One of the interesting things I have noticed is that post-apartheid South Africa participates in equal opportunity poverty. Whereas the government used to pretty much guarantee a job for every white (apparently those who could do nothing else would be employed in the railways or in the post office…), now they don’t, and so while you don’t see as many whites within the poor and ultra-poor, you do see them, in the hopsital and begging on street corners and at traffic lights. It’s sad that anyone should be in that situation, but here I find it even more confronting because most of my previous experience has been that the poor tend to be non-white minority populations (and so somehow detached from my personal situation (I have rather startlingly realised since arriving here how easy it is to let your western upbringing and conditioning bring out some quite startling passively racists views in you)), and of course this is the first country I’ve spent time in where the resident minority population are whites.