An all-white enclave less than an hour from South Africa’s capital is fighting to hold on to a segregated life reminiscent of the country before Nelson Mandela toppled the apartheid regime. “We feel that our culture is being threatened and we want to protect it and we want to nurture it,” said Marisa Haasbroek, a writer and mother who serves as voluntary spokeswoman for a gated community called Kleinfontein. A bust of Henrik Verwoerd, who is credited as the father of apartheid, sits near the entrance to Kleinfontein. Kleinfontein does not hide its ties to South Africa’s divided past, nor its mistrust of the country’s present: At its entrance stands a bust of Hendrik Verwoerd, who is seen as the father of apartheid. A fence surrounds its almost 2,000 acres and guards in fatigues police at the entrance of the community condemned as "racist" by some critics. Among the reasons that Haasbroek and others in the cooperative town cite for walling themselves off are the country’s high crime rates and institutionalized affirmative action, which they say results in white people being frozen out of jobs and university places. worldnews.nbcnews/_news/2013/06/20/19039961-all-white-town-fights-to-preserve-segregation-in-mandelas-rainbow-nation?lite
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:16:31 +0000