Different -- not wrong?!

I have been wanting to write about my trip to South Africa but not wanting to at the same time. That's why, in the end, nothing has yet been written. But I find it's set up sort of a mental block; until I write this and get it out of my head, I seem unable to write about much else. So, here goes.
Now, I preface my remarks by noting that I spent my entire 2 1/2 weeks in that large country in only one region, Cape Town and the surrounding Cape, so I am certainly not the expert on South Africa. And frankly, Cape Town is SA's original settlement of imperialism (first Dutch and later English), so it is likely to have more remnants of that mentality there than perhaps anywhere else. But still, South Africa's culture was an utter surprise to me. I'd been told to expect a warm and generous culture and have a wonderful relaxing holiday. Instead, I found it a strange and deeply disturbing country.
I'd read up a bit on it before leaving Austria, and I'd heard quite a bit from my various friends from there, but my experience didn't fit any of that information. I guess inwardly I was expecting something like the culture of Brazil, where every race and income bracket is represented, but they all intermarry and they all accept each other as Brazilians. Sure, there is still a visible gap between the very rich and the very poor, but the average Brazilian of the ever-growing middle class is aware of this gap, not happy about it and works to change it.
My experience of South Africa was that, although apartheid may now be illegal, what caused and supported apartheid in the first place is still unfortunately far too alive and well for my comfort level. It seems to me that South Africans live in a truce situation, not in peace. My (all white) friends there came from varying backgrounds but all conveyed clearly to me, in one form or another, the following message: "This is just the way we do life here; it's our culture. Everybody knows their place and keeps it, and it works best that way. Like attracts like; birds of a feather flock together. Everyone in SA lives where they do by choice." This in a context where one of my friends had already explained to me, in so many words, the social pecking order:
1) The English-descended whites (comparable to white-collar professionals).
2) The Dutch-descended whites (Boers, comparable to blue-collar workers).
3) "Coloreds" (everything not in the first two categories, but not black: Asians, Indians, Aboriginals, mixed-race).
4) "Our" blacks (those descended from the original tribes living in the country when it was colonized).
5) "The other" blacks (anyone from any other African nation living in SA).
In my time there, I did not see a single white person doing any job that could be considered "grunt work"; that was reserved exclusively for blacks. Coloreds sometimes waited on tables, but whites were always their bosses. There were black men at every crossroads and traffic light, trying to sell fruit or trinkets; I was told their wives actually go out to work (cleaning whites' houses and the like), but the men generally can't or won't find work and try to get by in this way. We went to church twice during my stay and each time the congregation segregated themselves automatically. (We were the only ones who broke the unwritten rules and sat on the "colored" side, which was closest to the toilets.)
Whites of middle to upper-class live in gated communities surrounded by high walls with glass, barbed wire and/or electric deterrents on the top. The common and expressed belief is that anything not nailed down or protected securely will be stolen, and I do believe it to be a justified assumption. The sprawl of ever-present townships (the SA term for slums), sometimes only blocks away, are studiously ignored by most whites, and in fact I heard complaints about how the government provided them with "free" sanitary facilities and partial electricity.
These township dwellings are truly made of whatever people could beg, borrow or steal; some had corrugated iron roofs, but many were of wood or plastic sheets or even of tarp. I was there in winter and though the temperatures do not go down to freezing it can get mighty cold, especially at night; rains are sometimes torrential and the wind can be very cutting. The average South African home does not have central heating; the houses are built of cement, and my feet were cold almost the entire time. But if it was that way in a snug house in a "mixed" neighborhood, where I stayed (this means it is not gated, but every door and window is barred and there are alarms), how must it be in a "home" made of permeable materials, with nothing but perhaps a wood or coal fire for warmth?
I heard the attitude expressed that "those people" should go back to the villages from whence they had come, hoping for a better life, as they would have enough to eat there if they lived as their ancestors had, without having to steal. I was also told that you could find good and honest black women, but you should never, ever trust a black man, not even in church. They were described to me as "animals" in how they treat their wives and their personal habits.
And this all from three otherwise delightful, devout Christian ladies who were hosting me at their expense.
What could I say? Mostly, I held my tongue. I was not there to challenge them.
However, I was, and remain, appalled. SA is the only nation (and it is, I believe, the 33rd I have visited) that I have no desire at all to return to.
Now of course there were many highlights of the visit. I saw some absolutely stunning natural beauty, I had some good times with my lady friends and ate some nice traditional food. I got the closest I have ever been to a real lion (and it was a truly awe-inspiring experience-- especially when he growled!), and God used the time away to do some necessary dealing with my heart. I know I was supposed to be there, especially as I was out of the way when my resignation letter was read out loud at a members' meeting of my old church here in Graz, and I was not present to take any flak. (What utterly perfect timing; this trip was planned 3/4 of a year before I knew that would be happening!)
But even so, my visit to South Africa remains in my mind as a deeply troubling experience. I've tried to deal with it as we learnt many years ago in missions school: "Different, not wrong"-- without much success. It seems wrong to me; it seems dangerous to assume that this truce with how things really are (though there is now a black government, the weight of money and power remains in the hands of the --few in comparison-- whites; race riots no longer occur, but white farmers are regularly slaughtered out in the veldt) can hold. I am now not at all surprised that the South Africans I have met are people I like; they are ex-pats who left that situation, who are not willing (for whatever reason) to cooperate with it.
And I sorrow that my Christian friends there seem unable to grasp how very different their accepted culture is from Kingdom culture, and how (in my opinion) their tacit support of it works against Kingdom being established in their land, although that is something they long for.
It makes me wonder what I am blind to in both my home culture and my adopted one, which has a similar effect.
Well. There it is: out there. It may not have changed anything, but I might now be able to focus on something else when I sit down to write!!