Hard Times

How's your husband doing?, we ask the 50 something white woman we meet at the airport. She sighs. Times are hard. He's being retrenched at work. This is a fancy word for getting fired to make space for a black or coloured person. (There is some kind of financial plan included, though.) Her husband is 53 years old and has been working at the same company for almost 30 years. Now he has to go. The (white) people at our table are all outraged by this prospect. It's unfair, they say. I don't wanna be this foreign I-know-it-better, but I am not sure what to think. The apartheidsregime caused so much inequality. There has to be some kind of plan to give black and coloured people in South-Africa a chance for a better life. If they don't force change, the jobs will stay in white hands for years to come. But when it's you who's getting fired, I totally understand that you are angry.
It's sad, that a new form of discrimination has to undo the wrongs of the old form of discrimination.

After the drinks we leave and wish the lady well. She needs it, she says, because she's not sure if she will be able to get her husbands Mercedes E-class out of the narrow parking.