go to csmonitor.com's homepage
WORLD USA COMMENTARY WORK & MONEY LEARNING LIVING SCI / TECH A & E TRAVEL BOOKS THE HOME FORUM
Home About Us/Help  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Feedback  |   Text Edition



Section Branding

The Monitor's View

Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Columns:
Dante Chinni
Helena Cobban
Pat M. Holt
John Hughes
Moral Dilemmas
Daniel Schorr
Jeffrey Shaffer
Features Columns:
2nd Chapters
Marilyn Gardner
Economic Scene
A Global Accounting
David R. Francis
Web Columns
Another View
Patrick Chisholm
Deep Space
Michelle Thaller
Pop Eye
Jeremy Dauber
Siteseeing
Jim Regan
Weblogs
In Focus
John Nordell
Notebook: Africa
Abraham McLaughlin
Notebook: Iraq
Monitor correspondents
Notebook: South Asia
Monitor correspondents
SciTechblog
csmonitor.com staff
Verbal Energy
Ruth Walker
Weekend Zone
Weekend staff
We're Just Fans
csmonitor.com staff


 
Commentary > Web columns & blogs > Notebook: Africa > Archive > November, 2003
Notebook: Africa
Off-deadline insights: Our correspondents take you beyond the story.
Recent Posts
Categories
Archives
Information
Posted November 16, 2003

"Is there a ghetto in heaven?"

By csmonitor.com staff

“At first it (South Africa) seems a lot like the US, but every day you’ll find out more about how it’s not.” These words – spoken by an American friend on our first day here – have turned out to be hugely true.

Some impressions:

  • After seeing “Pirates of the Caribbean” at the mega-plex, we walk through the now-empty mall toward our car at 11:00 p.m. The exits are sealed with big padlocks, not crash bars. We canvass the entire mall to find the one open exit. Along the way, we pass a column of eight men. They walk single file, eyes forward. Big shotguns and ammunition belts are slung over their shoulders. Mall security.

  • Walk into the cellphone store and it looks high-tech and 21st century. Bright posters. Glass display cases. Two computers behind the counter. But fill out a paper application, and Yunus, the shop’s owner, drops it off at the cell company's headquarters on his way home that night. The computers serve no discernible purpose in the shop.

  • A sparkling white Rolls Royce rounds the corner on a palm-tree lined street in the late afternoon. It cruises past a group of black workers waiting for their ride home. They typically work for between $15 and $25 a day and commute one or two hours in jam-packed mini-buses from crowded townships to big-lawn, high-wall suburbs. The life of domestic servants.

  • Driving along a two-lane highway in South Africa’s rural northwest, past villages with two-room houses made from concrete blocks. Tin roofs glint in the sun. Chickens cluck in the dirt front yards. Graffiti scrawled on the wall of one house reads, “Is there a ghetto in heaven?” ... It's a fitting question in a poor village. But it's also an echo of American rapper Tupac Shakur's song, "I wonder if heaven's got a ghetto" - a hint that things may be different here, but they can also be strikingly similar.

    •

    November 16, 2003 in Impressions | By csmonitor.com staff | Permalink


    		Support the Monitor
    Advertisement
    Home  |  About Us/Help  |  Feedback  |  Subscribe  |  Archive  |  Print Edition  |  Site Map  |  RSS  |  Special Projects  |  Corrections
    Contact Us  |  Privacy Policy  |  Rights & Permissions  |  Advertise With Us  |  Today's Article on Christian Science
    www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.