The Johannesburg weekly newspaper, “Mail & Guardian,” recently published its (annual?) “Race Issue.” The idea of a “Race Issue” seems odd as a topic in South Africa since race define that country’s everyday. And it sort of implies, although I don’t think they meant it, that now they’ll get back to reporting other things: We’ll talk about race again next year.
Anyway, I finally had a chance to read most of the articles.
So what can we say about them? Amongst others, there’s a lead article about utterances by ANC leaders; we find out that one white reporter does not want to talk about racism and voted for the Democratic Alliance; that there are nice black people in the Democratic Alliance; and there’s a meandering piece by novelist and educator Njabulo Ndebele about white and black expectations, etcetera. This is all well and good. But the relationship between race and class (how it stays the same, or changes), hardly comes up. It is all about identity. And about the preoccupations of the black and white middle classes.
But there were highlights. Especially the piece by journalist Pearlie Joubert.
Read that. Here’s an extract:
