Dear Alice

I read your article for the SA Link with great interest. The South African community in Australia has so much to come to terms with apart from supporting the SA sporting sides. There is still such deep-rooted anger and resentment towards each other from the different SA community groups. In South Africa they may have reconciled but in Australia we still live as a divided community. The majority of the coloured community arrived in Australia +20 years ago to escape racial oppression.

Unlike the privileged and successful white South Africans we had no Kruger Rands, no stashes of money that could take us to Vaucluse, Rosebay and the likes. Most of us arrived here with very little money 
such as a $1000 if we were lucky, suitcases, a couple of kids in hand. Most of us just got stuck in and persevered. Therefore today we are enjoying life as one of the millions of Australians living and supporting everything Australian. We do not question everything and try to justify our reasons for leaving and continually question the Australian culture at every turn. We embraced it because we wanted to belong. We left behind a country where we were treated as 2nd class citizens and for this reason we were eager to embrace a new life where we could be just a face in the crowd. We were used to working hard to survive so the adjustment was not that difficult. The most precious things we left behind were family and friends, not our Mercedes, privileged or expensive lifestyle.

Unlike other communities we could not celebrate the South African national day as one, or for that matter support the SA rugby sides when they tour here. There is still too much hurt. What we need is a healing 
process firstly to bring us together as a community. Most white South Africans do not realise that they still have an arrogance about them that may have worked years ago in South Africa but today in Australia 
it will not be tolerated. Because of our mixed background most people do not realised that we are South African born and that is the when the comparison would be made. White South Africans will always have the tag of the oppressors no matter what generation you are from. Not fair but that is the way life goes. Memories are everlasting. In South Africa we could not get to know each other because of the laws. What about here? Do we choose not to? Or don't we know how to mix?

Our children have grown up here and we are the ones that wear the wallaby jumper with pride and know everything about cricketers David Boon, Dennis Lillee, Steven Waugh etc. We love the Ella brothers, Nick 
Farr-Jones, David Campese etc. We cheered along Cathy Freeman at the Olympics many of us working as volunteers at the events. We sing along to Waltzing Mathilda in loud voice!

In my business of promoting and touring South African artists I find it particularly interesting. I have brought mainly coloured performers to Australia. And who supports them, coloured people. Pieter Dirk Uys comes to Australia, who are his main supporters, white South Africans. Marc Lottering comes to Australia, who supports him mainly coloureds because they can laugh at themselves. I noticed at some of Marc Lotterings shows, the ones that hang around to socialise after, meet him for a photograph or just have a drink would only be the coloured community. While the white patrons found him so funny inside the theatre, they take off immediately at the end. Why?

A paper like the former SA Independent comes along who knows about it, not the coloured people, it was kept almost exclusively white, the content too political and staid. The marketing towards SA businesses in 
Australia and who owned them, the white community. Were efforts ever made to find out what the rest of the SA community is doing, how are they coping, no never!

I am pessimistic about our chances of ever being a true South African community in Australia.