European and African Cultures

Culture Uneasiness
This morning on our way to St George’s Cathedral in downtown Cape Town, coming down towards the city from the beautiful de Waal Drive, I was again filled with this distinct and unpleasant uneasiness. What kind of place is this? Are people happy here? To whom does this place belong? Why are the blacks still in a minority here?
There is a lot of talk about unity, transformation etc these days, but I wonder. The facts on the ground seem to be as follows. There was a local culture here. For many thousand years indigenous people lived here, especially the Khoi-Khoi and the Khoi-San. Later on other African ethnic groups migrated from central and east Africa.
From 1652 Europeans settled here at the Cape and they were Dutch, the first group sent directly from Amsterdam as part of the Dutch East India route. From 1795 the British colonial power took over gradually and during the 19th century and only after the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902 what is today South Africa was handed back to the (white) South Africans.
Coming down to Cape Town this morning again reminded me of the complete non-merger of the different cultures that have clashed here. Of course the local African cultures were subdued under the different European cultures. They have never met on any kind of equal level and blended into one another. No merger has taken place. An uneasy feeling of staging a non-event befalls me every now and again. God knows what will happen the day the African cultures not only merge with the (previously) oppressive cultures but perhaps takes over from them.
It is as if we haven’t gone down to the real roots of the problem. In a quick passing moment I sometimes feel that the great things that have taken place here, the coming of democracy, the fall of apartheid, the emergence of a new leadership under the helm of Nelson Mandela, the institution of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996 under Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s rule, all these great things may come to nothing; just because the victim cultures of Africa have until today not been taken seriously, have not been given enough room for manoeuvre and action; in addition, many of the stakeholders of the old victim cultures also have played with the oppressive cultures and that has not exactly been much of a help.
I write this, without having planned it in such a way on the day of the Final in the Soccer World Cup 2010 here in South Africa between the Netherlands and Spain, two ‘great’ colonial powers with quite a history in the southern hemisphere.