“They said they wanted to see how we are living,” Ms. Matshega said. “Can you imagine?”

The Hewitts moved into the shack for the month of August as an experiment in radical empathy. Could a white middle-class South African family make it on $10 a day in the kind of living conditions that millions of black South Africans endure every day? “It is one thing to know from an academic perspective what divides us,” said Mr. Hewitt, who also blogged about the experience. “But what is it like to actually live it?”

Image Credit... The New York Times

In most countries, a family slumming it for a month would hardly be news, but in South Africa, where deep racial divides strike at the core of the nation’s identity, the Hewitts’ experiment made headlines and spurred heated debate.

They left behind in their comfortable suburban home everything but the barest necessities that people in squatter camps could afford. A few changes of clothes, a couple of pots, some blankets and thin mattresses were allowed. With no running water, tepid bucket baths replaced hot showers. Instead of flushing toilets, they shared a pit latrine with their neighbors. They also left behind their cars, taking local minibus taxis instead. Their children, Julia, 4, and Jessica, 2, even had to leave their toys behind. They were allowed one book to share.

“Like so many people in South Africa, we live in a bubble,” said Ena Hewitt, a real estate agent. “We wanted to get outside that bubble.”

But stepping outside the sharp lines that define South Africa, a nation that endured decades of repressive white minority rule that brutally enforced racial division, can be a tricky business on many levels, the Hewitts soon learned.