Aging in South Africa

Abstract

All the countries in our sample have witnessed great changes in the last century or so. Arguably, however, the changes in South Africa have been the greatest of all. The country witnessed the full force of a horrific apartheid regime and the armed struggle to overthrow it. That this has been done successfully is in large part testimony to the example provided by Nelson Mandela who came out of prison in Robben Island not hell-bent on revenge on his captors, but instead hell-bent on building a new country in which racism has no part. If you were born as a White Afrikaaner in 1930, you were born into a White society that saw itself as superior to the Black society around it. Your ancestors were involved in the Great Trek north and fought the British in the Boer Wars, and your parents were involved in beginning the apartheid regime of separate development for different races in the 1930s. You could not envisage that Black people could run their own farm successfully, never mind the country. And yet after all the hatred and all the conflict, you have been won round and you and your family are now prospering in the new South Africa. Nelson Mandela even wore the shirt of the Springbok South African rugby team when they won the Rugby World Cup in 1995. Your country still faces problems, but you now have a different view of Black people, and a (sometimes grudging) acceptance that this is their country just as much as it is yours.