Why are you so nice to me?

I had a rather eye-opening and disturbing conversation with a girl in my village who was around 13 years old.

A paraphrased version of the conversation:

Girl: Lotjhani Jabulani (hello Jabulani (my South African name))
Me: Yebo Ninjani (Yes, how are you?)
Girl: Sharp, wena unjani ((pronounced 'shop' meaning 'good') and how are you)
Me: Sharp
Girl: Give me 2 up (give me 2 Rand)
Me:No, you give me 2 Rand

As usual, I followed that response with a series of other responses and questions meant to make her think about her request:

You give me 2 Rand today and then I will give you 2 Rand tomorrow. You don't have 2 Rand today? So what would make me believe you'll have 2 Rand tomorrow to pay me back? If you're going to have 2 Rand tomorrow, why don't you just wait until tomorrow? What have you done for me so that you would deserve me giving you 2 Rand? Why do you deserve 2 Rand more than everyone else who asks me for money? If I gave you my money, how would I feed and clothe myself and do my job?

Generally people will get frustrated by this once it has sunk in that they are not going to get money from me and walk away. Instead of just turning and walking away she continued.

Girl: You're so nice to me, why don't you hate me?
Me: Why should I hate you?
Girl: Well, because I'm black
Me: Well, I don't, it takes too much energy to hate people; especially over something so petty as the color of your skin.

I proceeded to explain to her that the color of her skin doesn't determine what she can and can't do. This is, of course, the very reason she assumed that I had money that I might be willing to give her. I think by the end of the conversation she felt more empowered to look beyond the color of her and other's skins and be more optimistic for the future.

The first post-Apartheid election occurred only 15 years ago meaning that a large portion of the current children's parents were directly impacted as young adults by the Apartheid system. Since your beliefs are largely formed in your formative years from those of the adults around you, it's no surprise that some of the kids have developed this set of beliefs. It's a sad reality that a significant portion of the population still has deeply rooted beliefs like this. The sadder thing is that these views are still cultivating in the young minds who are the future of South Africa. Since South Africa is the most democratic sub-Saharan African country and South it wants to be seen as a developed country, hopefully South Africans will make a stronger effort to try and ease racial tensions and move forward instead of being held back by deep-rooted hatred.