Business Trip to the Republic of South Africa - Article Example

 This was a good thing because I needed a few days to recover from jet lag. By the third day, I was beginning to feel more like myself and could appreciate some of the differences surrounding me. The culture in South Africa was very similar to my own in many ways. People were wearing western style clothing and everything was very modern. I was in Cape Town the entire time, so I did not get to see any of the more rural areas in South Africa. My colleagues assured me that the rural areas looked more like stereotypical Africa than did the city.

One part of the business culture that was different from at home is the number of ethnically uniform meetings I had. This is perhaps a leftover from the age of Apartheid in South Africa. When I met with one firm, all of the participants in the meeting were white. In another firm, everyone was native. I do not know if this is the norm for South Africa, but it was my experience. In the few meetings that were interracial, there did not appear to be any animosity between races, but racial tensions seemed to be an unfortunate part of the business environment in South Africa to a much larger extent than they are at home.