Having recently moved from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg, I have noticed a difference in the racial ‘climate’ up here. The Afrikaans people are a lot different that in PE. It seems like people are more racist than in PE, especially the Afrikaans people. However then I realised that the more racist Afrikaans people in PE and most of Joburg’s Afrikaans people (including Pretoria and many more places it seems…) have something I common. They all went to an Afrikaans-only school.

Now you might wonder where race comes in when I’m talking about language. Well, since most people who go/went to an Afrikaans-only school are white (in PE and Joburg anyway, the Western Cape might be different); they never had any people of colour in their class. Having attended Pearson High School, which is a dual medium (English and Afrikaans) school, I was surrounded by people of all colour, and had classes with them. It was the same case in Primary school. This seemed normal to me, and there were very few racial incidents ever. However when I reached university, where most students were black, I realised that my friends who had been in an Afrikaans only school found it hard to adapt. They found it strange that I had a few friends on campus who were black or coloured. And there was definitely a more racist attitude. They almost saw the black students as being ‘less clever’ because they never went to their school, or because they’ve never interacted with blacks in an academic environment.

So the reason for the difference in racial climate I see here might be partially because I haven’t seen any dual medium schools here. All the schools I’ve seen are either English or Afrikaans. And there is also quite a big difference between the English and Afrikaans speaking pupils. Whereas in PE English and Afrikaans people are friends and mingle, they seem to be quite separate here, almost like the Boer War is still quite fresh in everyone’s minds.

So maybe the solution to racism after the whole apartheid era is dual medium schools, where children of all races and languages grow up together and get to know each other on equal grounds. This will probably cause a lot of unhappiness though, especially among the Afrikaners. And cultural identity might be somewhat lost, but with the correct education and cultural appreciation I’m sure it can work.