Dirty Word (South Africa)

"The only reason that I can sit here in this bar with you and not worry that if I went to the bathroom 4 guys would follow me and beat me up is because people can tell we are both foreigners." Sam, a black Malawian who has lived in South Africa for 11 years told me.
Already walking down the street with my friend, someone had slowed down in their car and, thinking I was a local, yelled in Afrikaans at me. I didn't understand the words but Sam and I understood what he had meant completely.
Apartheid is over, but has anything changed? The whites live in the cities and most of the blacks below the poverty line in townships. "The problem is there is no middle-class. There are only extremes but the middle class are the spenders so something is sure to collapse." Said Simon, a local to Plettenberg Bay.
So the different colors remain dead locked in a sort of static equilibrium, both need each other, but both are highly suspicious of the other with little interaction. With the vast majority of people living in townships, I asked why the people didn't retaliate because all of the violence and discrimination you hear of is white oppressing black. Just last week white students at a university were discovered to be abusing black workers in horrific ways, beating them, forcing them to eat feces, etc. What kind of a mentality has the workers to not stand up for themselves while at the same time what kind of mentality allows the whites to continue to abuse the majority? Does it go both ways?
"Because they still need their jobs and they work for the whites. It's all interconnected, that's why they don't retaliate," is Simon's opinion.
It seems one-sided, whites hurting the blacks, but I know nothing is that simple. I had been told I would be welcome in a black club, where as a black wouldn't be welcome in a white one.
"You would be welcome in a black club and treated like an honored guest, the most popular person in the club but only because you are a foreigner," Sam told me.
"But how would they know that I was a foreigner?" I asked him.
"Simple. If you were a local you wouldn't be there." said Sam.
So what is to happen to South Africa? The economy is growing but so many live in absolute poverty. The disparity between rich and poor is gigantic. With no mixing and contact between the races I don't see how it can be resolved. I told Sam how to me, appearance-wise, South Africa seems like paradise, yet socially, I could never live here. He agreed that it seems to be nearing a breaking point, a shift that seems hard to break, especially because there is such a lack of education for those growing up in townships, but that education is necessary for upward mobility.
Apartheid hangs in the air like a dirty word. Everyone I have spoken with refuses to say it. It's never "apartheid." Instead it is always, "the past," or "what happened."
I'm reading a book about apartheid now and was talking to a waitress who said she wanted a book to read. I said she could have mine when I finished it. She asked what it was about and I said the A-word. She visibly flinched.
It affects everything you see today, but it is never mentioned. From an outsiders viewpoint, it' snot so much the distribution of wealth that worries me, I think that will take time to remedy. Rather, it's the lack of dialogue, connection and contact between the races that is where the paradise fades. It is the palatable suspicion of everyone and tension.
As Sam says, the problem is the fact that, "There is no love." A huge problem indeed.