Adapted from Chapter 9 of my book Chasing Black Unicorns. It is about 2015, and I wrote it around 2018, so some details are from that time. It touches racism, so it uses some blunt language in order to describe it.

Nigerians adore football. The inhabitants of Lagos can bring the city to a standstill celebrating a victory by Hull City or some other less well-known English club, when the English themselves say “Hull what?” But this story is not about the kind of football played with a round ball. It is about a rugby match.

It was 2015, and I had gotten to know Africa pretty well by then, and lots of great people in it. My friend Jimi called.

“Hi, what are you doing on Saturday?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it.”

“Great. Fly to Johannesburg. We’re having a birthday party there. Only not too late, because before the party we’re going to a match.”

“What kind of match?”

“You’ll see.”

He hung up and I booked the tickets straight away.

Jimi, and a stadium of 62,000

I had met Jimi in Cape Town, and he is a dream contact for every young white newcomer from Europe wishing to break into the “golden circles”. He is an international model of Nigerian origin who later became the owner of a modeling agency and a nightclub. He no longer graces the covers of the most popular magazines in the world, but he still knows everything and everyone.

I knew Cape Town well, but Johannesburg was new to me. Coming in to land, I wasn’t sure whether I had overslept and missed my stop. It looked like Chicago: glass skyscrapers, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, millions of ant-like people scurrying about.

Jimi picked me up himself. The road to the stadium reminded me a bit of the Africa I knew, though the poverty in those districts was nothing like that in Nigeria. And the stadium itself, Ellis Park, holds 62,000 people and, sold out, makes an awesome impression. It was sold out, because the Springboks, South Africa’s national rugby team, were playing New Zealand’s All Blacks, famous for the Haka, for their black shirts, and for steamrolling through everyone with unbelievable force.

Once we had found our sector and our seats, Jimi asked: “Have you noticed anything strange?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re the only black man around us.”

“Ha! Exactly. Now look straight ahead. Do you see the flags of the All Blacks?”

“Sure. That must be the Kiwi sector.”

“Well, not necessarily. Most of South Africa’s black fans are sitting there.”

“Umm… I don’t get it.”

“I see I have a lot to tell you about this country.”

So I discovered what racism looks like in South Africa. It was explained to me, a white European, by a black African, which would have been impossible without our friendship. I am not a sociologist, and my experience does not describe the complexity of the issue. But according to my observations, there are at least three kinds of racism in South Africa.

The short version of apartheid

I won’t try to untangle the history here. The Dutch arrived, then the Germans and the French, and in the end, as is their custom, the British. Enormous diamond reserves were discovered, which created the necessity of “defending civilized values”. The new order was based on the absolute dominance of the white man, and it did not change when South Africa gained independence in 1910. From then on, the racism became official. Black people were not allowed to go to school, earn money, vote or use medical services. This lasted until the 1990s.

The reforms came when the governing regime, under protests and increasingly severe international sanctions, let Nelson Mandela out after 27 years in prison. Whether his imprisonment was justified is still argued about, and judgment about Madiba is often decided by the skin color of the person passing it. For some whites he is still a thug, for blacks a hero, but for everyone a legend. He ran in elections, his party, the African National Congress, won, and he became president.

Anyone who thinks racism ended with apartheid is wrong.

Racism number one: whites over blacks

The first kind we know very well: whites treating blacks with contempt. People say South Africa has weakened under black-led governments, and maybe that is so. Reforms have been introduced too slowly, the country is getting poorer, and many whites are simply leaving.

“And let them go,” Jimi said during the break. “Nobody needs them here anyway. They are usually old, backward people. They are not able to get used to the fact that they are no longer the masters here.”

“But they are right that under the ANC governments a lot changed to their disadvantage. You can’t deny that,” I said, because Jimi and I always speak to each other honestly.

“Of course not. But it’s hard to see how it could have been otherwise. They had it way too good for decades. It’s not possible to raise the entire black population to the level of the whites. Part of the white population had to be brought down. Besides, since they didn’t allow us to be educated, they are to blame for us having uneducated and inexperienced people in power. Mandela was so old that he grew up when blacks still had their own universities, so he managed to get educated. As for those who came later, the less said the better. It’s only now that the first generation not forbidden to study is coming through. You’ll see how they change the country.”

They have not changed it yet. The blacks are getting more and more impatient, and the whites are getting more and more worried about their future.

Once, in a Cape Town restaurant, I had just finished a grilled springbok when a ruckus broke out. Some black customers jumped up from their tables, threw plates and glasses on the floor and attacked a white waiter. A security guard broke it up and threw out only one man, the waiter.

“He called them the k-word,” Jimi whispered, and explained that it is the most racist word in South Africa, stronger than the English N-word. If you call a black man that, you leave him no choice: if he doesn’t hit you, he will never forgive himself. Using it is illegal, and at the beginning of 2018 a white estate agent was sentenced to three years in jail for using it toward black police officers.

Racism number two: payback, and quotas

The second kind is black racism toward whites, based less on feelings of superiority than on reactive hatred. It existed in its classic form during apartheid, and it is hard not to hate your tormentor. After the transfer of power it was calmer, which was a miracle we can thank Mandela and his allies for.

The first victims of the revenge ideas were to be the Springboks. It was quickly argued that the team’s name and emblem (an inoffensive antelope) and its green and gold colors were symbols of apartheid and should be removed from public space. Mandela is said to have vetoed the idea, arguing that after the change South Africa would not suddenly become a country only for blacks, but stop being a country only for whites. That a time of national unity was at hand and you could not take away what white people love, because, firstly, “that wasn’t the South Africa I fought for”, and secondly, such actions would be the best way to escalate the conflict. Clint Eastwood made a film about this, Invictus, in a typically idealized American style, but the core is true: Mandela worked with the captain, Francois Pienaar, who did the same for the team, and the team for the nation. The Springboks won the World Cup with the wildly enthusiastic support of blacks and whites alike.

When I wrote this, the team was threatened with suspension in international tournaments, because South Africa’s own sports minister believed there were too many white players. More broadly, no other country has such an extensive quota system based on skin color. Quotas aimed at equal results at the “exit point” (how many blacks are employed in relation to whites) rather than the “entry point” (how many have the same qualifications) quickly produce visible results, which is why politicians facing elections like them. The effect is that well-educated Afrikaners have to look for work abroad or work in a restaurant, and sometimes frustration leads them to call the clientele by that word.

Racism number three: black on black

The third kind is xenophobia, or simply hatred, black against black.

When I arrive somewhere new, I like to start with a morning jog or by taking a bus along its whole route. I love observing a city from the wings. In Cape Town I took the MyCiTi bus, a long journey from Sunset Beach to Green Point, because I wanted to see the new stadium. Around the Lagoon Beach stop, the passengers getting on began shouting at each other, in local languages, so I had no idea what about.

The driver, an Afrikaner, stopped and came out of his cabin. He separated the troublemakers, shouting at one and then the other. I expected them to take a break and turn on their “common enemy”, but nothing like that happened. Both sides tried to explain their case to him, as if he were the neighborhood defender of justice. He cared only about the timetable, which the ruckus had wrecked.

“Everyone out!”

“Wait, why should we get out? They picked on us!” said one of them.

“No, it was them!” shouted someone from the other group.

“Yes, yes, I know,” the driver said. “But the truth is I don’t care. If you still want to punch each other, go ahead, I’ll even bet on the winners. But take this contest outside, or I call the police.”

“I’ll never understand those blacks,” he said to me when we were alone, in an openly racist manner.

“What actually happened?”

“I don’t know and don’t want to know.”

One of the passengers was, I think, an immigrant from Zimbabwe. When apartheid was dismantled, a job market based on supply and demand appeared, and something happened that black South Africans did not expect: other Africans arrived. Botswanans, Zambians, Zimbabweans, Malawians. Why work for Zimbabwean dollars worth nothing because of inflation when you can earn a decent salary in rand? That sounds familiar to Poles. Locals rebelling against economic immigrants is a global phenomenon. The government had forced through better pay for blacks, but the immigrants took the jobs at the old rates, and so blacks still earn significantly less than whites. Patience is running out, and the evidence is anti-immigrant violence: since 2009, thousands of immigrants have been killed in South Africa.

As the driver left, he said: “It’s idiotic that the blacks don’t even need us for that anymore. Racism, I mean.” I had the impression he was disappointed that reality had taken him out of the game. From a main player he was now on the sidelines.

“In Africa, if you’re not white, you’re black”

The same logic reaches well beyond South Africa. When we talk about conflict in Africa, even between countries, it concerns tribal conflict more than national, and Nigeria alone has 250 of the smaller tribes. Even jollof rice, a west African dish, is the subject of a conflict between Nigerians and Ghanaians that has not been resolved to this day. After Ghana became independent in 1957, many Nigerians emigrated there, and when Nigeria followed three years later, many Ghanaians went the other way. Where there are enormous minorities, there are disagreements, and in the end each country deported the other’s people.

I learned another version of this in Zanzibar, which is a boring version of Africa: no terrorist attacks, no armed robberies, no coups. Expats go there to kite-surf. A friend in our group wanted to get engaged, and I lost at least three hours of good wind, because no man on earth can buy an engagement ring on his own. The jeweler, an old Indian man, knew everything about precious stones and loved talking about it. My friend paid a mere $20,000 for one of the cheaper rings.

On our way out, I noticed stains of green paint on the glass of the entrance door.

“Oh, that. Sometimes they come and throw this and that at my store. Once eggs, another time tomatoes, and lately paint. I have the impression someone in the neighborhood has bought a paintball gun. Thank God no one has tried to rob me. They simply don’t like me because I have money.”

“But you’re an expat,” I said in surprise. “Expats always have lots of money, and locals prefer to be friends with them than run them out of town.”

He sighed. “Have you been long in Africa?”

“Almost two years.”

“You should look a little further than the end of your nose. In Africa, if you’re not white, you’re black. You understand?”

“No.”

“You’re white, so you’re an expat. If your face was any other color, the most you would be is an economic immigrant. Someone who comes and takes their jobs.”

My friend began to say something, but the jeweler’s stare shut him up. “Your friend has been in Africa for two years,” he said to me, “but I’d say you’ve been here a week.”

“Two weeks,” my friend stammered. “I’m here on vacation.”

Back to the match

The things I have described are only a small part of the issue. Perhaps a telling one, but still small. And back at Ellis Park, I had them all in front of me at once: the white fans, the black fans under the All Blacks flags, and a friend explaining the country between the breaks.

In the 46th minute, Jesse Kriel broke away to the left and passed the ball to Willi le Roux, who scored a spectacular try that put the Springboks in the lead. The black fans sitting opposite us exploded with the same pure joy as the rest of the stadium.

The All Blacks eventually won the match. But I understood that this country, despite everything, still had its future ahead of it. That these people want to live with each other. Maybe they are not yet able to, but time is on their side. Racism in South Africa will eventually die. And then Africa will breathe true freedom.

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This is from Chapter 9, “Springboks vs. All Blacks”, of Chasing Black Unicorns. All of my income from the book goes to the MaYa Foundation.

Listen to this chapter: Polish audiobook on YouTube (English version coming soon) · Spotify