The plusses and minuses - so far.

Here are some of the bad and the good differences I’ve found in South Africa compared to the United States, so far (cultural, social, legal). Please forgive the seemingly ethnocentric statements contained in the following paragraphs. I’ve saved the good for last, though. I can’t leave my readers on a bad note.

I think my biggest complaint so far would be the education system. I don’t really need to go to class here, even though I do. Slides are just read out loud in class and you really only need to read the book. There’s no such thing as critical and independent thinking. One teacher I have a problem with specifically is our new Diplomacy teacher. Before and after our first test, she kept emphasizing that we need to repeat what the text says. “Pay close attention to the text,” “Make sure you know your text.” Nothing on read and then develop your own opinion. Basically, the test was how well do you know the book and what the author thinks. And this is an international relations test. Not a biology 101 class. There is room for leeway in the answers. One would think politics are relative and would vary as much as peoples’ various ideologies, but apparently not. Another problem I have with school here is that students are just outright rude. They talk during lectures, ask mocking questions, and get up and leave five minutes before class is over. Segueing instantly, I am at my next topic: students’ education. Last year, half of the University of Pretoria students in the Humanities Department failed. Half. In one class, with the exception of the Americans, the class voted to hear a lecture explaining what an abstract, introduction, and conclusion are. Those are things I learned in junior high. Another class gave examples of bakeries, churches, and butcheries when asked what public buildings were. The list goes on. But I will not. You get the idea.

My only other huge complaint is the traffic laws. Or lack thereof. Namely the fact that pedestrians absolutely do not have the right of way. It seems crazy to me but this is Africa, I guess. On my way to class about a week ago, a car was stopped across (diagonally) from me at an intersection. I began to cross, and when I was in the middle of the street, the car floored it and proceeded to honk as I ran out of the way and on to the sidewalk. I smiled and waved sarcastically, though somewhat startled and annoyed. Friday I made eye contact with a car stopped behind another at a four way stop, thinking it was my turn. The second car tailgated the one in front of it through the stop sign so that it didn’t have to wait on me to cross the street. A local, Ruben, told me that you never assume a car will stop for you as a pedestrian. Assume they will run you over first. Because oftentimes, they do.

People walk at the speed of glaciers here. And I’m not talking about the melting ones of today’s time. Slower. Seriously, there are times where I want to push people out of my way to get where I need to be. We did not evolve bipedalism so that people can walk at the speed of the now extinct South American Giant Ground Sloth. If we were living 10,000 years ago, a predator would have eaten some of these people first simply due to the complete lack of urgency they have in their steps. It was nice being on African time on our mini-vacation in Durban, but now that it’s back to school, I have somewhere to be, thank you.

I’m on the fence about this one, so I’m putting it in the middle: Unions aren’t as restricted or as controversial here as they are in the US. For the past two Wednesdays, a few of my international friends here at Tuksdorp and I were supposed to go to an elementary school in the Mamelodi Township to tutor kids in reading and writing English. The problem here is that for the past few weeks, there have been mass public sector strikes going on in South Africa. The main demand of the workers is, of course, wage increase. The teachers specifically want 8% and have been offered 6% (as of a week ago). While I support the rights of workers to organize and protect their rights, the kids are suffering at the same time. Teachers are undervalued in almost every country and the same is true in South Africa. But with teachers striking, children suffer as well. They don’t get the education they are supposed to be getting and in the case of Mamelodi, sometimes they aren’t getting good food or attention needed. Mamelodi is still very much a township and as a result, school can potentially be safer, more comforting, and have better food than home. There have been tutoring programs set up in lieu of the striking teachers’ absences, but I’m sure the quality is not the same. I remain neutral on this issue. Mainly (maybe selfishly) I want the strike to end so that I can get my bit of tutoring and interaction in with the kids too.

Now to the positives: they are mainly legal and not cultural, unfortunately.

Marriage equality and adoption are legal nationwide in South Africa. I know there’s a push for marriage equality currently going on at home in the US via California’s Prop 8 going through our justice system. And with the exception of religious reasons (which, if actually thoroughly investigated, would be found in favor of equality and acceptance – contact me for reading material on this matter), there is no legitimate reason the LGBT community should not have equal rights in any country that claims to be a liberal (traditional, not ideological) democracy (see the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision – read the first ten pages, if not the whole thing.). While equal rights are legal, the South African public is still deeply divided. Regardless, the Constitution protects the rights of all people residing in South Africa.

Another provision of the South African Constitution is that “the National Assembly… results, in general, in proportional representation.” (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa No. 108 of 1996, Chapter 4, section 46d) This ensures that, as has been the case in US up until recently, it isn’t only straight Christian rich white men running the country. Which is actually how it was under segregation and apartheid. Muslims, blacks, whites, Christians, gays, tribal ethnicities, women, or any combination of these are, theoretically, represented in the National Assembly and Judiciary. There are also “State Institutions Supporting Constitutional Democracy,” that protect the people, such as The Public Protector, The South African Human Rights Commission, The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, The Commission for Gender Equality, The Auditor General, and The Electoral Commission (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa No. 108 of 1996, Chapter 9). My political science class partially covers the South African government, if you can’t tell.

So, there you have it. The complaints. The praises. I won’t make this any longer than it already is and leave it here. Once again, my political and philosophical views have spilled out onto the blogosphere. Next time I’ll try to keep it event centered for ya’ll.