The Other Cape Town...

Cape Town is a city which contains a stunning national park, Table Mountain, in its heart. The city is basically arranged around the mountain and encircles it by about 270 degrees. The real estate on the Table Bay side of the mountain is prime and includes the downtown and the waterfront. On the other side of the mountain, real estate values decrease with altitude until you are in the Cape Flats which is where those former township areas are. A township was, of course, a designated district where blacks or coloureds were mandated to live during apartheid and its inhabitants had to carry passbooks clearly showing who they were, of what race, why and when they were allowed to leave the township (to go to their jobs in the white areas). If you were not carrying your passbook or exceeding the curfew limits, you were thrown in jail or worse. Of course, whites had to carry passbooks too, but their movements were not as curtailed.

The areas in the Cape Flats are still referred to as townships, even though people can come and go freely now. These areas contain some decent housing, but are overwhelmingly populated by very sub-standard housing. Shanties, shacks, former hostels (built for male workers during the mining days) where large numbers of families share communal cooking and eating space and inhabit one room. Really awful. The unemployment rate in South Africa is an overall 38%, but you know which groups have jobs and which have much higher unemployment rates. In the white areas, you see plenty of blacks in the service jobs; in some of the less prosperous inner suburbs, such as where the CCS home base is, you see integrated neighborhoods and people of this "rainbow nation" interacting; and there are many properous black and coloured South Africans - but overwhelmingly the have-nots are black!

For those of you who are wondering, black is an African tribal native (Xhosa, Zulu, etc.), and a coloured is anyone mixed. Coloureds could also include Malaysians and Arabs who were originally brought here as slaves, as were natives of Madagascar. This term is not a slur - it is how people identify themselves - and proudly. Actually, the word native is considered a slur by black folks.

Whites are either of English ancestry or Afrikaaners or both. Afrikaaners are also proud of their "pioneer" heritage. Where I did see lots of wonderful rainbow interaction was at a rugby game at the University of Cape Town. Lots of people I have spoken to have said that it will take some time yet - the next generation perhaps - before true racial harmony exists. I think it might be much longer, because in the meanwhile you have this awful disparity between the way less than 20% of the population thrives and how the majority barely manage to survive.

Meanwhile, at CCS we spent the first days involved in orientation, language lessons, history and HIV lectures. My placement is at a primary school in Athlone, one of the formerly "coloured" townships, and I am enjoying myself immensely. More about that next time.