Students’ foregrounds

Abstract

Consider two South African children born on the same day in 2000. Nthabiseng is black, born in a poor family in a rural area in the Eastern Cape province, about 700 kilometres from Cape Town. Her mother had no formal schooling. Pieter is white, born in a wealthy family in Cape Town. His mother completed a college education at the nearby prestigious Stellenbosch University. One the day of their birth, Nthabiseng and Pieter could hardly be held responsible for their family circumstances: their race, their parents’ income and education, their urban or rural location, or indeed their sex. Yet statistics suggests that those predetermined background variables will make a major difference for the lives they lead. Nthabiseng has 7.2 percent change of dying in the first year of her life, more than twice Pieter’s 3 percent. Pieter can look forward to 68 years of life, Nthabiseng to 50.