Townships

The morning we arrived, as we drove from the airport, we passed our first slum. I remember thinking ‘we can’t actually be going in there.’ Of course, we were going to go in there, as that is where most of Living Hope’s work is done. So, in terms of geography, there is the main city of Cape Town, surrounded by a variety of nicer suburbs, one of which is Noordhoek, where we stayed. The suburbs are nicer homes, all surrounded by fence (some electric) and all guarded by a minimum of 2-3 large dogs. These neighbourhoods are safer, but it is still unadvisable for anyone to walk after dark (right now about 6pm). The people that live in these suburbs are mostly white Afrikaaners, descendants of the Dutch that colonized SA. The Afrikaans language is therefore very similar to Dutch. Our particular area had many families that owned horses, many of which employ black or coloureds as maids, gardeners and cooks. The terms ‘black’ and ‘coloured’ are not considered derogatory here, but used by the people to describe themselves.

In amongst these suburbs are townships. Some of these are black townships, people that I guess would be considered the original African population. Here the people mostly speak Xhosa, one of the African languages that use a variety of clicking sounds. Other townships have strictly coloured populations. The coloured people in SA have a history in which white men, often Dutch, that were sailing around the Cape Peninsula ended up sleeping with local black women. This created a culture in which many coloured familes seem plagued with infidelity and fatherlessness. Coloureds speak English and Afrikaans, and we’ve been told that coloured Afrikaans is a little different, sort of like a slang Afrikaans, or a little less proper. In most of these areas, coloureds, blacks and whites don’t mix, not even 14 years after the end of apartheid. One exception to this is the township of Red Hill. This is a rural area in the mountain that was once privately owned. Twenty-five years ago, people began moving from different parts of SA to look for work. The owner of this land let these people ‘temporarily’ settle there. Now this area has three separate camps, of which only received electricity and water a year ago. Apparently the government is trying to improve the situation there, but if and when that happens is sketchy at best.

The government has had its hand in most of these townships. Many were actually created by the government during apartheid years, where coloured or blacks were resettled. Then the numbers living in the townships just exploded after that. Although apartheid has ended, the townships have not really changed. Last weekend, a bunch of us were driving out to Stellenbosch, to visit the local wine farms. It was beautiful country, with lots of sand dunes along the ocean. We came over a hill and all went silent. Ahead of us was Khayelitsha, the second largest slum in SA. We couldn’t see the end of it. The tin shacks were so tightly packed, we couldn’t see the dirt road in between them. We drove in, just for a few minutes. There were fires burning, portable bathrooms outside, and garbage everywhere. All of the roofs had things like concrete or shoes on top to make sure they didn’t blow off in the wind. Later we found out that Khayelitsha is 17 square kilometers and has roughly 1.2 million people living there. One of the most sad and astonishing things is that has virtually just popped up in the last 3 years, which gave us an idea of the desperate nature of the situation and also the horrible conditions people must live in there. In Canada, it takes at least 6 months to build one home. How do over one million people take over an area in such a short time?

From what we know and have seen, conditions in the townships are severe. Some estimates are that 90% of some townships are HIV positive. Obviously, with people living in such close quarters other diseases are also rampant. Many areas are controlled by gangs and are filled with drugs. Meth use, called Tick here, is especially a problem, as it can be made with common substances, but is very dangerous. It seems from talking to local women that rape is a prevalent problem, although numbers are unreliable. I would suspect that part of the problem is that the homes barely have doors, so there is no security for these people. Anyone could enter your home, with minimal trouble. Violence is common. It is completely unsafe there at night, and some people will not go in during the day hours either. Police will go in there if they are called.

There are a few other things that we have learned about the townships, but that I won’t write about here. I will email a few pictures, but to be honest, I haven’t taken many there. One reason for this is that no picture that I’ve taken really captures the conditions of these areas. Primarily though, it always feels a bit like a zoo when driving through there and people are pulling out their cameras. So, that explains why there seems to only be pictures up of what we are doing on the weekends. Sight seeing pictures don’t really communicate the experience here, but there seem to be the easiest to take and explain.