There are many similarities between India and South Africa. Both are economic and cultural hegemons in their respective regions. They share a history of British colonialism, and of struggle against oppression by a minority over the masses. Both suffer from acute and widespread poverty, counterbalanced by the excesses of the ruling and owning classes, creating ridiculous levels of inequality. They both experience unacceptable levels of corruption, unacceptable levels of rape and domestic abuse, and unacceptable levels of child homelessness and poverty. On the plus side, both can boast a level of diversity unseen in many other nations in the world, a resource that should not be ignored.
There are also many differences between the two countries. Size, for one thing. India isn't known as the subcontinent for nothing. Made up of 1.2 billion people, 3,166,414 km2, 29 states, seven Union Territories, and one National Capital Region, India is, in a word, huge. South Africa is tiny by comparison, with 51 million people, 1,220,813 km2, and nine provinces. And although Indians will complain about their abysmal education system, once children are in school, there is an expectation that they achieve. I have never heard of the kind of competitive spirit in South Africa as I have heard of in India. The competition to be the class "topper", to get into the best colleges and universities, to get the plum jobs thereafter, is so intense that suicides due to failure to achieve are not a particularly surprising phenomenon in Indian urban society. Over and above all that, in all three urban metropolises I have visited, there have been street vendors selling books on pavements, displaying their wares in Connaught Place or College Street or Colaba Causeway. Clearly, if there is a market, then ordinary Indians are reading for pleasure. Comparatively, South Africa's major distributor of books is a chain of stores in high-end malls called Exclusive Books. I don't think I need to say any more on that.
But the most interesting difference to me is displayed by the humble autorickshaw. What is an autorickshaw, exactly? Well, this:
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| Next left, bhaiya! |
It is a three-wheeled vehicle, the illicit lovechild of a scooter and a Smart Car. It is a main mode of public transportation in Indian urban areas, and a main source of traffic-related frustration for urban drivers. However, as a pedestrian, it provides a very convenient and relatively inexpensive way to get from A to B. Autowallahs drive in a style that could be described as "controlled, calculated risk." Yes, they will squeeze through gaps you never imagined possible. Yes, they will run the light just before or even just after it turns red. But I've never felt unsafe in an auto, unlike in a minibus taxi in South Africa, those hell-sent sardine cans of death.
But I digress. What struck me the first time I rode in one, was this: This mode of transportation would never work in South Africa. Firstly, as you may have noticed from the picture, autos have no doors, one consequence of which I have already written about. In a country where South Africans lock their doors immediately and automatically upon entering their cars, a car with no doors is inconceivable. The first few times I sat in the back of an auto I clung to my bag like a crazy person. What was stopping someone from reaching in and grabbing it, besides my arthritic death-grip? Nothing! No doors! Open both sides! And yet it wasn't long before I would just let my backpack sit at my feet, unconcerned. I knew nothing would happen to it, even when the street vendors came up to my side to sell me magazines, oversized balloons, bangles and bindis.
But my mind still boggled. What stopped someone from getting into an auto, commanding the driver to take them someplace far away, and then once sufficiently close, just jumping out and running away at a red light without paying? Nothing! Clearly the autodriver wouldn't be able to abandon his vehicle at a red light and give chase! And similarly, why doesn't it seem to happen that, once the passenger has stepped out of the auto and hands over a large note to the driver expecting change, the autowallah just drives off, big note in hand? Inexplicable!
These are things a South African thinks about. I like to tell foreigners, and I'm sure many of my fellow South Africans say the same, "The state of crime in South Africa is largely exaggerated. Of course you and your possessions will be safe! You just have to be alert." What lies beneath that statement is that, to the speaker, precautions to avoid crime have become routine, habit, something we don't even think about because it's just part of the way we are, the way we live our lives. Of course you need to lock your doors. Of course you never walk around after dark. Of course you never leave bags in parked cars, or drive with them on the passenger seat. Of course you should never wave your camera or your cellphone around in high density places. Of course you need an alarm system, or at the very least a big dog to guard your property.
I'm not saying that India does not experience crime. My flatmate Anna had her bag slit and valuables stolen from it while visiting a temple not long ago. I'm sure others can share similar stories. But it's not nearly as pervasive as in South Africa, despite similar levels of poverty and inequality.
So why is that, I wonder? It's clear to me that Indian society functions on trust. When I select and pay for my heavy bag of vegetables at the market, and the shopkeeper offers to have it delivered to my door, I trust that it will be, and I don't fear that now a random stranger knows where I live, as I would in South Africa. When I don't have sufficient change to pay the security guard and I have to give him 50 rupees extra and he promises to pay me back later, I trust that he will. Trust is taken for granted in India.
There are of course multiple explanations for this disparity. On a black-and-white level, we can say South Africans don't trust because of crime. End of story. But let's scratch beneath the surface a little. Does South Africa experience such high levels of crime because of our recent brutally violent history? Or perhaps there has always been a lack of trust between the haves (mostly white) and the have-nots (mostly black) and that that distrust is so ingrained it might never change. Is it a kind of feedback loop wherein if you don't trust someone, you give them no reason to honour your trust?
Or does the answer lie with what India is doing right and not what South Africa is doing wrong? There is a sense of personal honour and familial pride that exists here, the kind of honour that makes students strive for the top positions and commit suicide when they fail. Perhaps the culture of trust relies on this honour. The autowallah has his pride, as do the street vendors, shopkeepers, and security guards. Perhaps the worst crime of the apartheid regime was to twist our pride and our sense of honour to a state in which criminals take pride in getting away with crime, and ordinary citizens feel no shame in suspecting every taxi driver, every passer-by to be a potential criminal.
I was once sitting on a bench in Deer Park near Hauz Khas in Delhi, when a girl of about eighteen or nineteen came up to me. Shy and nervous, she hesitated as she told me in stilted English she was a tourism student. Drawing nearer, she placed her hand on my bag, and instinctively and automatically my hand shot out to draw it closer to me. She wanted a picture with a foreigner, she said, showing me her camera, and I felt ashamed for ever suspecting that this young girl would ever run away with my backpack.
South African society is not based on honour or trust, but on suspicion, an ever-present divisive othering and a growing frustration with the way things are, whether you have or you don't.
My dream for my country is that the humble autorickshaw can one day become a viable option in addressing our public transport problem. I hope that someday South Africans can learn to trust, and give each other no reasons to distrust one another. Crime will never disappear entirely, but clearly there has to be reasons beyond mere poverty and inequality for its extreme levels in SA, and those reasons are more nuanced than mere black-and-white explanations, pun intended. I hope that someday the rage that simmers beneath the surface of South African society will mellow, and that through development and dialogue we can achieve true reconciliation. No, I'm not stupid, I'm just an idealist.
