South Africa is the only country that has three capitols...Capetown, Pretoria and another one “Blou” something...I can’t quite recall and I don't really have time for Google right now.
It’s also the only country that doesn't actually have a name, but rather just a geographical location.
We are travelling on the N-1 highway, which is one of the longest in the world. It goes from Capetown to Cairo, which sounds like such a good name for a book that I bet it already is.
All the small towns we are travelling though are differentiated by who lives there, (ie) our guide, Wellington, will tell us “This is a black town” “This is a coloured town” etc. South Africa has three types of people, black, coloured and white. This is how they describe it, even though the term “coloured” is very derogatory and frowned upon in north America, it’s used here, and is not a slur. If you have any white and black in you at all, no matter how far back, you are considered coloured. It’s very odd. The blacks are proud to be black as they consider themselves the original owners of the land (which of course they are), the whites consider themselves superior since they “settled” the land over 400 years ago, and the coloured people desire to be one or the other. It’s an almost tangible feeling of dislike between all three.
Between 85% and 95% of all the businesses and lands are owned by just 5% of the people, and those people are white. Black and coloured still perform the more menial jobs, and blacks are very seldom in a management position if a white person is available. Out guide and driver are both black and we spend a lot of bus hours discussing this.
But I will post this now, and maybe talk about it later. Right now we are on our way to a vineyard for wine tasting. 👍🏻
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