Contrast of South Africa

The country of South Africa has been the home of hate and violence due to racial indifference for nearly two centuries. During this class and while viewing the films, I have come to realize that what I knew and thought about South Africa was far from accurate.

When I used to think of South Africa, I thought that white people mainly inhabited the country. I "carried strong mental images" of what I thought South Africa to be.(Keim pp.3). I knew that the apartheid and differences between the black and white people there existed, but did not cause the violence that there has been in the past. I was not aware that the cities were owned and run by the white people, and that blacks were only welcome there to work. I was ignorant of the problems and reality of South Africa, and the history its black people have endured.

After watching Cry, the Beloved Country my eyes were opened to what the life of a black man in South Africa was like. Black people were only allowed in the cities to work, and they lived in the poorest places imaginable. Black women in the cities had such a rough life, that if without a husband, most would become prostitutes. This movie made me realize that there were problems in South Africa; problems that were no better then what blacks of our country had been through not that long ago.

In A Dry White Season I witnessed the way that the Afrikaners treated the black people. Innocent black people were being tortured and murdered just so that the Afrikaners could cover up and hide their own crimes. The Afrikaners who did these things were no better then the Nazi's of Germany. I realized now that South Africa was not kind to the black people but when I witnessed through this film the atrocities of the white people, I asked myself how I could be so ignorant to what had truly been going on.

I wondered why? Why was it that in high school I learned all about Germany, the Nazi's, the holocaust, and Hitler; but I was never taught even the basic history of black South African life, or how the Afrikaners treated them? The history books would tell you all about how Germany slaughtered six million innocent people; however they would have about two pages stating that there was apartheid in South Africa but it was eventually overthrown about 1990. There was little mentioned about how the blacks were viewed as inferior and lived in poverty, but the books mentioned nothing about how many were