Yesterday we went to a township. As I mentioned before, half the population of Cape Town lives in townships much like the one we saw. They are on the outskirts of the city, and during apartheid, many blacks were uprooted from their homes and forcibly moved into the townships. Even ten years after the end of apartheid, the population is still all-black, the unemployment rate hovers at around 85%, and the people living there -- for the most part -- are only getting poorer. Access to the most basic necessities -- like clean water -- is hard to come by.
When we first got there, it was rather unremarkable. The street was run down, the houses were small and poorly maintained, but it could have been any bad neighborhood in any American city. Our guide (just one of our group's leaders, who's done a lot of work in the townships) informed us that these were the first houses built. They were older, but that was just the entrance, just so people passing by would only see the good face of Langa. It was, he informed us, the township's very own "Beverly Hills." Many people living in the houses are doctors, lawyers, nurses, and professionals who just can't quite get out of the townships but are getting there.
As we moved deeper into the township, the extraordinary poverty became more apparent. There was garbage littering the streets, sickly-looking chickens crammed into coops, and the smell of feces in the air (there's no plumbing anywhere). Crumbling two-room structures -- "hostels" -- housed ten or more people. Dirty water flooded the streets from the (fairly mild) rain a couple days ago. The whole time, I couldn't shake the really uncomfortable feeling that we were invading people's privacy, walking through someone's backyard completely uninvited.
Beyond the area with the hostels, we reached the very edge of the township -- the poorest of the poor -- the shanty-town, also called a squatter camp. People there have put together shacks from bits of cardboard and metal.There are no roads. The areas are completely razed on a regular basis because of crossed electrical wires or a tipped candle (which the lack of electricity necessitates). We talked to a couple of the people walking around, but most of the kids (who were, as usual, the friendliest) spoke only Xhosa, so none of the Americans could talk to them.
When our group reconvened for a premature (in my opinion) "processing session," I think everyone felt emotionally drained. Most of the Americans had never seen anything like it before, and I think there was a lot of rich kid guilt going on. Some of the South Africans had grown up in townships, and thought it was completely weird (not to mention upsetting) to go back as a tourist to something they'd worked so hard to escape.
I commented that it felt so weird to just gawk, like the people living there were zoo animals or something. I would have felt better actually doing something, like getting people together to repair a house, or paint something, or help in the school. I got attacked for that sentiment, which apparently is a result of my bourgeois background which patronizingly assumes that people less fortunate than me want and/or need my help. I didn't get yelled at as much as the few ignoramuses who went around snapping photos of some of the township residents without even asking permission.
Anyway. It was emotionally draining, but I think we all agreed that it was important to see. While half of Cape Town is beautiful and cosmopolitan, it's important not to ignore the existence of the other half.