Great Decisions explores South Africa

By: Kyle Christensen
Features Editor

On Wednesday, Feb. 21, Great Decisions hosted its fifth in a semester-long series of lectures dealing with significant subject matter which affects the world around us. The recent talk featured Mary Bruce, professor of English, offering her insights on the development (or lack thereof) of South Africa, based upon her own experiences as a tourist and instructor in Africa, situated particularly in Zimbabwe and locales of southern Africa including Cape Town and Robben Island.

According to Bruce, the African National Congress (ANC), which sought to assist those in poverty, has helped to make South Africa a thriving commercialized, urban land, but has still not entirely fulfilled its initial goal of helping those in need, as many black South Africans only hold 25 percent of all jobs and are still earning less than $3 a day.

“As prosperous as South African companies have become…it’s just a handful. For the poor, not much has happened for them,” stated Bruce.

Their government, in an attempt to improve their image prior to serving as a host to the World Cup in 2010, has initiated many public work programs to resolve these troubles, but Bruce feels that there are still many factors which are a hindrance to achieving this overall objective. For instance, ethnic interests of employers and what Bruce deems as “economic apartheid” have proven to be problematic, while tourism has begun to dwindle as news of the spread of AIDS-HIV and violent crimes in the area have scared some travelers away.

To support this argument, Bruce addressed her views on what she feels is an unsubstantial education on AIDS-awareness for the public (prompted by the stigma of conversing about health concerns in African culture). Bruce then exhibited an online edition of “The Guardian” (a newspaper serving to specifically report on the happenings of Cape Town) from Feb. 19, 2007, which contained approximately 35 headlines citing various violent acts in the country.

“Johannesburg [a thronged city of South Africa] has the highest murder rate in the world,” claimed Bruce.

An open discussion followed Bruce’s presentation, which gave the event’s listeners a chance to direct questions toward Bruce and cover many topics relevant to the status of South Africa, such as the notion of family structure, intercultural communication, race relations, child care and orphanages and many other imperative issues. Despite Bruce’s uncertainty regarding the future of South Africa, she also sees the potential for it to grow over time. “I frankly have a lot of faith in South Africans, because I think they want to make it work,” Bruce commented.