Los Conceptos en la Enseñanza de las Ciencias

During the emigration phase of their migration experience, all but one of the participants held the conviction that post-apartheid South Africa was falling apart in ways that affected all aspects of their lives. I will present the exceptional or ‘deviant’39

case of Sandy at a later stage, and will focus here on the majority view, which was that the country was now in incapable and corrupt hands. The problems were laid at the door of the black majority government, both explicitly and implicitly. While all agreed that apartheid was evil, and that democracy was a necessary and important stage for South Africa to reach, most felt that the new South Africa was not in fact a genuinely free and democratic country. In addition, they felt that the very fabric of society - as they had known it - was at risk, and that South Africa was on its way to the chaos and collapse that they generally ascribed to the rest of Africa.

For almost all the participants in this study, South Africa had become a centre that could not hold. Differentiated from their sense of themselves as unable to manage the changes that had manifested, it was their belief that the country itself would not survive as a viable place to live in the future. A number of themes that contributed to this perception emerged from the data.

9.3.1 “Violence every day”

In their primary focus on the high level of crime and violence in South Africa, the participants in this study confirmed Crush’s (2013) assertion that migrants from South Africa inevitably

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Exceptional or ‘deviant’ cases are those that do not accord with the dominant pattern or theoretical construction.

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reference threats to life and security when naming the reasons they left. Jerry’s comment – used as the heading for this section – is typical of the feeling that exists within this group. They have a sense that crime and violence have become quotidian experiences in South Africa since the early 1990s, and that it is an inescapable fact of life in post-apartheid South Africa. Most of the participants had personal experiences of crime to recount:

Susan: I think, you know, living with crime and that kind of thing … I’ve been exposed to the crime, my father’s been exposed to crime, he was held up a few years ago and pistol- whipped, I was held up when I was sixteen … so you know, I’ve had experience with exposure to crime and I think that’s obviously also part of it.

Andre: We had a break-in or two, and after we got the visa to come to Australia we were the victims of an armed robbery – but by then the decision had already been made.

Those who had not themselves been victims of crime inevitably knew of family and friends who had. In some cases, this served to reinforce or affirm their decision to leave:

Sally: There were a lot of car hijackings, that sort of thing, just before I emigrated, that was when it was really rife. Um … And you know, breaking into homes and I do remember living with my dad and being in the house that we lived in and having the alarm on, you know, always having the alarm on and being anxious to a degree … And in the years that I’ve been away, there have been incidents that have occurred to my family of origin … And some of my extended family. And does it affirm my leaving? Yes, it does! You know, obviously!

Even as they named the high crime levels as the prominent factor in their decision to leave, it was not uncommon for participants to describe their experiences in ways that minimise and normalise the way in which crime pervades life in South Africa:

Tina: I remember lying down one afternoon, and the dog started going ballistic - and there was some- a man in the kitchen, you know. The dog, thank God, scared him away. You know, little things like that …

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Gina: How much people don’t want to talk about it, or you know, it's a bit of a label maybe that they don't want to use, it's a genocide that's going on there. It's nothing else but a genocide and it won't stop until there is nothing left. That's the African way. Cathy: It's a strong word, ‘genocide’.

Gina: Yes it's a genocide; people are getting slaughtered and the government doesn't care, because firstly those are not vulnerable people, they're people with money who can protect themselves … But where there is a systematic eradication of a certain group of people, you're going to be very foolhardy indeed to stick around and wait for the bullets so you can dodge. It's genocide. People don't want to say that, they think it’s a strong word, it's got political overtones …but it's what it is.

It should be noted that, in her discussion of crime in South Africa, Gina did not make explicit her perception that this is crime against whites, perpetrated by black people. Instead, she suggested that the targets are people with money. Nevertheless, her use of the term ‘genocide’ implied a racial element, since it is a term usually used to refer to the extermination of a national, racial, political, religious or cultural group. In addition, the racial distinction was apparent in her use of the term “the African way”. In her interview, Gina went on to give examples to illustrate her contention, and in all of these the targets were white and the perpetrators black, and the government – a black majority government – was seen to be uncaring of the fate of these whites. I asked her to elaborate on her perception:

Cathy: So why do you think that's happening? What makes...I mean – because, taking your comment ‘African people are fond of children’. So when you say it is a systematic, planned extermination of a group of people, why? How do you see that?

Gina: I think due to political and historical circumstances, the white people were seen as the

haves, and the black people as the have nots. So now that the protection of the white people by the government has been removed - because we're all equal now - and those systems of protection of the rural areas which were in operation during the apartheid government have been removed or dismantled - because they were seen as racist - I think it's just left those people vulnerable.

In fact, most of the participants in this study tended not to be specific about their perception that the majority of crime in South Africa is perpetrated by black people against whites - although, when invited to elaborate on their perceptions, the racialized nature of these frequently became

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evident, as Gina’s did in the example above. Generally speaking, however, most exhibited a great deal of caution around using racial terms throughout the conversation, irrespective of subject matter. Susan’s comment may imply that one of the reasons for this is a fear of being seen as racist:

Susan: So I think, you know, one can’t underestimate the violence, the fear and that … how much that impacts on you. I don’t think that’s being racist, I think that’s being realistic. Rather than use the term ‘blacks’ or ‘black people’, most participants spoke of ‘Africans’ in our interviews. Their usage of this term was very mixed though – sometimes they spoke with warmth about Africans and African-ness, and sometimes they used the term possessively, to describe themselves, as I will illustrate later. And regularly, they used the term to intimate chaos, corruption, savagery and disaster. This was especially evident when talking about the future of South Africa.

9.3.2 “It’s vibrant, it’s noisy, it’s chaos – and it’s Africa”

The perception of the new South Africa as a centre that cannot hold was frequently presented by these participants with reference to the rest of Africa – as Susan said: “This has never worked in Africa”. She was referring here to the possibility of a stable political future for the post-colonial countries in Africa. The perception that African countries fall apart under black rule, and the prediction that South Africa would go the same route, was a regular aspect of the participants’ reasons for emigration:

Terry: I was following Zimbabwe’s progress, and at 20 years it started going pretty pear- shaped and at 40 it’s pretty much a basket case. So I always thought South Africa would take longer, but there was no doubt in my mind that it would follow a similar path and who’s to say when.

Steve: What I'd experienced north of South Africa as a kid, and seeing what had happened in post-independence Zim, Zambia, Mozambique - that was our influence.

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Although not widespread among these participants, some demonstrated an awareness of the incongruities of the colonial past – and yet, at the same time, maintained the sort of view that has been dubbed Afropessimism (Evans, 2011):

Jerry: But in the older South Africa, what happened is - there were two South Africas: there was the very colonial, the ordered leafy suburbs that dwelt alongside the other - the townships - that nobody ever saw. And I struggled with that sometimes, when I started working in the townships, because I'd drive from my beautiful leafy suburb, and just over the hill out of sight, there was cheek-by-jowl squatters and chaos. But you could always come back, out of that, to the ordered world and settle down for a while. But I realised that, with time, that's all going to meld into one. There's not - the vibrancy and the chaos will take over - as it should; that's the natural progression of things. It will get there.

The sense of ‘things falling apart’ referred to a number of aspects of life in post-apartheid South Africa. Many, especially those with children, referenced the education system. Susan’s view was typical:

Susan: I think you don’t know about the standard of education or things like that. Having children … you know, I believe the schools are good and like … but I just … there’s part of me … I feel like there’s an uncertainty around that, there’s no guarantee that things are gonna stay … you know, that way, and university I know, the standard’s really lowered now, like, when I was there now, everyone passed matric, you know, that kind of thing, they’ve really lowered the standard of education there, like I know that for a fact, and that concerns me.

Roger also noted the problems in the education system in South Africa, but felt that it was the lack of education on the part of those in government that was a direct cause of things falling apart:

Roger: You have people taking decisions - I don't know if I should say - but take the current president of the country, he hasn't finished school! How can you have someone that didn't even finish their own schooling be the leader of a country? You need education! Suddenly he’s the president of the country because he was a freedom fighter! I do understand the whole freedom fighting and all those kind of things and the atrocities of the past - I have no problem with that and I don't say that - I'm not trying to say that anything was right. But the fact is to have a good - it's like a business - a good country,

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a good business; you need a good leader and good leadership. There's so many examples of a lack of leadership leads to things falling apart. So I just found that the people taking decisions had no knowledge whatsoever. They didn't have the

background; they didn't have the understanding to see the consequences of their decisions.

It was not uncommon for the participants in this study, like Roger in this case, to decry many aspects of the current situation in South Africa, with little or no reference to the past. While he acknowledged past atrocities, Roger made no link between what he saw as the educational shortcomings of the current leaders and the inferior education that was provided for people of colour under apartheid.

Andre, too, while he noted affirmative action as part of the reason for instability and decline in South Africa, made no link between this and the inequalities of the past:

Andre: The future that I saw was that the children would have to go overseas. Cathy: Why?

Andre: To get a proper university education, to get a proper future for themselves. I didn’t see any future for my kids in South Africa … My vision of the future for children is,

specifically my two, I can't see that there is a bright future for the two of them … Afrikaner culture is pushed off the plate. It’s not even … In the 1970s it was the middle of the universe as far as we were concerned, and now with affirmative action, the centre of the plate is Africanisation, and the whites and Afrikaners will fall by the wayside, Afrikaners first and then the whites.

The issue of corruption was seen as one of the dominant contributors to the view of South Africa as a country falling apart, and was seen as endemic to Africa. Speaking of the feeding scheme she established in the townships, Linda noted the impact of perceived corruption: Linda: After a year I'd sort of let it go, but I know that towards that time we were hearing that

the Bakers' bread would stop off - load off half here - before it went to the townships. That's Africa, isn't it?

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Jerry: After '94, I started to become increasingly disillusioned, when I actually just saw the - some of the level of corruption that was going on. The influence sometimes that was put on me, personally, to award contracts for political reasons rather than - you know, this was public money and my role was to make sure it was properly spent. And I would get sometimes veiled threats to say, you will award it to my friend who has supported me, or …

And Gina indicated her frustration and helplessness:

Gina: You're not going to achieve anything there, so either you see it every day and you torture yourself, or you leave … because it's not going to change. It's just the African nature that the ones in power will grab and look after themselves, and their cronies … You can see it sliding, and you can see it declining. You're not doing anything - because you can't do anything, but you can't stomach it. You can't face that poverty and suffering on a daily ... If there's a little glimmer of hope, a little glimmer you can say okay we're getting there. We're achieving something, slowly but surely, you know, a lot needs to be done but we're making progress, we can mark our progress, we're achieving something - but we're not! Have we eradicated poverty in any way? Have we improved the education system, the much criticised apartheid education system? Have we

maintained the stuff we've got? Wouldn't you think that the first, first principle would be ‘look, what we've inherited isn't perfect, it's not the way we want it, but we'll do our level best to maintain that and to improve on it’? No, you trash it and you replace it with something worse?! That makes you angry. That really makes you feel defeated.

With the strong sense in place that post-apartheid South Africa was on its way to ruin,

participants felt that there would be no place for themselves or their children in the future. They felt that the country, the geographical and political centre, was both unwilling and unable to hold them safely and securely, and in the manner to which they had become accustomed. Their whiteness was seen as an intrinsic element of this, as the following section demonstrates.

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9.3.3 “I think, being white, that the colour of your skin really is a problem”

Both implicitly and explicitly, the participants’ belief that there would be no future for them or their children in South Africa was associated with their being white people in a country that was perceived to be skewed towards the interests of black people:

Tina: I wanted to give my child a better future. Everyone was saying, oh, there's no future for a white child in South Africa - which in a way has come true because people say that to me now. I've got friends there that have got sons who are 17, and they say what are their children going to do? When I was there I was with this friend and he was saying to me that like if you're young, and black, and male in South Africa, you've got everything for you. Now he's got twin sons who are 17, and he says he doesn't know what his kids are going to do.

Even when they displayed some awareness of the historical context that has motivated initiatives for affirmative action and black empowerment in South Africa, it was nevertheless evident in many cases that they did not see themselves as having been beneficiaries of the apartheid system. Rather, they felt that they were victims of an unjust order. Andre, for instance, displaced responsibility onto previous generations:

Andre: My children would keep on paying for the misdeeds of my parents and my

grandparents for ever and a day and I didn’t see any future for the kids really. That was