An Interesting Thing in the Bank

Today I was in the bank to pay the rent as usual, and as is also normal for the first few days of the month, a large queue had developed. The woman a few places in front of me in the queue was chatting on her mobile phone when a guy walked up behind her and slapped her round the side of the head, and grabbed her phone. Needless to say her reaction was immediate and furious. She berated him (in good English) and he didn't seem too concerned about arguing his point or responding to her complaint. It transpired that he worked as a security guard for the bank, and apparently in South Africa it's generally not allowed to use your mobile phone in a bank - something unfathomable to do with security. So instead of asking her politely to desist, he considered it appropriate to slap her and grab the phone!

Anyway the point is that the people around me murmured their approval at the way he had treated her! Very strange I thought - but talking to friends afterwards revealed that in black culture, it's quite normal to treat women like this. A man talking on his phone would never have been treated the same way.