South Africa has a particular hold on our imagination, those of us who came of political age in the 1970s. I think of it as a noble country, with people of such courage and fortitude who fought long and hard to end systematic, violent and totalizing oppression. The release of Mandela and the political prisoners, the coming to government of ANC, the adoption of a Constitution which recognized a wide range of human rights, these were victories as well as promises of a larger freedom and justice to come.
Twenty four years later, the scorecard on progress towards economic justice is decidedly mixed. Truth and reconciliation notwithstanding, the structure of the South African economy has not been sufficiently transformed to allow for redistribution of resources to benefit the many. Despite state investments in education, health care and housing, without access to productive assets, most are denied the resources needed for productive development. Seventy-two 72% of the land is owned by white South Africans. More than half of South Africans were poor in 2015 -55.5%.
According to a World Bank report, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. One percent of south Africans own 70.9% of the country’s wealth while the bottom 60% controls 7% of the country’s assets. One in five South Africans are unemployed.
We are in South Africa, my first time here and I came with a sense of restrained expectations. A tour of the Apartheid Museum underlines the scale of the transformation needed. It is thoughtfully constructed taking the visitor through the history of the country, starting with the misadventures of the British and Dutch in the nineteenth century and their battle between themselves to control the extra rich territory whilst making common cause in the oppression of South Africans.
The thought and artifice which were put into devising the dispossession of Africans and the edifice of apartheid is staggering. The museum records what looks like well over 50 laws which provided the architecture for apartheid. The Native Land Act 1913 prohibited the purchase of land by South Africans in some 93% of the country. And it is the continuing legacy of this that partly explains persistent and enduring poverty and inequality. How can the country progress without land reform?
Soweto is a stone’s throw away from the largest stadium in Africa. But between the stadium and Soweto is a large mound of old (and toxic) mining debris, placed there, our guide tells us, by apartheid authorities as an impediment to those in Soweto coming into parts of Johannesburg.
The tour guide took us through what he described to be rich Soweto, middle class Soweto and poor Soweto areas. He was proud of the progress, hopeful and mindful of how much else was needed to improve the lives of those in the area. There are many areas without electricity still, without indoor plumbing and without proper sanitation.
But for all the challenges of corruption and inequality (these two are always closely linked) the history of all that struggle and courage is beyond moving. The Hector Peiterson Museum tells the story of a 14-year-old boy who was mowed down by bullets in a 1976 student protest against sub-standard education and the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in Soweto. Hundreds of children were massacred and many others injured by the police. But the beginning of the end of apartheid has been attributed to this tragedy as it gave rise to a new era of political mobilising within and outside of South Africa.
The determination to end apartheid and the eventual triumph has to be one of the social justice beacons of the twentieth century. It remains inspirational, giving hope and encouragement that justice can and will prevail with struggle and solidarity.
But South Africa so far is also a cautionary tale. I keep thinking of Langston Hughes’ poem:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Brief Herhistories restoring justice:
We the (descendants of the First People /Xam-ka !Eis, Cobuqua-//Kosa and later the thousands of enslave populations brought here as Slaves from all over the world Cape ( 1600-1900. And later Khoena (Khoi) and the Cobuqua-//Kosa and later the Nguni joined the /Xam-ka !Eis
A massive, full scale slave trade was established and diseases were brought here by the English and the Dutch, French, Germans, Portuguese etc which literally decimated our local communities of color at the Cape centuries ago.
This story of genocide and murder is not ‘really’ been told in the mainstream museums and galleries and doesn’t ‘really’ appear or are remembered.
Whilst the perpetrators or criminals are not really ‘revealed’ (sugar-contentedness) or is interpreted in ways that makes him/her not accountable for crimes committed in the name of the crown.
Also remembering Europeans colonised Cape Town first then the rest of South Africa. Cape Town’s Indigenous People felt the first pangs of dispossession, loss of language, rape, culture and identity. Still being labelled ‘coloured’ people’, other, not quite. Internal racism between ‘black and so-called ‘coloured’ people, the k word and the h word, and xenophobia is rife in Cape Town, notwithstanding rape…
Rather Cape Town City is adorned with high rise colonial statues and monuments which lines up the streets of the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape. They still have streets named after them.
Legacies And Social Conditions:
We are indeed at war with ourselves. We are living on the Cape Flats (Group Areas Act of 1950 was created by the apartheid government of South Africa and assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas, legalised racial segregation in the Apartheid system enforced by the South African government between 1948 and 1994.
The colonial and apartheid spatial divisions attests to the architectural colonial barriers constructed to forcefully remove the majority ‘black’ of so-called ‘coloured’ people from their land and culture. Currently in this City gentrification is strongly challenged by the Bo-Kaap community a strong historical place in the history of slavery and the birth of Islam at the Cape.
This community is currently under threat of rich developers buying up prime land in the City and selling it for millions, this is a relatively working class communities there are many who are being lured to sell there properties. Organisations are rallying around these issues.
Most people of color are living in crime scenes and deteriorating environments. They are still the oppressed people of Cape Town living their lives waking up in the morning with guns shots ringing in your ear we go to bed with sounds of gang-war not so far away.
These areas in Cape Town, which I call the African reserves created for ‘coloured’, ‘black’ people). Socioeconomic conditions are at an absolute low where organised crime, gangsterism, murder and crime has become the order of the day for those who live gang land on the margins of the City.
Denying the past traumas and not acknowledging this crime against humanity then and now would be starting a revolution by the people for their rights. Like in 1834 when Cape Towns supposed emancipation of slave were to be ratified slaves were told that they would have to work another 4 years as indentured labour. Then in 1838 and the eventual emancipation of slaves most of them were not skilled. What happened to them who are these people? But on that day the ex-slavers now were given compensation for letting their slaves free so did the French Hugenots. Come 1994 we find negotiations between the Nationalist Apartheid government and the ANC pussyfooting eventual giving concences and considerations to the old guard. This history has left humanity undone. We have much to do…
But first the Healing of Memories And Remembering is essential through actively acknowledge the pain of inter-generational trauma transmitted from Slave Mother to Slave Child….
Should you have time please go to the local cinema to see ‘Ellen Pakkies’ This would be a good view into the lives of Mothers and children and the trauma associated with drug addiction.
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yes, i know how you feel, I had similar thoughts touring the museums, the old prisons and more…tough to see after all that struggle….
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And sometimes things seem to go backwards … Our PM, currently touring Africa to drum up post-Brexit trade, opposed sanctions back in the day and was responsible for the ‘hostile environment’ that led to many of the Windrush generation losing their rightful benefits or even being deported.
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The road towards access to the basics of real human rights is, alas, centuries away. The resilience of South African people is just not enough.
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