Jane Phare talks to a South African living in New Zealand who is returning to Cape Town armed with lessons learned from Kiwis.
When Sharon Davids left South Africa more than seven years ago, she believed she was betraying a country she loved.
As she packed up her Cape Town home, the Government accused people like her of being traitors, of not being prepared to stay in the country Davids' parents had
spent a lifetime struggling to change.
But Davids says reverse discrimination left her husband, Melvyn, a building supervisor, out of work. And with their eldest daughter traumatised by violence no young person should ever witness, Davids felt she had no choice but to leave.
Davids, who describes herself as a "so-called Cape Coloured" is upfront about her attitude to "white people" back then.
As a militant member of the African National Congress (ANC) she arrived in New Zealand with little money and a deep-seated suspicion of anyone rich or with a pale skin. "I did not like white people. But New Zealanders were different."
She remembers that first Christmas in Auckland, when a kind Aucklander helped her family buy food and set up their house.
"They adopted us as a family. They paid for Melvyn to do a course and opened doors for us to help him get work."
Last year Davids started a cleaning business and many of her clients have become friends. At first she was taken aback by the level of trust.
"No one came into their house and immediately went to check if anything had been stolen. Here, they speak to me as an equal. In South Africa I would have been seen as a servant, not allowed to speak to their children."
Now Davids, her husband and their youngest daughter Melana (11) will return to Cape Town by the end of the year. Eldest daughter Jodeen (17) refuses to return, instead opting to study at Auckland's Unitec next year. As a youngster in Cape Town, Jodeen witnessed a coloured girl beat up a black girl who later died from her injuries, a man hang himself in the school grounds and a shooting.
Two years ago, while back in South Africa with her mother, Jodeen was robbed at knifepoint in the street for her mobile phone.
Davids is understandably nervous about taking her younger daughter back to Cape Town, a city better off in terms of crime statistics than Johannesburg but nonetheless dangerous.
Davids has spent thousands of dollars having iron bars fitted to the window of her Cape Town home, building a steel perimeter fence and installing alarms inside and out.
The family will buy an old van to drive for fear of becoming victims of carjacking, rather than drive the $25,000 van they bought in New Zealand. But Davids, like her family still in South Africa, has a sense of optimism. She and her husband plan to set up a company building low-cost housing using many techniques and ideas they have picked up in New Zealand.
"In the past businesses were only run by the rich. Now the Government has a fund to help you start your own business." Her years in New Zealand have given her the confidence to give it a go, Davids says, and she hopes to create jobs for South Africans.
And it has taught her this. "Many rich people are very nice and they work hard. We should not see people as coloured, or rich or poor."
