By Farayi Mungoshi

APARTHEID was a system of racial segregation in South Africa.
Its roots can be traced back to colonial times under Dutch rule and continued under the British in the late 1700s.
The National Party which was dominated by Afrikaners and was the governing party in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 enforced the apartheid system through legislation.
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word referring to a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
Just because one is black, it means he or she is not good enough to live in the same area as a white person, neither is he/she worthy to live in the same area as the Indians or coloureds.
From 1960 to 1983, approximately
3,5 million non-white people were forced from their homes and homelands and moved into segregated areas as per colour of skin; the blacks in their shanty corner, the Indians in their own, coloureds and whites also in their own separate corners.
The lighter the skin, the better your habitat and this meant even education, health care and other public services were segregated.
Basically life for the blackman was hell in South Africa.
Images of people being mauled by police dogs and viciously beaten up by baton sticks still haunt our memories.
It was not a place one wanted to raise his/her child.
As Zimbabweans we knew this story too well as we also suffered racial segregation under colonial rule.
Our leaders in Southern Africa understood their (black South Africans’) plight and joined hands to form the Frontline States movement in a bid to fight this evil.
It was a battle for humanity, to enforce equality in a land whites viewed themselves as the superior race and force while viewing black people as animals.
The trauma that black people went through is evident in black people today.
This helped in shaping the negative attitude and characters of most South Africans towards other people as seen during the xenophobic attacks on foreigners in the past years.
This reminds me of a familiar saying: The children unto whom evil is done do evil in return.
It is as I was trying to understand the violent nature of some of our neighbours in South Africa, to find out why they were so angry and had no respect or fear for human life that this journey began, taking me back into history.
How it is that we all once fought side by side for equality in South Africa, but now black people walk the streets of Johannesburg paranoid, scared of even asking for directions from the taxi driver for fear of being asked why they cannot speak Zulu or Sotho.
It is clear that by displaying such behaviour towards your own brother and sister, there is an unattended issue still embedded in most people’s psyche that has not been addressed.
But there are others in South Africa who still remember their brothers and sisters from across the border.
Even though I was fairly young in those days (of apartheid) and didn’t fully understand what was going on in South Africa, I certainly remember going to high school with a few South Africans, the Moshoeshoes and Matsaus, among others.
Even in Chitungwiza we had South African neighbours.
It was only some years later when I revisited the topic that I understood most of these people were here in exile, unable to be in their country because of the atrocities white folk were perpetrating on black folk and also the fact that they could get better education here.
I had the opportunity of meeting up with one particular South African lady, Lisbeth Magazi (real name withheld) who lived in Zimbabwe during the apartheid era and had the pleasure of talking to her, revisiting the horrors of yesteryear.
The first thing she said to me was: “I loved Zimbabwe, even now I still do.
“They never treated me badly as a foreigner.
“I would rather live in Zimbabwe because it is safe.”
Magazi spent her childhood in Zimbabwe and went to Hatfield Primary School and later Hatfield Girls High in Harare.
She was one of the many South Africans who were in exile in Zimbabwe and returned home to South Africa after independence.
Magazi never managed to get the hang of speaking Zulu or Sotho, but speaks mostly English and Shona.
When I asked her why this was so, she could not fully explain it, citing that maybe her parents didn’t see it as a necessity at that time. Being in a foreign country, they simply blended in with the locals and also due to the fact that she spent the day at school where they spoke English and Shona.
As a result, Magazi has also suffered black-on-black racism and has been called names by her own brothers and sisters in South Africa.
Names like ‘coconut’ and ‘kwere kwere’ because she communicates to them in English.
At work, there are times when colleagues would blatantly question her authenticity as a black person because she speaks English, challenging her to speak in their language to show that she is black, otherwise she is not black enough.
“They call me names, but they are not interested in knowing my background or knowing how it is that I do not speak Zulu or Sotho, but I was in exile,” said Magazi.