Leon Benade: Arrogant South Africans a product of their nation

COMMENT

It was a shameful day for South African migrants when we awoke to hear that some of those born in the same neck of the woods had been expressing their vitriolic, and sometimes debased, views on a website.

It was reminiscent of the shame one may have felt as a young adult South African living there in the 1980s, when a repressive regime, led by the raving P.W. Botha, did all in its might to crush a growing opposition.

At a more banal level, it was the shame one may have felt at Ellis Park when the Cavaliers, risking careers and indignation in New Zealand, came to entertain us, only to be subjected to physical violence on the field.

All too often, in a zeal to show that South Africans can cut it with the best, they aim to win the fight, even if they lose the game.

The views expressed on the website revealed an arrogance that is central to the South African (especially white) psyche.

Those of us who came here in the mid-1990s, when the first major wave of migration from South Africa began, were warned of the laid-back Kiwi attitude.

The story was often told of how offended New Zealanders might be at what they deemed to be pushy South African attitudes.

The workplace has been where many South African migrants have struggled to adapt to different work cultures, and sometimes to a different pace of work.

It was a place where many found interminable and endless meetings, seemingly going around in circles, sometimes achieving little.

The workplace is the area where many of these migrants have suppressed their talents, energy and drive, because in a society that knocks tall poppies and is sometimes embarrassed to win (yet despises losing and punishes high-profile losers), such energy and drive will be less likely to be rewarded and more likely to be scorned.

Essentially, South Africans' arrogance is shaped by a history quite different from that of New Zealand.

It is a history of two white tribes clashing with each other and with the indigenous inhabitants of a vast and rugged place of great beauty and mineral wealth.

Afrikaners are driven by an Old Testament zeal reinforced daily by experience in a harsh and unremitting environment, whether it be taming the wilderness, overcoming the depths of poor whiteism in the early 20th century or adapting to life in a black country now governed by blacks.

It is this bitter pill that has been the toughest to swallow.

The psyche of Afrikaners - people largely of Dutch but also French and German ancestry - is steeped in the history of defiance to the British, and a constant moving away to conquer new territories free of British strictures.

A self-belief that they will overcome, no matter what, is essential to the Afrikaner make-up. It is, therefore, no surprise to learn there are those who believe they have a mission to come to New Zealand and colonise it.

Some Afrikaners, as devout Christians, will see in New Zealand's secular nature a godlessness that presents an opportunity for fresh evangelism.

English-speaking South Africans are a more difficult group to understand. Their heritage is tangled - certainly British, but also Continental and even involving some cross-marriage into Afrikaner families.

While the Afrikaners concentrated on building political power and financial muscle for the development of Afrikaners, English South Africans took a disdainful position after 1948, when the Afrikaner National Party came to power.

English power was based on wealth from an economy driven by commodities.

Initially, after 1948, there was little support from English speakers for the racist apartheid experiment. In 1961, when the Nationalist Prime Minister, and key architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, tested the opinion of white South Africa on the issues of republicanism and continuing membership of the Commonwealth, he barely scraped a majority.

But the hammer blows delivered to the black opposition, particularly the African National Congress, and the incarceration by 1965 of the likes of Nelson Mandela by the apartheid regime led English-speaking whites and their captains of industry to see the benefits of continued racial, social, educational and economic oppression.

The votes of English-speaking whites helped keep the Afrikaner nationalists in power. Treat always with suspicion the person who says he never supported the government, and welcomed democracy. This statement has as much honesty as "some of my best friends in South Africa are black".

The kind of society that maintains privilege perpetuates itself through education. White South Africans generally enjoyed a system and level of education that only the top 5 or 10 per cent of any modern society gets to enjoy. Indeed, even Indian and so-called coloured South Africans enjoyed high standards of education. Up to 1990, however, South Africa was clearly a dual economy, First World and Third World.

All of this has been changing in the past decade, and it is the stresses caused by these changes - affirmative action, lower standards of living and loss of political power - that have brought many South Africans to these shores in search of a new life in a country similar in many ways to South Africa.

They bring with them their national baggage - a determination to succeed, and a cocky self-confidence that they will.

* Leon Benade is a South African-born New Zealand citizen who has lived here for seven years. He teaches at Waiuku College.