The Campbell Academy Blog (107)

Represent (Cape Town)

I've written a lot about representation in the pages of this blog over the last 3,500 posts.

I've recounted stories of people who taught me about the importance of representation and how when you meet people, you may be the only example or experience of the place you come from and the people you stand in front of.

And so, on Wednesday night, I drove to Heathrow and flew to Cape Town.

Understand that I see clearly that I live in an extraordinary, rarefied bubble.

I understand the unbelievable privilege that I have access to and, therefore, also understand that my view may be wholly jaundiced or out of focus, but I don't think so, not so much.

As I was preparing for this trip of a lifetime (part of this privileged existence I have is that I seem to have trips of a lifetime all the time), I would talk to patients or other people about travelling to South Africa, and the response was mixed.

One patient who spoke to me on Tuesday said he would never return because he couldn't stand the disparity between the rich and the poor.

When you leave the airport in Cape Town, the first thing you come up against are townships and the place where recently a British orthopaedic surgeon was shot in the head when he apparently took a wrong turn during a taxi strike.

I understand when people stare face to face with this; they think that everything is terrible and nothing is moving forward. Still, I can tell you that after 24 hours in this city, I have not met a single person (and I have met many) who does not think it's getting better and who is trying to make it better.

The picture attached to this blog is the South African speakers at the South African National Dental Conference.

Look closely; look at the mix of the speakers on the stage. It's enormously and fantastically diverse.

Everybody knows that there is a massive journey or a huge road to travel, and they also seem to know that it will not be fixed by a week on Tuesday, but they are continuing to go forward and to work to make it better.

South Africa is supposedly the only African country with a fast-developing black middle class.

It takes enormous amounts of immigration from other African countries because the prospects are better and because the lifestyle and the chance to make a better lifestyle are better (this is information I'm sharing from people who live here).
But the overriding sense that I have, having been here for 24 hours, is how enormously proud people are of where they live and what they're doing.

People are poorer here because, in Britain, we live in an extraordinary world of privilege and safety, and here it is not the same.

Make no mistake, there is clear privilege here, and there are people who are rich, but if you look to see how much people get paid, pound for pound and rand for rand, the jobs get paid less than we get paid, and people have less, but it is no less happy (I suspect perhaps a lot happier).

Cape Town is an extraordinary liberal place where people are received with warmth and kindness, regardless of their creed or colour or, religion or any other differentiating factor that we might worry about in the West.

I hope upon hope that this is not the last time I come here.

I hope to introduce Alison and maybe my kids to this.

It is glorious and wonderful, and I am so lucky.

In the opening ceremony, I got to carry St. Andrew's cross to the front of the stage and to 'plant it' beside the stage.

There was a piper playing Flower of Scotland as we walked out of the room; it probably doesn't get any better than that.