South Africa's middle class - young, black and driving a BMW

Rory Carroll in Johannesburg
The Guardian

In townships they call it Black Man's Wish, the make of car whose initials translate into gleaming, incontrovertible proof that you have made it. To buy a BMW is to say your Soweto days are probably over.

So there was a sense of ceremony at Johannesburg City Auto when Nomsa Philiso was handed the keys to her first BMW, a 320i series.

Ms Philiso, 35, stroked the dashboard, eased deep into the leather upholstery and flicked the ignition. "It feels good. It feels right," she said. "But I'm still your typical black single mum - who is now driving a BMW." She then flung her head back and laughed at the joke.

As South Africa prepares to vote tomorrow in the third election since apartheid's fall a decade ago there is a new generation of ambitious, wealthy black people transforming the country.

As fast as they are moving into senior positions in banks, multinationals and state-owned firms they are moving out of townships and into the once white-only suburbs of lawn sprinklers and pool filters.

Ms Philiso, a financial manager at the public broadcaster SABC, swapped Soweto for a suburb called Florida and was now swapping her VW Golf for a £23,000 BMW. Close friends were also thriving, she said. "We were chatting and drinking whiskey last night when at one point we looked at each other and said, 'we've done really well.'"

When the ANC won power in 1994 it resolved to carve a black middle class from a society which awarded privilege to the white minority at the expense of the black majority who often lacked clean water and electricity - a dangerous imbalance which risked dissolving the rainbow nation.

A decade later, according to the department of trade and industry, black people have moved from zero to 10% of company ownership and occupy 15% of skilled positions. The richest black people's incomes have risen 30% and you see them spending it in air-conditioned shopping malls and pricey restaurants.

Their good fortune is credited with draining tension from black aspirations and underpinning a political stability on the back of which the ANC is expected to sweep back to power. And if there is a shrine for the new elite it is Johannesburg City Auto.

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