In the beginning of time when the Dutch first came here … (Really? What about the people who were already here?)
The day that we had Portuguese food, the guides mused: The Portuguese got here first, of course. I wonder what our country would be like if the Portuguese had settled here rather than the Dutch later. We’d probably be like Mozambique. (But they didn't consider what the country would be like if the Dutch, and later the English, had not taken all the land and disenfranchised the natives. It was only the second day of the tour and I decided not to ask.)
The Zulu came down from the north. They weren’t native to the Cape area. Also the xhosa. The natives in the Cape were the khoisan, but they were very peaceful. They wouldn’t fight. They just went away. That is why they were no good as slaves. So they brought in slaves from Malaysia, and later from India. That is how it is. You have to bring slaves from somewhere else or they will just run away. So in America they brought slaves from Africa and here we brought slaves from Malaysia and India. (This one is a mouthful. Naturally, you must import slaves. Naturally. But this also states a very important Afrikaaner trope that they didn't take the land from anyone because no one was here - a land without a people for a people without a land. There is an element of truth in this trope. When diamonds and gold were discovered near Johannesburg, there was a great need for cheap labor that the Europeans were not willing or able to do. And since natives were displaced from their lands all over Africa, many natives of other countries came voluntarily to South Africa to work, and then ended up effectively enslaved. This seems to give the Afrikaaners continuing superior claim to the land.)
When I asked what people think about Nelson Mandela: He was the best president that we have had. He brought everyone together. It could have been a big fight. We thought there might be a civil war and that would have been bad because there are lots more of them than us. (No comment necessary.)
There seem to be protests and even riots on a fairly regular basis, but when I asked the guides what the protests were about, I got very evasive answers: Oh, they want things faster or they want more. So they think it is a good idea to burn down what they already have. They complained about the bus service so they burned the buses. What sense does that make? Of course, it is only a few troublemakers. (That clarifies who the "they" is.)
One of the guides is a serious marathoner and triathlete. She told us about a big annual race that got canceled for first time ever because of weather: They handled it very well. They told everyone that was registered that they would have first priority for next year’s race at this year's registration fee. But they had so much food and supplies already prepared so they gave it to an organization to help poor people. So my money went to them. (This doesn't do justice to her tone of voice. She mentioned a specific organization that received the largesse and she was clearly not happy about her race money going to "them.")
After my bike trip got over, I had two and a half days in Capetown and I made the most of it. The first afternoon I took a historic walking tour of the central area. The guide did a great job of explaining the growth of Capetown and the central role of slavery. As my bike guide had said, the slaves were not originally Africans; they were primarily from Malaysia and India, although later the British brought slaves from Western Africa. The guide was very clear, however, that the slaves built the beautiful city that Capetown is today, not the Dutch or English who take credit for it.
The next day I took a bike tour of the city of Capetown, covering a lot of the same ground but getting into some other neighborhoods out of the downtown area. I was not wearing my Claremonster bike shorts, so this is not an official picture.
The bike tour started from the upscale and touristy Victoria and Albert waterfront area where there are bridges over the shipping lanes. I had to wait for this pedestrian swing bridge that was closing after a boat passed.
I picked a perfect day for a bike ride as it was finally sunny and warm. I considered taking the cable car up Table Mountain after the ride since it was such a nice day, but in the afternoon, it started to get colder and windy so I hesitated. First I went to the Slave Museum, and then finally decided that a trip up Table Mountain was a must when in Capetown. Wrong decision. I grabbed a cab to the cable car station, only to discover that the cable car had stopped running because it was too windy on the top. Duh. So I grabbed a cab back but by then it was too late to do anything else.
On my last morning in Capetown I took a township tour. Part of what has bothered me has been the obvious discrepancy in living conditions. The whites live in beautiful, well maintained single houses with electric gates and barbed wire. You can see the townships clearly on the outskirts of every city and they look like shantytowns. Also, most of the drivers I see are white and the local buses seem to be used only by blacks. The "buses" are privately owned white vans that go on regular routes known only to the regulars. One of my white guides said she had never been on one and would not go on one. That was a challenge to me and I wanted to take one, but couldn't figure out how or where.
We visited Langa, one of the oldest townships in the Capetown area. Our guide, whose name I simply cannot pronounce, was born in Langa, but his family bought a house in a mixed neighborhood after apartheid ended and he went to a private school. He has a university degree in landscaping, and he decided to move back into Langa.
Langa has U-shaped buildings that were originally dormitories for men with common bathrooms in separate outbuildings. The men worked for eleven months of the year and went home to visit their wives in December. So most babies were born in September. Duh. Later, when women were allowed into the townships, the dormitories were remodeled into separate rooms for each family, still with communal bathrooms and cooking facilities. The government is building new housing but not fast enough to keep up with the demand, so they are using shipping containers as temporary housing. We met with one older woman who lived in half a shipping container with a refrigerator and hot plate. (There is electricity but of course no running water in the rooms.) It was another cold, windy day, and she was in bed fully dressed and under a blanket when she talked to us. Needless to say, the shipping container is freezing in the winter and hot in the summer. She has been in her temporary housing for nine years.
 |
| A strip mall in Langa |
Next we met with Shooter (Shorty) who prefers to be known as the Morgan Freeman of Langa. He built his own two bedroom mansion with scrap materials, and when it burned down in 2013, he rebuilt it. He invited eleven of us into his living room and bedroom (sit on the bed, it's okay, I'm single) and talked to us about life in Langa and his life before and after apartheid.
 |
| Shooter outside his house |
Notice behind Shooter in his living room the TV, cable box (or VCR, not sure which), speaker, picture of his wife who passed away in 2010, and pictures taken with people who have visited him. He really wants Morgan Freeman to visit him.
Shooter was incredibly optimistic and upbeat. Echoing something I heard several more times, he said that the happiest day of his life was when he voted in South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. People queued up for hours that day to vote.
After our visit with Shooter, we went to a local microbrewery.
Men sat around the fire while the owner made the .5 percent alcohol beer from a secret recipe passed down only to the women in a family. The frothy mixture was in a single large can that was passed around the room. The locals laughed at us for taking only small sips and showed us how you are supposed to drink.
Then we visited a local entrepreneur who ran a bakery cum catering business from her home which had at least three bedrooms that I saw and a bathroom with modern plumbing. All of the houses on her street were detached, mostly with driveways and/or garages, and mostly with nice cars outside. Our guide said that the first thing that people buy when they can afford to is a car, and one of the most popular businesses is a car wash since everyone washes their car every week. Needless to say, these are not automatic car washes, but buckets of water applied by young boys with rags. The bakery made a local flat roll similar to pita and they served us chicken salad sandwiches in warm bread. Excellent.
Langa has elementary schools, high schools, a library (very important for room to study since the houses are so small), a medical center, and a sports complex. It is spring break this week, so the children were all outside playing, but we saw three boys walk by with their backpacks on. They were on their way to their math tutor, and as our guide said, small boys don't choose to be tutored in math, so clearly their parents were pushing them.
There were an assortment of shops including the usual grocery stores and beauty salons. Also, a butcher that specialized in a local delicacy: sheep's head.
Langa gave me a lot of food for thought. Most of it still looks like a shanty town. Living in a shipping container for years as a temporary placement. One room for an entire family. Bathrooms in separate buildings. Getting up to shower at 2AM because the hot water will be gone by 7. Communal kitchens. Wires hanging down everywhere that are jerry rigged to provide electricity to the "temporary" containers or self-built houses. But our guide chose to more back into Langa. Shooter is one of the most contented people I have met. Now that blacks are no longer forced to live in townships, is that enough for the people to take ownership and create community? I have no answers.
Back in Capetown, I had the guide drop me at the District 6 Museum. District 6 used to be the most (literally) colorful neighborhood in Capetown - a combination of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village. Immigrants such as the Eastern European Jews who came from Lithuania in the late nineteenth century moved into District 6. Theater and music thrived in District 6. During the Apartheid Era, District 6 was designated a coloured (as opposed to black) area. But it was in a prime geographical location close to downtown, so beginning in the late 1960's the government bulldozed it, forcibly removing over 60,000 to the townships or further-out coloured districts. In the 1990's a temporary exhibit to the former residents of District 6 was so popular, that it was made into a permanent museum.
The museum is fascinating, but the real story is that District 6 is still up in the air. The government built a college on part of it and developers built on a little more, but most of the land is still undeveloped. So who gets it? There is a process for former residents to prove their ownership, but the records have been mostly destroyed, so few can do so. Besides they are all old now. Do their children get the property? Who would have to pay to build on the property? Do they get compensation instead? The government and local activists have been struggling with this for years with no solution. Bear in mind, however, that this is prime real estate close to downtown. So who do you think is going to win in the end?
Next I took another walking tour called From Apartheid to Freedom. This was mostly a two hour lecture given piecemeal at several locations by an excellent young guide. His mother was mixed-race and his father was an immigrant from Czechoslavakia - a very interesting combination in South Africa.
During Apartheid, there was a four tiered system of classification: whites, mixed race, Indian, and black (or zulu). We stopped at the court which had to determine which class you belonged to. Mixed race, or coloured, was a significant step above black. Indian included everyone from Asia, so the Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysians were all classified as Indian. Toward the end of the Apartheid era when virtually no country would trade with South Africa, the Japanese were willing to do so. This created a problem for the government since Indians were not allowed to trade with whites. So the government designated the Japanese as "honorary whites."
By the 1980's, the government realized that the end of Apartheid was inevitable and worked on a smooth transition. I had pictured de Clerk, the last president of the National Party as George Wallace standing on the steps of the University of Alabama declaring, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. But he was not. He deserved the Noble Peace Prize that he shared with Nelson Mandela. Under de Clerk, the ANC, which had been declared illegal was legitimized and political prisoners freed. He worked with Mandela to transition to a democratic government, and served as deputy president under Mandela.
At least three different guides took me to the place where Mandela gave his first speech after being released from prison in 1990 and told me the same story. It was a very hot summer day, and the speech was supposed to be given at noon. The plaza could hold 100,000 people, but more than 250,000 squeezed in starting the day before. But Mandela did not begin to speak until after 4 (after 8 according to one guide). When he did, there was complete silence as he said, we must forgive them. Not what the people or the ANC wanted to hear. They wanted arms; they wanted a civil war. But Mandela said, I can forgive them for putting me in prison for twenty seven years, so you can forgive them, too. At the first democratic election four years later, that every single person remembers with great emotion, Mandela was elected president. He advocated a two step process: acknowledge the past and forgive. You cannot just sweep the past under the rug; you have to first acknowledge what was done before there can be forgiveness. Mandela certainly deserved his Nobel Peace Prize.
I had just enough time after this tour to visit the Jewish Museum which includes the old synagogue, the current synagogue, and the only Holocaust Memorial in all of Africa. The old synagogue was nice and they had a very interesting exhibit about the early Jews in South Africa. I thought they were German Jews who started coming in the 1930's, but it turns out that some Lithuanians came here starting in 1880, the same time as the great wave of immigration to the United States. These are my landsmen. But ... the current synagogue, which has an interesting architecture style and was what I really wanted to see, was closed by the time I got there.
I was not planning on ever visiting Capetown again, but events have conspired against me. I could not go up Table Mountain or visit the synagogue. Is this a sign? Who knows?
No comments:
Post a Comment