
called by the government.. you rememeber, plural, native, bantu, kaffir
kooperatif, etc. For get those my friends they are gone.. now you have your
degree.. which is regarded nationwide as much less a degree than the one from
Capetown.. 
You are unemployed now, who do you call, ... you cannot lack onto you dads
rollodex, or call your uncle in the funisher industry Jushua Door! you uncle
is in the mines.. You roommate work for the Venda Government Services and you
are unemployed.. You grandmother has no experience abroad.. or anywhere
and you granddad belong to no club unless of course the ANC which is banned..
You have no family friends that are friends to the director of
YsterKorperasie.. and By law you cannot be employed above a white person..
by cultural practice of the whites you cannot join any unemployment roll
and by the Group areas act you will not go to Joburg to find emplyment...
well you may if you find a chief's stamp and a job or else you run the risk
o being arested for pass ofence (in fact you have 60-80 chance of having
several repvious pass arest. 

You remeber the Town library that has been so useful in getting job, or
just preparing you for the regour of jo search..  sorry! you are not
allowed it whites only bab. You had alway thought that by being educated
you would be treated better by you society-the country but you are not
allowed in the center of knowledge the library.. you cannot but
remeber the day you were turn away for the first time... it was one of those 
many stay aways that were staged by students against government education
policy of apartheid, and you though since you were missing classes you could
as well pay the bus fare to town and study something  "Aowa ndoda" you are
balck this time.. as you were turned to the stree a white 15 year old
bumps you and a policeman nearby asked him if you were causing any trouble.
you went home. It happen again Gav...

Because of your qualification you could not get any good jobs but was luck
to see in the paper that Anglo was recruiting for black personnel office
to be station on a mine compound some 800 km in Welkom Vrystaat. You got that
job alright but you had to go through a testing place for balck worker right
in the heart of Thabong... a Teba compound called Mziligazi.. there you
were undresses and paraded together with twenty onther men.. kaal not even
a shred of cotton... welcome to The mine.. the Loud speaker makes anouncements
in Fanakalo! "Yena mandoda yenaphuma lo manyafnyaf wena theta nolo mabas boy
ka wena!! FRENCH... you notice all sort of posters one read Pasopa londoda
yena phoma lomgodi yena bulala" whatever that means... You white boss
hated you educated Kaffirs... you were not as much a personnel office as
you were a clerk and a smoke screen to preven the spread of Ramaphosa's NUM.
You are frustared but poor.. choices.

Only if black had been allowed to get educated maybe you father's network, 
would betranfered to you .. the law would have been less hash you frinds
would have died of all sort of things including fighting the government 
police... beside some white scholar named mokaba in capetown believes
that land and related policies had nothing to do with you position...
They cannot understand how in the creation of wealth those that invest
or are allowed in the capital minevstment process be it human if fiscal
are the one that will reap the profits both percuniary and otherwise
their children will benefit frrom what some economist have called the
multiplier effect of human capital investment.. the fact that percapita
invest by the government in your training by the government was less that
25% of Mokaba children is said to have little effect... as for lad purchase
only you understood what amout of land and the graves of your grnadfather 
that now is in Mnr Van Skiet-in-die-donker se plaas.. That was no you land
and the land act saw to that... Don't you be so picky because the white
did not take money from you ... they just enacted laws that truncated
you wage levels, force a split nlabor market in which you could not break
by so doing allowowing the curve in the white sector to be hioghly elastic
a steep... the ensuing shortage of hihg level manpower was so to say
"discovered in the 1980" you don't have to worry black Gavin, those
laws of free enterprise were directed by the desire on the part of the
white to protect themselves against poverty and not by suppressing 
blacks... you see the changes that followed the recommendfation of 
the Carnegie commission in the thirties were not followed.. .Verwoed
did not hat african he wnated to protect them against white... even when
he said that there was no need in training black children because the was
no place for you Gav.. above certain levels of labour.. he was just
kidding when he said that ... you black, Gavin, should be taught from
young that equality with a European is not for them ...(it was just a joke)
..   

More to come in the next episode of Gavan tredoux the balck man...
the next chapter will be a contextuall analysis of tredouxian priciple
of both epistemology and evidence ... based on the recent posting...

Just groing up to be an adult in a township is a miracle-Steven Bantu Biko..
Newsgroups: soc.culture.thai