SPARE a thought for Penny Sparrow and Dianne Kohler Barnard. Even for those of us who used enviously to walk near the then whites-only Durban beachfront to marvel at the umbrellas of white families enjoying themselves, dotted across the largely empty sands, today‘s crowds can conjure up images of an invasion. (Africans were allowed a dip in the sea only in places such as stony Umgababa, some 40km away.)And so, spare a thought for Sparrow and Kohler Barnard if for them life before 1994 is remembered with longing.Of course Sparrow and her ilk know that, strictly speaking, there are black monkeys and white monkeys. The fundamental issue transcends monkey business. It is about a sense of entitlement to historical privilege. It is about nostalgia for what was and the rationalisation of what remains.South Africa‘s history and demographics have rendered our land a giant social experiment. It defies the typology of colonial settlement followed at independence by mass emigration back to th...
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