Transforming Cape Town (review)

For many South Africans, the general elections of 27 April 1994, which officially marked the end of the apartheid system, ushered in black majority rule for the first time. Therefore, it was not only historic, but was supposed to represent the beginning of a new era of hope and opportunity for the downtrodden throughout the country. By focusing on Cape Town, the most liberal city during the apartheid era, Catherine Besteman, in Transforming Cape Town, looks at the extent to which those opportunities have been achieved and how the city's racial attitudes have been transformed since the collapse of the apartheid system.

Although Besteman found herself transformed from a visitor—whose initial visit to Cape Town, in 1999, was to help plan a joint study-abroad program for her students at Colby, as well as students at Bowdoin and Bates colleges—to a research scholar, what emerges from her subsequent visits over five years in this coastal city at the tip of South Africa is a detailed study, which demonstrates the conflict, confusion, ignorance, and frustration that continue to plague local racial groups. In fact, a decade after apartheid, many residents of Cape Town (called Capetonians) still cannot transcend the stereotypes and racial divide created by apartheid.

Meanwhile, the socioeconomic disparities that were the hallmarks of the apartheid era remain, evidenced by persistent residential enclaves and profound educational and healthcare gaps. Many white Capetonians still feel uncomfortable interacting with nonwhites, but nonwhites are unsure walking in white suburbs for fear of police harassment and white hostility (p. 82). A sense of inferior status, self-pity, and even self-hate still dominate the psyche of colored and black Capetonians, who feel they must adapt to white values to achieve progress. Some of the whites interviewed in the study were not remorseful about apartheid: they argued that they either had been oblivious to the existence of it, or had themselves been its victims.

Besteman makes a poignant comparison between white Capetonians and white liberals in the United States, who often preach cultural tolerance without actually accepting cultural differences. Despite these difficulties, however, credit must be given to organizations and individuals like The Langa Educational Assistance Programme (LEAP), the Hope Project, and Circle of Courage members, who must still overcome tremendous obstacles, skepticism, racial conflicts, and personal sacrifices to transform racial and social barriers created by apartheid.

Although written from largely an anthropological perspective, Transforming Cape Town is very informative and eye-opening for all and sundry, including historians. The range of conversations, anecdotes, and interviews with whites in suburbia and their country-clublike settings, to what she describes as "ordinary people" in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods like Langa, Khayelitsha, and Guguletu, not only are quite revealing, but show a tremendous lack of understanding and ignorance on the part of many white Capetonians of the economic, social, political, and psychological impact of apartheid on many nonwhite Capetonians.

It is hoped that in a second or revised edition of this otherwise useful book, the author will offer a substantive discussion of the black population, which forms 32 percent of the country's population; this figure comes from South Africa's 2001 census.