Greg Castle's response to Noseweek's article 'What the Aussies can learn from us'..

Having travelled to Australia many times over the past two decades, spending time with my Australian born wife’s family and friends every couple of years, I found the recent Noseweek article by Sue Segar, titled ‘What the Aussies can learn from us’, along with the response letter from Sandra Devine of Queensland, Australia, ‘Right about Aussie bigotry’, most interesting and felt compelled to contribute. 

These issues are far more complex than they appear at face value, however I have often believed that if one gives people hand outs, one breeds lethargy and lack of ambition, and that goes for South Africa too.  It can also be a very good disguise for a form of keeping people in their place of birth and mindset (i.e. a form of Apartheid in itself, as is the case of the Aborigines in Australia). This in-turn inevitably leads to massive social problems, societal breakdown, substance abuse, etc., merely as a form of escapism from the realities of life.  And yet white Australians generally put that down to merely culture.

 Differently to Australia, in South Africa, despite Apartheid, people constantly mixed and interacted with one another across race groups, cultures and creeds.  It may have been primarily within the work environment, but most white kids grew up with black house cleaners and babysitters, farm labourers, office workers, shopkeepers, waiters, cleaners, neighbours, etc., etc., and interacted with their families daily.  Many of us grew up with mates of different races as kids, and were encouraged to do so.  White kids particularly on farms in Natal and E.Cape grew up speaking either Zulu or Xhosa respectively before their own family language of English.  

Although many private schools allowed the admission of black kids from as early as the ‘70’s, government schools didn't until the late ‘80’s.  Yet contrary to this, we had these draconian laws that prohibited me from inviting my black boyhood friend and coloured fellow Navy sailor during National Service, out for dinner at any restaurant in town, where it was regarded as 'whites only'.  We had to have dinner in hotels or out of the way establishments.  Yet we interacted and knew one another rather well, better than we even realised.  We had so much in common, including love for music and sense of humour, yet freedom of choice wasn't one of them.

My impression is that things are rather different in Aus when it comes to ‘true’ integration.  My summation is that Australians have never been forced to really understand their indigenous people other than from a selective, somewhat distant 'white settler' perspective.  Instead I have always got the impression, despite the best intentions and apparent well-meaning of most Australians, that society and government have approached it in a rather patronising, paternalistic manner, thinking that perhaps to be the best approach.  It may sound rather harsh, but there’s a remnant of the rather old fashioned way that the somewhat 'self-important' and 'pompous' Brits use to deal with the indigenous people in the colonies. "Nice but shame, they're simple folk with simple needs and wants".  

I think Nyunggai Warren Mundine (Executive Chairman of Australian Indigenous Chamber of Commerce)  summed it up rather well when interviewed recently, saying that "Poverty persists because we treat communities such as the Ampilatwatja like dependent children and smother them in bureaucratic mire.  Let's start treating them like adults."  

History books need to perhaps be rewritten by those from all sides of the spectrum as they have here now and continue to be.   The Islamic 'invasion' into Australia is a case in point.  It was somehow alright for there to have been a 'British/European/Christian' invasion a few centuries back and since, (although Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and the like were treated as second class citizens until very recently), and yet now it's just not 'cricket'.  Australians must apparently have an ‘Australian culture’ and set of values to 'fit in' and to be accepted, whatever that means?  But that's another discussion, yet very closely linked to the mind-set that I believe many very well meaning, relatively open minded Aussies still quietly have deep down, that Aborigines are just not the same as us. 

 This is certainly not finger pointing, it’s just how things naturally are unless there is a real appreciation and desire to truly understand the other perspective and to see how contradictory history can be when it comes to culture and religion.  Cultural affairs worldwide have moved on dramatically in the last few decades alone.  Ironically perhaps, South Africa had the advantage of having to shake a 'statutory', openly racist monkey off its back, which may have expedited things.  But more importantly, deep down, South Africans of all races knew one another rather well, which made the cultural, political and economic transition much easier than most of us thought it could ever have been.  There wasn't much to overcome culturally from an acceptance point of view.  Even with rather radically different approaches to marriage (e.g. acquiring wives for lobola, polygamy), herbal medicine, ancestral beliefs, tribal laws, etc.  

In Australia I perceive a real sense of general suspicion, even down to deep-seated hatred that I never experienced growing up in Apartheid South Africa, despite the atrocities. Although it may sound sanctimonious in saying, ‘What the Aussies can learn from us’, it appears it may be so.  Perhaps we should be proud of what we've become, despite all odds and much of the negativity that we may dwell on day-to-day.  This glass is half full..

Forwarded by Martin Welz (Editor of Noseweek Magazine) 

Article written by Greg Castle

Founding Managing Director of strategic management and marketing planning consultancy - Torquil Strategic Marketing, and boutique winery - Brothers Wines.