So I've been promising myself for sometime that I would get around to an entry on the whole political situation and the apartheid thing. Finally here it is!
About 3 or 4 weeks ago I visited the District 6 museum which, surprise surprise, in in District 6. This was one of the districts that was allocated as "White Only" when apartheid took its grip in the early 60's. This was despite the fact that the area was already full of black and coloured folks. By the way its ok to say coloured here, it means someone who is not pure black and not pure white. For example one of our tour guides Ursula has a black father and a Chinese mother so she is coloured.
Anyway, there were many districts that were allocated as white only and the government got really busy moving out all the black folks to make room for the tetchy white folks who wanted the area because it was nearer to the city centre and had better amenities and so on. The way these removals were done was horrific. The government just sent trucks with no warning and folks sometimes had as little as 20 minutes to pack up the homes that they had been living in for 20 years, and their families and move out. Their belongings were tossed into the trucks and no one cared whether they got damaged or not. This obviously was traumatic enough but to make matters worse, the black were then moved into areas that were far away from Cape Town and the areas that they knew. They had to travel for 4 hours sometimes to get to work, costing a lot of money and meaning that they left for work at 4am. Their social networks were cut off as they were removed from their friends and they had no money to keep in touch. Often they lost their jobs because they were late or couldn't afford to get there. The black areas became known as areas that were high in the crime rate and in illegal activities, but no one ever made the connection between this and the fact that people had been moved too far away. Instead everyone shrugged their shoulders and said "What can you expect from the blacks?". Add to this the fact that "Whites Only" sign started creeping in everywhere, the blacks had no reasonable access to amenities, medical care and so on, and its not surprising that the tensions rose in the way they did. About 10 years after the start of apartheid, a group of young black men made a peaceful walking protest against it as their children were not getting good education. They were gunned down by the (white) police and most of them were killed for expressing their opinion. One of the photos above is of the monument that was set up- rather late!- by the government in their memory.
Even now in South Africa things are not really any different. The country is only 15 years out of apartheid- isn't that incredible!- so its unrealistic to expect massive changes as yet. The funny thing is that when you talk to Ursula about the differences, she says that in some ways the black and coloureds were better off under apartheid. This is what she had to say:
"As a coloured person I had "Cape Coloured" marked on my identity card so that any government officials could identify me and decide that I should not be in the white area. Apartheid was a terrible time for us all and very scary, as the government could do as they pleased with us and no one would stop them. However, at least when they decided at that time to move us, they would build us decent homes to live in, proper brick homes that were dry and had electricity. But now, the black people are just left to live in townships. They are still separated from whites because they have no education or prospects so can't afford to live in a decent house. They have been forced to build these tin shacks in these townships (the biggest in Cape Town, Khayaleitcha, hold nearly 2 million black and coloured people) and the government say that they dont have to help beacause people are making their choice. My people are not making choices, they have had this way of life thrust upon them and the government do even less now to assist than they did before."
So apartheid may not officially exist in South Africa any more but unofficially its still very much in existence. The lower ranking and poorer paid jobs here are held down by black people- the shop workers and construction workers, the road sweepers and sadly the homeless people who sleep on the beach are all black. The doctors and dentists are all white and drive big, fancy cars. They live in places like Table View and the blacks live in the townships.
Isn't that shit? I've never felt so ashamed to be white.
