Quoting We're Learning

Just something that really made me smile - all the way from New York (Times):

Last Saturday, Christoffel Groenewald found it hard to believe he had waited so long before visiting Soweto.

“There’s a vibe here you just don’t get when it’s white people alone in Pretoria,” he said before the game.

By rugby standards, he was modestly dressed, with only wildly oversize blue sunglasses to enliven his wardrobe. He had boarded a bus that morning, crossed the racial divide and come to an epiphany: “Black people are better at accepting white people than white people are at accepting blacks.”

Mr. Groenewald, a 37-year-old engineer, was standing in a stranger’s crowded front yard. He continued his thought: “If black people came to our stadium, white people wouldn’t be as welcoming. White people wouldn’t be selling them beer, inviting them into their yards, grabbing them by the arm and asking them to come meet another white person.”

He paused to consider his conclusion and seemed compelled to add, “White people wouldn’t even do that for other white people.”

Behind him, blacks and whites sat together on benches. A newfound friend, Mandla Tshabalala, ambled over, beer in hand, and said, “Everyone is mingling with everyone here. South Africa is a changed country now.”

Up the block, Louwtjie Bekker, an off-duty policeman, called the scene “South Africa as it ought to be.” He said: “People are exchanging their cultures. We’re learning how the other lives.”

[About the Super 14 Semi-final & Final taking place in Soweto this year]