Flag of South Africa
By Edie Shannon
Prologue
Scottsdale residents Edie and BJ Shannon do volunteer business training in emerging democracies. The purpose of the training, which is funded by the US state department, is to develop the capabilities of the newly independent states to survive and prosper on their own, and secondly to bring back business to the US. Editor
South Africa
The young woman who checks us into the hotel is named Brightness, and she lives up to her name. We’ve arrived in Johannesburg after a four hour delay in Dakar, Senegal, where we were not allowed to leave the plane. So we are a little rumpled and jet lagged, but we’re here and we’re by a beaming smile on the face of Brightness.
Our hotel has no restaurant to eat, and the places that deliver are long shuttered, so we stumble across the way to an Italian café, slurp some spaghetti and hit the bed.
We are here jointly with BJ working in Pretoria and I here in Joburg. How can I describe Joburg? A friend who lives here says it looks like Dallas, and it does, as long as you hang around the area we are, four minutes from Mandela Square flanked by upscale restaurants and shops; Gucci, Ferragamo, Versace, etc.
Edie (Center, Black Coat) with Staff
Journey North
On Monday I and two staff members head north to meet some mentees (i.e. ones who are being mentored) of my clients. These young women own construction firms which have been awarded joint contracts in the construction of government buildings. The bigger (see White) construction firms are required to “partner” with young, mostly female, black firms in order to get the government contracts.
Our first stop is in the middle of what you probably imagine most of Soweto to look like, crates with corrugated roofs to live in, no water, no electricity, and many, many children. In the center of this squalor is our project, a government school complex.
Kindergarten, Price of Gold
The kindergarten, called a Crèche, is almost finished with tiny little toilets and sinks. The library is next on the schedule, followed by the primary building and secondary building. I just have to wonder how long these buildings will remain nice. The person I have an appointment with is nowhere to be found. Surprise! So I meet with the foreman (an Afrikaans) who tells me of promises made and broken by the local elders, and threats from the same group.
We get back in the car and head west and back toward the city. As we drive I see large whitish mountains. “Gold filings,” I’m told, the leftovers from gold mining. The largest good reef in the world was discovered here in the late 1800s. The white minority needed labor. They found it. The history of oppression of blacks is sickening, and all too similar to our treatment of minorities.
Psychiatric Hospital
Our second stop is a place the two people in the front seat have not visited. No one has thought to call ahead for directions. Five cell phone calls later, we pull up to a fortress, with gates, barbed wire, and guards. Our destination is the country’s psychiatric hospital. Another mentee of my client has won a joint venture with a big construction firm. They are in the process erecting Building 17 of the facility, to hold over one hundred patients, all behind locked doors, and some in isolation wards. The isolation wards have beds made of solid concrete, and slits for windows.
The person with whom I have an appointment is not around, so again I talk to the foreman. I ask him how much of his time is spent training the mentee and her crew. Fifty percent is his reply.
And so goes affirmative action in South Africa. Here’s the priority structure for getting government contracts: black woman, black man, colored, Indian, and white.
Office Stories
In my office I work with a black woman, a black man, a colored woman, an Indian, and a white. To me, they are just Connie, David, Zil, Armen, and Judy. It is beyond difficult for me to think of people in governmental racial terms, but I must remember, I am in South Africa.
South Africa has a terrible energy problem, and part of the unwieldy solution is “load shedding,” basically cutting off power in various parts of the city. There is a schedule of what to expect in the paper, but it has nothing to do with reality, so in the office we rush to use the computers, make copies, etc. before we are left in darkness. As load shedding includes the elevators, only one of four which works, I’m working on the 7th floor and load shedding includes the elevators, only one of four which works, so my assignment includes more exercise than I had anticipated.
The women’s bathroom is a few steps down from the 7th floor and the men’s a few steps up. Yesterday I went looking for Armin, and Connie said, “She’s gone halfway.” It took me a while to understand, but it sure beats hearing “She’s in the John!”
On the Road
My driver is ethnically Indian and an observant Hindu, her husband Spanish, Lebanese and Catholic. Her name is Yogi, like Yogi Bear. Often, when she picks me up to take me to the office, her two darling nieces and her four year old son come along for the ride. I asked the kids what their favorite foods are. Their responses: Spaghetti! Pizza! Sushi! And from the four year old: Coco Puffs!
One day as we were crawling home from the office, with the power turned off in Johannesburg, and the traffic lights down at a particularly ugly intersection, cars in all directions were blowing their horns. “Don’t you hate it” Yogi queried “when people tap their hooters?”
Names and News
I am doing training sessions for the staff and various clients on issues as diverse as communication skills and cash flow management. Clients are named Innocent, Pretty, Experience, Mpho (a feisty little woman), Kefilwe, Sizakele, Titus and one mildly cantankerous fellow named Zed, as in X-Y-Zed. I figure his mother took one look at him and said to her husband, “I’ve had it! He’s the end!”
The newspapers here are interesting. For one thing, they are significantly wider than ours, making the stretch of arms borderline painful. Job ads are for “a male aged 20 to 30.”
Apartheid Museum
Apartheid Museum
Yesterday, we took a rare day off, and went to the Apartheid Museum, which is adjacent to Soweto. BJ and I were given entrance tokens. Mine said white. His said non white. We had to enter separate doors and pass down separate corridors lined with identify cards issued during apartheid.
What an experience that museum is! I thought I knew a lot about Apartheid. I didn’t. Hours after we entered the museum, we got to the section on the riots in 1976 Soweto. The films, showing police placing tires around the necks of blacks and setting them on fire, were too much for me.
Two of my fellow office workers live now in Soweto and lived through the events of the 1970s. It’s chilling to hear them talk.
Place of Contrasts
Our hotel is in the heart of Sandton, the extremely affluent area north of central Joburg. Each night we repair to the bar where they offer complimentary wonderful South African Wine and nibbles. It is an honor bar. Those who imbibe outside of happy hour just leave a note as to what and how many drinks they have consumed.
We have our choice of many places to eat within walking distance: Italian, Thai, Indian, steak, Portuguese, Chinese, seafood. If I were here alone, I wouldn’t be walking anywhere. My driver had her car high-jacked two weeks ago. The thieves took the car, her purse, and the school bags of the three little ones that she had in the car with her.
Armin from the office stopped at a light and someone smashed her passenger window and grabbed her purse and laptop.
So we are careful. Today we had lunch on Mandela Square, in the center of a huge extremely upscale shopping center. Although it is fall, the weather is fine and people are walking all along the square, trying to decide which of the many fine dining spots will get their Rand. We sit on the square with huge statue of Nelson Mandela looking down benevolently on us. It’s truly a city and country of contrasts.
God Bless America!
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