9781422278901

CUSTOMS AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD

MY TEENAGE LIFE IN

SOUTH AFRICA

CUSTOMS AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD

My Teenage Life in AUSTRALIA My Teenage Life in BRAZIL My Teenage Life in CHINA My Teenage Life in EGYPT My Teenage Life in GREECE

My Teenage Life in INDIA My Teenage Life in JAPAN My Teenage Life in MEXICO My Teenage Life in NEPAL My Teenage Life in RUSSIA My Teenage Life in SOUTH AFRICA Our Teenage Life in the NAVAJO NATION

CUSTOMS AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD

MY TEENAGE LIFE IN

SOUTH AFRICA

By Michael Centore with Tshwarelo Lebeko

Series Foreword by Kum-Kum Bhavnani

MASON CREST

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2018 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in the United States of America. First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3899-8 ISBN: 978-1-4222-3911-7 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7890-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Centore, Michael, 1980- author. | Lebeko, Tshwarelo, author. Title: My teenage life in South Africa / by Michael Centore, with Tshwarelo Lebeko ; series foreword by Kum-Kum Bhavnani. Other titles: Customs and cultures of the world. Description: Broomall, PA : Mason Crest, 2017. | Series: Customs and cultures of the world | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017003258| ISBN 9781422239117 (hardback) | ISBN 142223911X (hardback) | ISBN 9781422278901 (ebook) | ISBN 1422278905 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: South Africa--Social life and customs--Juvenile literature. | Teenagers--South Africa--Social life and customs--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC DT1752 .C46 2017 | DDC 305.2350968--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003258 Developed and Produced by Shoreline Publishing Group. Editor: James Buckley, Jr. Design: Tom Carling, Carling Design Inc. Production : Sandy Gordon www.shorelinepublishing.com Cover photo: spooh/iStock Editor’s note: Special thanks to Michael Thema of Ikamva Youth in South Africa for his help in reaching out to our teen author, Tshwarelo. QR Codes disclaimer:

You may gain access to certain third party content (“Third-Party Sites”) by scanning and using the QR Codes that appear in this publication (the “QR Codes”). We do not operate or control in any respect any information, products, or services on such Third-Party Sites linked to by us via the QR Codes included in this publication, and we assume no responsibility for any materials you may access using the QR Codes. Your use of the QR Codes may be subject to terms, limitations, or restrictions set forth in the applicable terms of use or otherwise established by the owners of the Third-Party Sites. Our linking to such Third-Party Sites via the QR Codes does not imply an endorsement or sponsorship of such Third-Party Sites, or the information, products, or services offered on or through the Third-Party Sites, nor does it imply an endorsement or sponsorship of this publication by the owners of such Third-Party Sites.

S O U T H A F R I C A

C ontents

Series Foreword by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, UCSB..................... 6

South African Customs...................... 32 Tshwarelo’S Free Time......................38 South African Economy and Politics.... 40 Tshwarelo’S Country........................48 Tshwarelo’S Faith.............................. 52 The Future of South Africa................. 54

Meet Tshwarelo!.................................. 8 South Africa: An Introduction............ 10 Tshwarelo’S School Life...................18 Time to Eat!.........................................20 South African Culture......................... 22 Tshwarelo’S Home..............................30

Text-Dependent Questions..................................................... 60 Research Projects.................................................................. 61 Find Out More......................................................................... 62 Series Glossary of Key Terms................................................ 63 Index/Author........................................................................... 64

Key Icons to Look For

Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text, while building vocabulary skills.

Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented here. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

S O U T H A F R I C A

S eries F oreword Culture: Parts =Whole C ulture makes us human. Many of us think of culture

Culture is also about how we live our lives. It is about our lived experiences of our societies and of all theworldswe inhabit. And in this series—CustomsandCulturesof the World—you will meet young people who will share their experiences of the cultures andworlds they inhabit. How does a teenager growing up in South Africa make sense of the history of apartheid, the 1994 democratic elections, and of what is happening now? That is as integral to ourworld’s culture as the ancient ruins in Greece, the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Himalayas above Nepal, and the Amazon rain forests in Brazil. But these examples are not enough. Greece is also known for its financial uncertainties, Egypt is

assomethingthatbelongstoaperson, a group, or even a country. We talk about the food of a region as being part of its culture (tacos, pupusas, tamales, and burritos all are part of ourunderstandingof food fromMex- ico, andSouthandCentralAmerica). We might also talk about the clothes asbeing important toculture (saris in India, kimonos in Japan, hijabs or gallibayas in Egypt, or beaded shirts in theNavajoNation). Imaginetryingtosumup“American” cultureusingjustexampleslikethese! Yet culture does not just belong to a personorevenacountry. It isnot only about food and clothes or music and art, because those things by them- selves cannot tell the whole story.

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known for the uprisings in Tahrir Square, China is known for its rapid developmentof megacities,Australia is known for its amazing animals, andBrazil isknown for theOlympics and its football [soccer] team. And there are many more examples for eachnation, region, andperson, and some of these examples are featured in these books. The question is: How do you, growing up in a particular country, view your own culture? What do you think of as culture? What is your lived experience of it? Howdo you come to understand and engage with cultures that are not familiar to you? And, perhaps most importantly, why do you/wewant to do this?Andhowdoes reading about andexperiencingother cultureshelp you understand your own? It is perhaps a cliché to say culture forms the central core of our humanity and our dignity. If that’s true, how do young adults talk about your own cultures? How do you simultaneously understand how people apparently “different” fromyou live their lives, and engage

with their cultures? One way is to read the stories in this series. The “authors” are just like you, even though they live in different places and in different cultures. We com- municatedwith these youngwriters over the Internet, whichhas become the greatest gathering of cultures ever. The Internet is now central to the culture of almost everyone, with youngpeople leading thewayonhow to use it to expand the horizons of all of us. From those of us born in earlier generations, thank you for opening that cultural avenue! Let me finish by saying that culture allows us to open ourminds, think about worlds different from the ones we live in, and to imagine how people very different from us live their lives. This series of books is just the start of the process, but a crucial start. I hope you enjoy them. —Kum-Kum Bhavnani Professor of sociology and feminist and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an award-winning international filmmaker.

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S O U T H A F R I C A Meet Tshwarelo!

Hi, my name is Tshwarelo Lebeko! I live in Midrand, Gauteng, in South Africa.

I live in a family of six: my father, mother, my little brother, and my two little sisters. My father works as a marketing manager at a company called Agrinet Co. At the moment, my mother doesn’t work. Even though she has all the qualification she needs, she finds it very hard to find a job. But that doesn’t stop her from moving forward. She is a volunteer in an organization of HIV/AIDS awareness called “CARE.”

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The Reader

My Family I love my family very much. What I like mostly about them is their hyper-activity. No matter the odds, they still find a way to make their dreams a success. In my whole family I would say I am the weak one, mostly when it comes to hard situations, I’m the one who mostly considers quitting. My family inspires me very much, no matter the situation I face, but when I think of them I just get motivated to move on and defeat that curse. As strong as my family is, it is not as strong as when we are all together. When I am with my extended family, my life is full of gold, the happiness I have when I am with them is irreplaceable. There is no time when I feel as happy as when I am with them. My family as a whole is very big and close as well. There is no way which would ever break it apart as every matter we face, we adjoin together and fight it. Most times, we meet at my hometown Limpopo (see page 30). That is where we assemble together and celebrate. My family is a family of love, and although there may be days when we tend to disagree with one another, we always stand together. When I was growing up, I never thought that family was an important thing but the more I got to grow up, I realized that I’m nothing without my family. I faced many hard situations in my life and come to think of it, I got to realize that every situation I was in, my family was always behind me. As they say that “friends bring fun and family bring boredom but in dark days friends depart but family [stick together].” That is a true statement that I would never forget in my whole life, as it is something that I actually faced. My family was always behind me, even though sometimes I didn’t want them near me, they were always there and they helped me overcome every fear I ever faced.

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S O U T H A F R I C A

South Africa: An Introduction

S outh Africa is a place of rugged natural beauty, vibrant cultural life, and complicated political history. Even its location on the globe is one of extremes, as it forms the southernmost tip of the African continent, the only nation on earth to border both the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. To its northare the countries of Botswana,Namibia, andZimbabwe,withsmaller Swaziland and a shared short border with Mozambique to the northeast. In the eastern part of the country is the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho, which exists entirely within South Africa. At about 471,000 square miles (1.08 million sq km), South Africa is twice the size of Texas. It is often called “a world in one country” for its Words to Understand apartheid  a system of racial segregation imposed throughout South Africa from 1948 through 1991 biodiversity  describing a wide variety of life in a place, ecosystem, or habitat hunter-gatherer  a human who obtains food by foraging for wild plants and animals migrant  one who goes from place to place, usually in search of food or work segregate  to keep groups apart from each other

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Most of South Africa’s population lives near the oceans. Inland, there are large areas of beautiful scenery, such as these wildflowers.

incredible biodiversity : It is home to more than 20,000 plant species (10 percent of the world’s population), as well as a wide variety of wildlife, includinggiraffes, lions, andendangeredspecies suchas the riverine rabbit. South Africa has more than 1,500 miles (2,414 km) of coastline. The lush coastal areas rise to a high interior plateau. The Great Escarpment, a steep slope, forms the boundary between these two regions. Theweather in South Africa is generally warm and dry, with sunny days and cool nights. Differences in elevation between the coastal regions and the plateau and the effects of ocean currents can create a variety of climates, from sub- tropical on the east coast to more temperate in the interior.

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S O U T H A F R I C A

A Complex History South Africa has a long and complex history. The region’s oldest inhabi- tants are the San people, tribes of hunter-gatherers who have lived for more than 20,000 years. The San descended from early Stone Age peoples. There are still San people in South Africa today, though in the modern era it is difficult for them to continue their traditional lifestyle. In recent years, many have lobbied the government for preservation of San culture, customs, and land rights.

This illustration depicts fighting between British soldiers (in white helmets) and Dutch settlers of South Africa during the Boer Wars in the late 19th century.

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In the fourth century, other migrant groups joined the San in southern Africa. From about 900 to 1300—during the time of the Dark Ages in Europe—Mapungubwe on the northern border of present-day South Africawas the largest kingdomin theAfrican subcontinent. It was an important center for tradewithChina, India, andEgypt, especially the trade of gold and ivory. As theysought todiscovernewtraderoutes between Europe and the Far East, European explorers came in contact with South Africa in the 1400s. The Dutch established the first permanentEuropeansettlement atCapeTown in 1652, where it became an outpost for the Dutch East India Trading Company. Dutch settlers came over to help farm the land and began to expand throughout the country. In 1806, the British took control of Cape Town after defeating the Dutch at the Battle of Blaauwberg. TheBritish imposedEnglish- language laws, spurring many of the Dutch to leave the Cape Town colony and form their

Cape Town A glance at a picture of

Cape Town, South Africa, on the southwest coast, gives a great example of the drama and diversity of the country’s landscape. The flat-topped Table Mountain rises in the background, flanked by two other mountains, Lion’s Head and Devil’s Peak. Below spread the lights of the City Bowl, a metropolis bounded by Ta- ble Bay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. The Cape Town Stadium, built in 2010 when South Africa hosted the World Cup, domi- nates the northwestern part of the city with its strikingly mod- ern design. Beyond the city’s boundaries, mountain ranges, vineyards, and the desert of the Great Karoo add to the region’s biodiversity.

own republics to the north and east. After the British took over one of these republics, the Boers (as the Dutch settlers were called) rebelled, causing the First Boer War in 1880. The Boers won, but when the British continued to assert dominance over the region—hoping to control the Witwatersrand gold mines that had been discovered nearby—the Second Boer War broke out in 1899.

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S O U T H A F R I C A

As early as 1914, a delegation from the new African National Congress traveled from South Africa to England to call for more freedoms.

This time the British were victorious. They united the four colonies in the region into the Union of South Africa in 1910, and soon began to establishpolices that segregated black andwhite residents. One of these, theNative LandAct, limited black land ownership to a tiny fraction of the country. This led to white ownership of more than 80 percent of the land even though they were less than 20 percent of the population.

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