"South Africa, a First/Third World... " a South Africa Travel Page by DesertRat

I’m not certain what we expected to find in South Africa when we were in the midst of planning the trip. There were, I suppose, somewhat conflicting images of the country in our heads. On the one hand, there were the accounts of the country we had heard from South African friends and from others who had been there, stories of spectacular scenery, wonderful food, and superb wines. But on the other, there were the press reports we had seen or heard over the years about the violence, the rip-offs, the muggings, the accordion wire-studded walls around houses, and the numbers of people, mainly whites, I suppose, who had pulled up stakes and left. Indeed, one American friend was so much against the idea of our going that he seemed intent on trying to scare us out of making the trip. Or he certainly had that effect on my wife. Whatever the truth behind all these preliminary musings about the country, the things we found once we got there always seemed to come as a surprise and almost always exploded any pre-conceived notions we had come with.

First, the contrast between Cape Town Airport and Nairobi Airport, where we had changed planes, could not have been greater. Where Nairobi’s had been dingy, thoroughly disorganized, and chaotic, Cape Town’s was spotless, well-ordered, and child’s play to use. Passport control and customs were as smooth and efficient as anywhere in Europe or elsewhere in the developed world. And outside, traffic was orderly and the streets were in excellent condition. It was hard to believe the two airports were on the same continent.

Once in the car, the surprises continued. Within minutes we found ourselves on a freeway (motorway) system that was as good as any in Europe or North America. There was strict lane discipline – the lack thereof always being indicative of the developing world – and drivers were no more reckless than elsewhere. Everything seemed to be completely natural to us; we were cosseted in the same comfortable, middle-class sort of environment that we are used to in the developed world. Yet South Africa was at least supposed to be a developing country. Huh? It didn’t make sense. Then, about ten minutes away from the airport, our South African host pointed out what were little more than shacks on the other side of a wall along the highway. Here, we realized, were hundreds, more likely thousands, of dwellings that were clearly substandard when compared with the middle-class environment we had both grown up in.

The next evening, over dinner, our host’s wife and daughter both expressed annoyance at the way foreigners categorize South Africa as part of the Third World. Sitting in the somewhat upscale suburb we were in, it clearly wasn’t “Third World”. We could have been in Santa Barbara or Lane Cove or Hackney. Over the course of our trip, I came to realize that South Africa is a true dichotomy: the infrastructure that we encountered as tourists and that our white South African friends live with day-to-day certainly IS First World. No question. But behind the walls along the freeway, inside those improvised homes that are lucky to have either electricity or running water, well, I guess I have to say that this is a Third World reality. The high-tech, modern infrastructure that so impresses the casual visitor is a legacy of the apartheid government – as is South Africa’s superb road network. I suppose one could say that the parallel universes that apartheid created still continue to exist on a practical, day-to-day level. I am NOT going to make any judgments here. As far as I can see, however, it’s a change that must come slowly, lest even greater harm be done by attempting sudden, cataclysmic change.