10 April 2002
Some wanted a haven from violence, others just wanted new experiences. Either way, as Chloe Groser discovered, these families from South Africa found what they were looking for.
RIGHT AT HOME: South African Indians at home in Brooklyn. From left Kistama and Rajoo Govender, Revennie, Nakaylia, 6, Denesha, 7, and Dev Chetty.
ROSS GIBLINjThe Evening Post
South Africans Shane Pressley and Tamsyn Vigne wondered what they had let themselves in for when they arrived in Wellington last year on February 6.
It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon/ but when they drove
through the centre of town to check out their new city/ all they saw was a ghost town.
"I thought/ this place is absolutely deserted/ why did we come here and leave Cape Town/, says Mr Pressley.
The next day people filtered back into the streets and they found out they'd arrived on a public holiday - Waitangi Day.
Still, the Harbour View/ Lower Hutt/ couple say Wellington is much quieter than their hometown.
"Cape Town is a bit more vibey. There's always heaps to see and beaches and stuff. Wellington is really laid back, though it's funny to say somewhere is more laid back than Cape Town/' Mr Pressley says.
They moved here with Ms Vigne's parents for a bit of adventure/ but others/ including Colette Nowitz/ who left
Johannesberg nine years ago, said they chose to leave because of the political turmoil at the time.
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Appendix B "We left just before Nelson Mandela was voted in. The political situation was extremely tense. There was a lot of animosity and hatred and that's where the violence stemmed from," Mrs Nowitz said.
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New Zealand offered her family relief from the violence/ though she said old habits die hard.
"(Violence) had become such a way of life, I found it incredibly hard to stop locking my car doors as soon as I got in ... I still won't walk some places during the day here, even with a friend ... She thinks I'm crazy."
Her first trip back to South Africa five years after she left gave her hope for the country, she says.
"In that time there had been a lot of positive change. There were no longer black or white or coloured South Africans, but South Africans as a whole."
Valda and Steven Scheckter came to Wellington five years ago for similar reasons. Their home town/ Vryburg/ still had the
hall-marks of apartheid and was violent.
"It was still divided into areas/' says Mr Scheckter. "One for the whites, one for the blacks, another for the coloureds and
another for the Asians."
He says the town was typical of many small towns throughout South Africa. But there had been huge change since he was a child. "An 80-year-old black man would have to get off the foot-path to allow me, a six-year-old white boy, to pass."
TIGHT KNIT: Back from left, Zelda Scheckter, Shane Pressley, Maxine Scheckter, 6, Tamsyn Vigne, Justine Nowitz, 13, Colette Nowitz, Valda and Steven Scheckter. At front are Dane Nowitz, 9, and Thomas Scheckter, 8.
ROSS GIBLIN/The Evening Post
The Scheckters own On Trays, a small South African delicatessan in Petone. They say the shop provides a focal point for the growing South African community in Wellington.
"We've had people who heard about our shop on the plane. They come straight here - it's their first point of contact," Mrs Scheckter says.
Tony Delo, a coloured South African, regularly buys his lunch at the
shop. He's been in Wellington since 1998/ when he was on his way to a job in Canada and "got stuck here".
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157 AppendixB
He len :::,outn AfriCa Tor a cnange OT scene, not to escape
violence. His hometown, Port Elizabeth, was a more stable city, and not affected by the troubles plaguing other areas.
"I always wanted to see New Zealand. And I'm happy here. The lifestyle, the people are very open and free, whereas in South Africa it's very rigid."
Zelda MacKenzie, who runs the organisation South Africans In Wellington, says many families didn't leave because of
violence, but in search of opportunity and because of the troubled currency.
She came to Wellington four years ago, as a single parent with two teenage children. She said the move paid off. Her son has joined the Navy and her daughter is in Denmark on an AFS exchange for a year.
"They've had opportunities they'd never have had in South Africa."
She says the majority of South Africans in Wellington are white and coloured. Only a few black South Africans were beginning to make their way here.
Revennie Chetty, a South African Indian, said she experienced huge culture shock when she came to Wellington last year.
Although Mrs Chetty, a nurse, worked in a "white" hospital in Natal, she had gone to an all-Indian school and socialised mainly within her race.
"There was such a diversity of cultures here," she says.
"The Maori population was something totally different for me. I couldn't make the difference out between Maori and Samoans.
I didn't know what my gestures should be."
She says working in Wellington hospital forced her to mingle with the vast array of ethnic groups.
She left South Africa partly because of the crime and racial tension, but mainly in search of new experiences and a better life for her children.
Mrs Revennie says she's found it.
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