I went to the doctor for my six monthly checkup on Monday. When you are in your sixties that is just another thing you have to do.Like with a car or, any other vehicle, certain parts don’t function very well anymore. Some can be replaced, others not and most of us have some or other chronic pain. Every time you sit in the waitingroom, you wonder if a miracle cure had been discovered, invented for your ailments!

An old lady, correction elderly lady, (she turned out to be only five years older than I am) came from one of the examination rooms and sat down next to me.

Her name was Maria, she was black, used to be a school teacher and like me, she was also retired.

Maria walked with great difficulty, using a crutch. Her poor body was bent and twisted with arthritis. She was neatly dressed in a black pencil skirt, floral blouse and practical,black shoes. Maria also wore simple, black framed glasses and her hair was without pretention, natural.

We greeted and she started telling me, in very fluent Afrikaans, that she had two hip replacements and her back was giving her trouble. So much so that another major operation was on the cards for her.

Maria had two children, a son and a daughter, and four grandchildren, but she lived alone. Her townhouse was in one of the southern suburbs of the city.

Then came a confession that her white neighbour helped her, cared more about her than her own children that lived in the same suburb!

I was both saddened and shocked! According to what I have read and the general assumption of the black culture in South Africa, their society looked after their old.

In SA the Black Taxi industry is a big part of life! It became more and more prevalent, competative after ’94. They are like shuttles or small busses and much cheaper than the white taxies. Taxi ranks can be found all over the cities and towns in the whole of Africa. It is a huge source of employment and income to a big part of the population. I refer to black and white taxies because of the colour of the driver and the passengers. Most white people will never get into a black tax and most black people cannot afford a white taxi!

Maria then told me something that I still find appaling. Apparently the black taxies refuse to give her transport because she is old and slow and a hassle to other passengers!!

In 1993 a book “In their shoes” by J C Kotze, was published in SA. It was all about ubuntu in the collective black society in contrast with the more individual white society. Ubuntu means a warm, caring social behaviour and a sharing of eg. food in their society. Yet then I heard this dreadful, downright shameful testimony from this poor old lady.. Her own people, even her children, neglected, turned on her! It is a known fact, although not acknowledged, that the blacks shunn,even hate the whites in SA. I don’t blame them, but they follow our western lifestyle almost religiously.

Ubuntu has gone,disappeared.. The blacks have become aviricious, ignoring the most basic rules and laws and are extremely selfish..The difference is that whites had strict law enforcement, accountability,commitment to work and social ethicks…

We face a bleak future where even the police are openly corrupt and most people, black and white, have no moral compass! God Help us and God help people like Maria irrespective of colour, race!!

Really, what happened to Ubuntu!!