The new South Africa
My name is Ida Mackenzie, but I prefer if you’d call me “Mrs. Mackenzie”. Every morning at exactly 7.30 a.m. my alarm rings routinely. Routine is important, especially to me. I believe in the three R’s: Routine, Reliability and Respect. And therefor in my opinion no home could be hold successfully without these three great terms. Because of this I hate when I get unexpected visitors.
At 7.35 a.m. I reach for the silver bell and shake it. The silver bell is placed right beside the bed on the table next to my clock. I have inherited the bell from my mother. As a recall to the bell my maid, Beauty, will come to my bed with coffee and homemade rusks, and go through a timetable of tasks and duties of the actual day. Beauty has been my maid in over twenty-five years. She is reliable – or at least I thought she was. If I didn’t have a servant, I would not even remember, where I keep the rusks.

Until this election week I always thought Beauty was too sensible a girl to want anything to do with the African National Congress, but she let me down. Even though I tested her, in the way of leaving marked bottles out. One day Beauty stayed away, and I felt abandoned, betrayed, disappointed and helpless. I have always and will always like how orderly things used to be, with the blacks getting off the pavements for whites and respecting the obvious curfew at nightfall. My maids life in Vilakazi Township have never been in my interest, the fact that she was reliable according to my routines and not failed my test was enough for me to trust her.

I realize things have to change, but giving-in to the black – that I despise. I compare these feelings with being a prisoner in my own country, our country not theirs. We are preparing to give everything up, and with that I mean respect and what our ancestors in their time worked for, they worked for feeding