JONNY STEINBERG: Whites, beware: the machines, and black anger, are coming
Those advantages of the past will no longer be a buttress against the future
For as long as anyone can remember white South Africans have feared the future and hedged against its uncertainties. It has always been thus with privileged minorities everywhere. The ways in which they have done so are too numerous to list in a short column. But most have involved taking steps to smooth a path to the wider world. In the national censuses conducted in the 1970s, for instance, close to 60% of whites reported their mother tongue to be Afrikaans. Three decades later the figure had dropped to little more than 40%. What had happened, essentially, is that a generation of people had chosen to become English-speaking; they were acquiring both the linguistic skill and the cultural cache to operate across the developed world. Perhaps more than anything else, though, whites have hedged against the future by acquiring in spades the fine education generations of minority rule made available to them. This has lent them mobility, witnessed in the hundreds of thousands of South Afr...
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Subscribe now to unlock this article.
Support BusinessLIVE’s award-winning journalism for R129 per month (digital access only).
There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in SA. Our subscription packages now offer an ad-free experience for readers.
Cancel anytime.
Questions? Email helpdesk@businesslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00. Got a subscription voucher? Redeem it now.