Stepping Into A New World

By Jimmy D.  

Me at Freedom Park overlooking Pretoria

When I told my friends I was going abroad they were shocked at the fact that I chose Africa. They said “why don’t you go somewhere normal like Europe” and laughed at the fact that I needed to take anti-malaria pills. My reasoning is I believe it is important to see the world, and not only go to the developed areas of the world, but also look at the developing areas that have a history of oppression. Learning about history is very important in being able to pave the path for the future.  One amazing part of the Nation Building, Globalization and Decolonizing the Mind program offered by CGEE is that not only are you looking at very developed areas such as Sandton which is considered the richest square mile of properties in all of Africa; you also get to compare it to one of the poorest townships in Johannesburg, Alexandra. Even though some of these townships may be poor in terms of money, they are rich in culture and heritage. During these tours we learned why and how this happened, and the simplest answer is that it’s an after effect of the Apartheid Regime.

 

Apartheid started in 1948 when the white minority gained power under the guise of the National Party (NP). The Apartheid system was put in place to control social and economic factors in South Africa to favor the NP. The black majority was paid very little wages to create wealth for the white minority in power. This happened through cheap labor and exploitation of the land and the rights of people who inhabited the land. To explore this issue further we took a tour of Soweto, which has a lot of historical context of Apartheid. As a group we saw how the people of Soweto struggled during apartheid, by being forced to live in Townships, in small, run down hostels and one room shared houses. Our tour guide highlighted how the Apartheid Regime would create division amongst the people of Soweto by separating them into communities based off of similarities and pinning them against each other by promoting violence and alcoholism which destroyed these communities and helped the apartheid regime (The NP) control the black majority. Another impactful visit of Johannesburg was the Hector Pieterson Museum, created to highlight the events leading up to the June 16th anti-Afrikaans protests. Hector Pieterson was a young boy who was shot during the June 16th 1976 Soweto protests. What was so important about this event was that the photo below was released to the world and sparked international attention to the horrors of Apartheid. This event also shows the power of media and how important it is to have freedom of the press.

                                                   

Antoinette Sithole, Hector Pieterson, and Mbuyisa Makhubo
 during the 1976 Soweto Uprisings

What South Africa is still struggling with is rebuilding after apartheid. 90% of the wealth is still held by the 8% white minority. Dale McKinley, one of our speakers and a former member of the South African Communist Party, spoke about how the African National Congress, (ANC) who took power after the apartheid regime fell, with Nelson Mandela as their leader, allowed for the white minority to stay in control of the economic “house”, while being able to take control of the social aspect of politics. The ANC believed it was important to fix the social aspect of politics to create equality and then later figure out how to redistribute the wealth, but as we see today unemployment is at an all time high and South Africa holds one of the worst Gini Coefficients. The Gini Coefficient determines wealth gap between the population within Nations. The ANC wasn’t wrong in what they did and I believe it was very important that they did whatever they had to do to reverse the apartheid era rules. As with any political action there must be a trade off, in this case it was social freedom and equality for all, while allowing the white minority to stay in control of the economic power. If this wasn’t done then the apartheid regime may of stayed longer than 1994. Also what is important to note is that it has only been 27 years since the apartheid regime came to an end and South Africa fully gained independence. I believe that South Africa has come a long way in the short time that has passed and that they have a bright future, especially with the determined people who work and live in South Africa.

 

Lastly, I would like to include a poem I wrote based off my observations while we drove through Johannesburg.

“Untitled” By: Jimmy DiGiulio

As the road winds in, the skyline comes into view,

Artwork littered around the streets, wall to wall

Trash lying beautifully on the ground as if it belonged,

Poverty is just as prevalent as the cars weaving in and out of the people,

Struggle and sacrifice unite those who reside.



One of the buildings in the Alexandra Township in Johannesburg

 

Week 1: Breaking Stereotypes

By Keith Nagel

Stereotypes of a place are easy to recognize and hard to forget. The images that I expected to see upon arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa were immediately challenged, strengthened, and altered by what I saw in front of me. Johannesburg is a city in transition, a transition that began in 1994 and has continued to this day. The mainstream media’s mantra of a starving and forgotten Africa is in small part truth but in large part far from it. There is clearly wealth in South Africa. Even before I stepped foot on the continent I saw the gold mines scattered around the city of Johannesburg. The wealth from the countries resources I would soon learn is unequally shared among the population, leading to some of the highest inequality in the world.

A dilapidated hostel in Soweto stands in sharp contrast to the 

government houses that were left empty after poor policy

implementation.

While touring Soweto, a particularly infamous township in Johannesburg, Molefi our local companion gave us a clear picture of the history and current conditions in the community. The picture was one that puzzled me. I came expecting extreme poverty, and there were certainly pockets of poverty that no human should be stuck in. However, I did not see the stereotype of poverty that I had expected, instead of shacks I saw houses nicer than my own and business centers sprawling with activity. There is much work to be done in the townships but I would argue that there are pockets of poverty in many parts of the United States that would rival those in Soweto, particularly in immigrant labor camps and Native American reservations. This realization put into perspective that although conditions are tough in South Africa, there is certainly hope in strengthening the middle class in Johannesburg if the inequality train does not run off the tracks.

A picture with our host family in Soweto, the Nkosi family 
welcomed us with open arms. Getting to know the community 
through their eyes was an unforgettable experience.

My confidence in the community was only strengthened by my homestay with Mr. Nkosi and his lovely family. Staying in Soweto for a time, engaging with friends and neighbors in the community, and learning from both young and old residents of Soweto revealed to me that the conflict in South Africa is no longer along racial lines, but along class lines. There is a clear divide between the have and the have not’s. Community leaders that we visited in the Orange Farm region blamed globalization and the capitalist system for the country’s woes, while a guest speaker and the youth that we spoke to blamed aging leadership in the ANC. The ANC brought South Africa out of a long oppression under the apartheid regime, but many believe that the African National Congress is holding the country back.

The wealth disparity was clearly evident in the extravagance 

of Sandton mall, which was a departure from the poverty 

we had seen earlier in our tour. 

A short visit and presentation at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria showed that the United States is very interested in continuing to strengthen economic and political ties with South Africa in order to foster a better economic environment for the many U.S. companies in the country. This is good news for the South African government as trade with the U.S. is an essential portion of their GDP, however where that wealth ends up is another question altogether. One must look no further than the wealth disparity between the poor townships of Soweto or Alexandria and the extravagant luxury of Stanton to realize that the wealth in Southern Africa does not trickle down as one would hope. The good news is that from what I have seen, South Africa has far more wealth than I expected, though the elephant in the room is how is the wealth to be shared in such an unequal society and whether or not the current political climate is fostering the necessary environment for continuous change. These are certainly questions worth exploring further.

Week Three: Broken Systems, Broken Promises

By: Emily Campbell

“The people shall share in the country’s wealth.” Originally written in South Africa’s 1955 Freedom Charter and adopted by the current ruling party, the ANC, this sentence took on new life when we saw it spray painted across several overpasses in the Cape Flats. When displayed in the primarily black townships southeast of the city center, these words seemed to highlight the existing discontent with the current system. Sixty years after it was written, this promise, and many others, have yet to be realized. We repeatedly heard frustration over the perceived lack of follow through on promises made during the liberation struggle and how little has changed for the living conditions of many people residing in townships. Despite the ANC’s promises of 1994, many black South Africans still lack basic services such as power, clean water, housing, healthcare, education, and employment. 

On Tuesday, we met with Mandla Majola at the Treatment Action Campaign. His work exemplified the failed promises of the ANC. Located in Khayelitsha, a township within the Cape Flats, TAC was founded to increase HIV and AIDS awareness and to provide universal access to antiretroviral drugs. Since its formation in 1998, TAC has spread its reach far beyond HIV. Poor sanitation and failing infrastructure are tied to a wide range of health issues, and Majola has been an advocate on many of these fronts. In Khayelitsha, there are many homes without electricity or clean water, one (infrequently cleaned) public toilet for roughly every ten families, a high rate of TB, four reported rapes daily, and poor maternal health care, to name a few of the issues Majola is passionately tackling. Many of us left TAC carrying the emotional weight of Majola’s heart-rending stories, but inspired by his tireless work for his community. But these issues are not unique to his area and represent the symptoms of a weak infrastructure nationwide. As Henrik described in an earlier blog post, we saw many of the same issues when we visited Orange Farm outside of Johannesburg. The government system is set up in such a way large segments of the population fall through the cracks, receiving virtually no government services. The conditions in both townships illustrate this issue and how many of the rights secured by the 1994 South African Constitution are still nonexistent for many people across the country. 

On display at the District Six Museum, a member of the
demolition crew saved these street signs for decades. 

Land rights are another contentious issue that many activists feel the ANC has failed to address. During the Apartheid, segregation forced many black and coloured South Africans to relocate. One such area was District Six, a mixed neighborhood in Cape Town. In 1982, it was declared a whites-only area and 60,000 people were forcibly relocated to the Cape Flats. On Monday, we visited the District Six Museum and met Noor Ebrahim, a former resident of District Six. He explained the many financial, physical, sociological, and emotional impacts of the forced removals. Homes and businesses were destroyed, many were left without work and paying rent for their new residences. Those who had once walked to work had to start paying for transportation. The Cape Flats were overcrowded, leading to poor sanitation and additional health issues. Communities, and even families, were split up and segregated. People were pulled out of their communities and uprooted from their support systems. This is part of what makes forced removals such an effective tool of oppression. A community divided is less powerful and less able to organize against the unjust system. Since the official end of Apartheid, there has been a movement to restore the land rights of people forcibly removed from District Six, The government promised to build homes for former residents who wished to return to the area, but to date, few houses have been built and the area still remains largely empty. Hearing from Ebrahim and exploring the museum helped us to understand the many ways people are still healing from the scars of Apartheid.

Frustration over the government's lack of attention to these problems and its perceived inability to develop effective infrastructure has led to service delivery protests across the nation. During our time in Cape Town, we witnessed one of these protests (don't worry parents, we didn't participate). A group of citizens gathered in front of a government building to protest a government that has failed to provide the basic services its people need. Not only has the current system failed to close the gap between the wealthy and the impoverished, but the failure to deliver services and improve the infrastructure has deprived many people of basic human rights. Just as the spray painted overpasses in the Cape Flats proclaimed, the people are still not sharing in the country’s wealth. 

The group gets comfortable at the
CGE house on our first night in Windhoek.

My own frustration grew as we saw a different side of Cape Town. It seemed that everywhere we went there were mountain views and unending seascapes, delicious restaurants and busy marketplaces. It came as no surprise that Cape Town is consistently ranked as one of the top tourist destinations in the world. But as we experienced the tourist side of the city, we learned about places tourists don’t go. It seemed that the stories Majola and Ebrahim shared with us aren’t stories routinely heard. It was unsettling how easily their perspectives can be overlooked, despite the fundamental role they play in the history and present reality of the city. I found myself very lucky not only to hear their stories, but to share them. It was the dichotomy between their underrepresented perspectives and the overcrowded tourist destinations that helped us to understand more about post-apartheid South Africa. We came to Cape Town to explore identity. We left wondering about the two seemingly irreconcilable identities of the city, the many identities of its people, and our own identities in relation to everything we learned. Experiencing these many sides of Cape Town pushed us to ask questions about history, politics, inequality, and ourselves as we began to develop a global perspective. And now that we’ve settled into our home in Windhoek, we’re excited to dig deeper into the history and politics of Southern Africa as we continue to grow in our social and cultural understanding of the region.