Not the SA I want to live in -- and I’m one of the lucky ones

Life has not changed much for Jan Bornman. The problem is, it hasn’t changed for his countrymen either

IWAS born a few years too early to be considered a “born-free”, but, like them, democracy is all I know. was barely a few months old when Nelson Mandela was released from jail and just more than four years old when he became the first democratically elected president.

Yes, South Africa changed for the better for many, giving them access to housing, healthcare, education and many other basic human rights withheld during the apartheid years.

But, although things have improved for many, they have stayed the same for plenty of other people — equally bad or equally good.

The first thing that came to mind when thinking about our country celebrating its 20th year as a democracy was that I could not care less. It is all I know and all I have known, and my situation would probably have been the same whether we were a democracy or still living under the National Party’s authoritarianism.

I am not oblivious to the sacrifices many families made to free the majority of our country. It is just that neither I nor my family had any active role in fighting the previous government.

Now, that might be what some liberals call my “white privilege” speaking. It is there and I cannot deny it. I was born and raised in a white middle-class family to parents who had decent jobs, paying enough for us to live as comfortably as was possible.

The house I grew up in and still live in today with my parents is situated in what I would say is an above-average neighbourhood in northwestern Johannesburg. Since I can remember, we have had security companies patrolling our area, resulting in little serious crime.

As a youngster, I played in the streets with other kids from the neighbourhood, my parents knowing we were safe. I attended one of the better public high schools in the area, where I was able to play sport and get extra lessons in cricket from a private coach. When I wanted to learn to play the guitar, my parents bought me one and organised for me to attend lessons.

Although I hated school, I was always assured of the teachers pitching up for work — sober — to do their jobs. The school was mostly clean and everything functioned as well as it possibly could.

When I told my parents I wanted to go to university, they encouraged me. They could afford to pay for my studies and, as far as I know, did not have to sell any possessions or take out loans (and if they did, I thank them for never telling me).

Instead of worrying about getting around or having to use mostly unreliable and dangerous public transport, I was given a car when I finished high school (here I have to thank my grandfather, who had planned for this — I don’t know how many years ago).

So, whether I was born 40 years ago or 18 years ago, my life would probably have been mostly the same, democracy or not.

I am aware that I have been able to excel not so much because of the opportunities democracy gave me, but because of the opportunities the previous regime gave my parents.

I am also conscious of the fact that millions of other people have not been so lucky.

Take Ntombi Pen, 33, and Nomboniso Rodolo, 35, as an example. I met the two single mothers in March. For them, and thousands like them, the promise of democracy was the promise of a better life, but that is still only a phrase politicians use when they drive around in their sports cars or SUVs campaigning for votes.

Both mothers are unemployed, trying to raise their children on less than R1 000 a month while living in corrugated-iron shacks on the edge of Bloemfontein’s Batho township.

While they try to do this,

politicians from their province live a life of grandeur — and still try to defraud citizens of millions.

In Limpopo last year, I visited a primary school where the boys’ bathroom floor was flooded by water from the toilets. The stench was so bad that the photographer and I gagged when we were still metres from the entrance.

I was told by the headmistress that the boys regularly get sick because of the condition of the bathroom. And that was not the only problem at this school, or many others in the province — overcrowded classes, missing teachers, a shortage of paper and other supplies . . .

Do you think these children believe in our great democracy? Is having to walk hours to school, or eat only once a day, or wade through your and your peers’ waste to make use of a toilet truly freedom? These children would not agree.

Nor would the mothers and fathers, wives, brothers and sisters, or sons and daughters of the 34 people killed by the police at Marikana two years ago.

Not only were they let down by the politicians who were supposed to serve them and lead them to a better life, they were let down by the mostly white mine owners who still live lives of comfort while the miners have to toil underground for hours in poor conditions for a fraction of what their bosses earn.

And then there were the police — a public service mandated to protect, yet they used deadly force and tried to cover it up afterwards. So, even if we are celebrating our 20th year as a democracy, we still have a long way to go.

I am not here to criticise or offer solutions. I just know that the democratic South Africa I want to live in is one where I do not have to hear from a black classmate that I should go back to where I came from. It is also not the place where I want to hear from a friend or family member at a braai that “I’m not racist, but . . .”.

I want to know that the people we have elected and who should be serving us are doing exactly that — serving, trying to improve the lives of Ntombi and Nomboniso and the countless other mothers and fathers in their position.

I want children in rural Limpopo or wherever else in South Africa to get an education of the same quality as those in public schools in more affluent areas in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

Bornman is a Sunday Times reporter