On of my favorite aspects of traveling outside of the US is the complete inversion of the role that US citizenship plays in everyday interactions. Americans love to think of themselves as the blessed few in the land of unbridled opportunity, with billions of unwashed masses clamoring for a glimmer of a chance to become cogs in the wheel of the mighty giant of capitalism.

While to some extent that’s true (vis a vis Mexican immigration), there are also millions of Europeans, South Americans, Chinese etc. who scoff at the concept of leaving their very successful (and happy) lives in their home country, and think very poorly of what they perceive to be a nation of jingoistic,imperialistic war-mongers. (Because of course, in a nation of 350 million where the vast majority are descendents of immigrants within the last hundred years, we ALL share the exact same homogenous political views. Of course!) South Africans seem to hold a unique spot on this (admittedly exaggerated) spectrum.

South Africa has both extreme wealth and extreme poverty, both two halves of the same coin minted from a massive well of abundant natural resources and gold mines and discolored by apartheid. Something like 80% of all black South Africans live in townships, which are often crude squatter shelters with corrugated tin roofs. On the other extreme end as a telling stat, South Africa is Aston-Martin’s third-largest market in the world behind the US and the UK. Staying in Clifton, the Laguna Beach of Cape Town (minus the shitty TV show), over the last month has given me a first-hand look at the wealth that continues to dominate the Atlantic seaboard in the form of sports cars, glass-walled mansions, and suspiciously orange trophy wives. This world seems surprisingly oblivious to its surroundings.

Since the end of apartheid and the non-violent transfer of power via elections in 1994 (Nelson Mandela, the head of the African National Congress party and recently freed from his 27 years of imprisonment, was elected president), South Africa has suffered an explosive increase in crime and discomfort by many white South Africans at the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Affirmative Action initiatives that has resulted in over 100,000 South Africans emigrating each year.

Many white South Africans I’ve talked to of the middle-class (who will remain anonymous) have expressed a sort of wistful longing for the days of apartheid, when things were just jolly, with - (yet all very true) - much less crime (when was the last time dozens of soccer moms anywhere were carjacked at gunpoint while picking up their kids from school in the middle of the day?), no affirmative action policies that make it more competitive for jobs for whites, and no constant rolling power outages that have cost South African industry billions of dollars and man-hours of productivity.

Of course, for blacks and coloureds (yes my slack-jawed American readers, that is used as a non-offensive term for mixed-race individuals in SA) being forcibly removed from your home and being barred from employment and physical entry into “white-only” areas isn’t exactly stored in the memory between prom-night and your 21st birthday party. Yet a growing black middle class, surprisingly low levels of racial hate incidents, the hosting of the 2010 World Cup, and a massive rise in the value of South Africa’s gold mines create opportunity that has rarely shined at once on the country.

And for those South Africans who Range Rove from the nightclub to the white-sand beach to the Gucci store, i.e. the wealthy elite who universally scoff at leaving their homeland where they are absolutely at the top of the food chain, and who like it or not represent the vast majority of the wealth, education, and economic power of the country, any concerns are a non-issue - who cares when you’re rich?

Against the background of this recent history, a question emerges: Are these South African elites modern-day Neros or Lee Kuan Yew’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew in waiting?

Nero fiddled while the Roman Empire burned; Lee Kuan Yew built Singapore from a destitute wasteland into a economic tiger.

At a minimum, South Africa is certainly no Zimbabwe; Mandela devoted most of his life to ensuring that the Republic of South Africa had a democratic future of some sort. Time will tell whether the summering-set drinking imported booze on the beach are fossils-in-waiting or the next kings of the jungle. But with each passing sunset, South Africans batting a wistful eye to the past or an oblivious one to the future stand less and less of a chance of waking up in a country they recognize the next morning.