During the apartheid regime in South Africa, black people were segregated.  There were separate schools and separate neighborhoods; black and white people could not share the same sidewalk or frequent the same beach.  Inter-racial marriage was prohibited.

All this changed.  President Nelson Mandela suspended the laws justifying segregation.  After he took office, white and black South Africans could share the same sidewalk, attend the same schools, even marry.  But the current reality is not good. 

In Mamelodi, a former black township on the outskirts of Pretoria, there are houses with running water, electricity, standardized outdoor bathrooms.  Some houses even have masonry.  But unemployment continues as before; there is no public transportation; racial violence has grown. 

White South Africans have stopped using the sidewalks and no longer shop in the downtown area, going instead to shopping centers; the white schools now accept black children but their parents must be rich; inter-racial marriage is almost inexistent.  Mandela ended racial segregation but the social segregation is the same.

Post-apartheid South Africa increasingly resembles Brazil.  Here we have the same South-African segregation but by class instead of race.  The portion of the population included in modernity—the rich and the almost rich—frequent the shopping centers, study in the good schools, marry among themselves. 

The excluded portion—the poor and the almost poor—remain outside of the quality schools, do not enter the shopping centers.  On the beaches, everyone knows where the poor beach-goers hang out and which areas the rich frequent.  In the latter, the only poor admitted are the vendors of ice cream, beer, mineral water.

With the growing pressure of the poor masses, with the constant violence of beach sweeps by favela youths, the rich are beginning to flee from the beach just as they fled from the downtown area. 

Soon more private aquatic centers will begin to be built, as has already been done at tourist beaches in the Brazilian Northeast.  More and more Brazil resembles South Africa in the time of apartheid.

When we visited South Africa earlier this year, we perceived an enormous similarity to Brazil.  The two countries are promoting development that is separate, that benefits only part of the population—in Brazil, the Europeans and their descendants, who for four centuries brought slaves from Africa; in South Africa, the Europeans who arrived on the African continent and kept the natives excluded from the advantages of progress.

When slavery was abolished, Brazil liberated its slaves, denying them and their children any rights whatsoever—land, school, housing, water, electricity. When urbanization made agrarian servility difficult in South Africa, apartheid was instituted, and the people of color were denied their sociopolitical rights. 

Both Mandela and Lula came to power from the excluded sector of society.  The election of the two of them symbolized historical change, the transformation from evil and exclusion to solidarity and inclusion.

It is unfortunate that, despite all the changes, neither in South Africa nor in Brazil can one perceive a difference in what is fundamental.  Both countries are moving towards a growing exclusion, even as a defense against the violence between social classes.  South Africa, after Mandela, is Brazilianizing, and the Brazil of Lula is South-Africanizing.

Brazil and South Africa share the same history of segregation, but neither country has demonstrated the capacity to abolish exclusion and guarantee fundamental human rights.  They changed their reality—one electing a black man; the other, a poor man—but they have not successfully initiated a process of social inclusion of the black population there and the poor population here.

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage – www.cristovam.com.br – and write to him at cristovam@senador.gov.br.

Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.

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