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    Re: The Sussex pair Archived Message

    Posted by margo on September 29, 2019, 6:24 pm, in reply to "The Sussex pair"

    Are the South Africans sick of all the photo ops and press pushes?


    There's been a fair bit of it. Seem their PR team are happy with it all.

    The Sussexes did venture blindly into the kind of sensitive, politically-fraught territory where aware white South Africans would never dream of going... which did raise some giggles.

    For example:

    -- boogying with 'the natives' in township settings (seen as perpetuating old colonial stereotypes with awkward, cultural moves);

    -- keeping your privileged baby's expensive baby-grows to hand over in bulk to 'the natives' to clad their kids (the message being that the poor only ever deserve second-hand hand-outs, rather than respect. The rich 'madams' would always donate piles of worn clothing to the black servants during apartheid days: Meghan might think kids in shacks would feel happy wearing Prince Archie's cast-offs, but this type of re-cycling unfortunately has a negative history. Many people here take huge pride in dressing their children well. Meghan's bags of palace hand-me-downs were mocked, but with great humour!)

    -- taking selfies or being photographed with poverty-stricken black kids (seen as using 'cute' black victims as props to paint yourself as a noble or 'cool' rescuer, rather than dealing with underlying inequality issues)

    The days of rich people leaving their golden palaces to do 'tours' of the periphery and give lectures to struggling people in other lands are over, really. This royal 'tour' had a strange feel to it, like a relic of times long gone.

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