Trip Report:
Two Weeks in South Africa, January 1999
Richard's Version
Day 9
Saturday 1/16-
We were picked up at 8:30 by a minivan from Cape Rainbow Tours. Our driver was a 'Cape Coloured' man who worked as a math teacher in one of the township high schools. There was a couple from Holland already in the van. We headed into the city to pick up one last tourist, and ended up driving around for about 20 minutes trying to find the place. Cape town is a bit of a warren, only made worse by bypasses everywhere. We ended up going OVER the street we were trying to get to a couple of times before finally finding a way to get to it.
Our first stop was the District Six museum. District Six is a large chunk of Cape Town from which everyone was evicted about 25 years ago and forced to move out to townships. The people (black, coloured, and Jewish mainly) had to sell their houses for ridiculously small amounts of money. Everything in the district except houses of worship (temples, churches and mosques) was leveled to make room for white-only housing. The area had enough of a stigma, however, that no one ever developed the land (with the exception of a recent technical college). This leaves big empty spaces in the heart of Cape Town. The Museum has a map of the old streets on the floor (into which people have written the names of the displaced families), and all the street signs up on the walls. There was also a small case of archaeological artifacts from a small excavation done in the district. I chatted with the museum-keeper, a very nice man who remembered being forced out of the area. We had heard on our city tour that people were being allowed to place claims on the land they were forced out of, and that 40,000 claims had been filed. Soon, perhaps, people will begin to move back into the area.
The next stop was the Bo Kaap (Upper Cape) museum in the Malay quarter. This part of town has closely built, brightly painted houses on very narrow streets. Again, this was an area from which many coloured people were forced to move under the Apartheid government. The Bo Kaap museum is a 17th century house (Dutch design) which is filled with artifacts and displays honoring the Islamic community in the Cape. The museum-keeper told us about how few of the 'Cape Malay' were actually Malaysian, but rather they were brought as slaves to Cape Town (by the Dutch) from all over South East Asia, wherever the Dutch had colonies. He also chatted in Dutch (heavily tinged with Afrikaans) with the couple from Holland (showing off one of his 6 or 7 languages).
From here we went into the abandoned sections of District Six to see a couple of the churches and Mosques that were still standing, as well as to get a sense of how much area was cleared.
We went on out to one of the townships that occupy the Cape Flats. These are areas to which people were forced to relocate when the Apartheid government decided to separate the races. The areas are decidedly impoverished, and the housing that was provided was far from luxurious. We stopped at a Creche which is part day care center, part old folks home, and part homeless shelter. It is run by a woman who is becoming quite a legend in the area for her initiative in developing programs like this. The guide said many times that it is often the women in the community that take charge in making changes and setting up social support programs. The woman running the place that afternoon was very friendly and delighted to have visitors. She wanted to show us the classroom, but the teacher was on vacation and took the key. We left a donation for the creche when we left.
I had been very nervous about being a tourist in the townships. I wasn't afraid of violence, but rather felt embarrassed that I was being a voyeur to others' poverty. Being there though it was clear that we were welcomed into the community by virtually everyone. Men, women and especially children would wave and say 'Molweni' ("hello") as we made our way through the settlements.
The townships have two sides- one side being the neighborhoods built by the apartheid government to house displaced peoples, the other being the 'informal settlements' or squatter camps that ring these neighborhoods. These shantytowns are built mainly by people that have only recently moved to the city looking for work, and are a symptom of rapid urbanization rather than racism. Even in the shanty towns though, people were very friendly. They were all working in gardens or at jobs like recycling bricks and other debris. Everywhere there were small shops opening up- snack shops, barber shops, tire repair etc. These weren't people in a state of despair, but rather those with distinct hopes for the future. Not all is perfect though. Many of the townships have troubles with drugs and gangs. We did see a fair amount of grafitti (though not so much as in south central LA).
We visited a few new housing projects, places where streets, power lines and rows of toilets were already installed, waiting for houses to be built. In some of these areas, people were already putting up shacks, not waiting for the masonry houses to be built. We stopped in one of these developments to have a cold drink at one of the small shops that had opened up. Our guide had not been there before, but stopped on a whim to meet new people (and boost the local economy). Nothing like a cold Coke on a hot day, even if you are mainly in an air conditioned van.
On the way back to the hotel, we passed some tents set up on the outskirts of the townships. These, we were told, were occupied by boys going through circumcision rites, in which they had to be segregated and live 'in the bush' for some period of time. After that they were required to wear a suit and tie for some months, regardless of the temperature (it was at least 85 degrees F, and we saw a couple young men in suits out walking by the road). And everywhere people were walking along (and across) the roads and highways. Transportation is still spotty, uncomfortable and too expensive for most the people in the townships.
We were dropped back at our hotel at about 1pm. We had some iced coffee to cool down and perk up, then hopped in the rental car (I even got in the right side) and headed south for the Cape of Good Hope. Despite the map showing a nice direct highway, we ended up on the mountain road that zigzagged along the peninsula before reaching the beach (along the Indian Ocean!) at Simon's Town. This was our first goal for the afternoon. We wanted to see the penguins at the Boulders.
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Notes/Resources
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Last Updated 19 February, 1999
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