OURS IS A VERY UNEQUAL POPULATION

I ENJOYED an idyllic day on a wine farm in the Helderberg area recently, and as we sat sipping and chatting in the tasting room overlooking False Bay, the winemaker and I agreed that we were among the luckiest people in the world.

We both lived in good houses surrounded by shady gardens, with spectacular views over the ocean.

We enjoyed the finest wines in the world, were able to keep healthy by swimming, playing tennis and running and walking along spectacular mountain trails.

Life was good in South Africa we agreed, and clinked a smug glass to that thought.

Later, as I drove home along Baden Powell Drive, I passed areas such as Khayelitsha, where hundreds of thousands of tiny corrugated-iron shacks huddled together for as far as the eye could see, and I wondered how many of those people would agree that life was so good in South Africa.

Ours is a very unequal population. Some of us live in elegant comfort while many struggle to survive, cooped up in little rusty tin shacks or huddled under bridges.

We lucky ones send our children to elegant schools where they are offered tennis and ballet lessons, science, drama, water polo and other socially privileged options.

Interestingly, some are also offered lessons in Latin and French. But I have yet to hear of an English or Afrikaans language school that includes Xhosa as part of the normal curriculum.

Many of our country’s problems are caused by lack of communication. Wouldn’t it be a step in the right direction to offer white children a basic knowledge of the language spoken by about half our province’s population? I’m not sure of the percentage of our inhabitants who have Xhosa as a home language, but there are probably more of them than the Latin speakers in our midst. And there are many useful Xhosa phrases you can learn without having to struggle with those three difficult “click” sounds.

Last Laugh

A door-to-door salesman called at a house where there was a young boy sitting on the doorstep playing with a cat.

“Is your mother at home?” he asked.

“Yes, she is,” said the boy. The salesman rang the doorbell, but there was no reply so he rang it again and waited. There was still no reply.

Eventually he turned to the boy and said: “I thought you said your mother was at home.”

“Yes, she is, but we don’t live here. We live on the other side of the road,” he replied.