I grew up in South Africa as a white boy and saw the whole
end of apartheid thing. Because of the previous regime a town would
generally consist of white suburban neighbourhoods not unlike you'd
expect in the US with a commercial centre with malls and whatever, and
then just outside of town would be a black 'township' that had dirt
roads and most people lived in metal and wooden shacks and basic brick
houses and would take the bus or minibus taxi into the main white town
if they had work.
The town I lived in had a public swimming pool, and as facilities
were being opened to all races this was opened too. The white
population of the main town was about 8,000 people and the township had
about 25,000 people in it. The black kids from the townships were
obviously very keen to try out this swimming thing, especially since
they had no pool up in the townships. The pool became very busy with
lots of black people. None of them had any swimming experience but the
whole thing went without any major drowning incident. The white
families were very freaked out by this influx of black skin and stopped
going to the pool. They also spread stories about how the pool is now
80% urine and all sorts of stuff, which my dad could debunk easily since he actually specialised in municipal sewerage systems.
Anyway, by the next summer the whole swimming novelty wore off for
the black kids, and most of them stopped going to the pool. That summer
was great. It was a massive pool with diving boards, and every
afternoon we were about 4 white kids and 8 black kids that had the
entire pool to ourselves. We all got on fine and had a good time.
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