First Month in South Africa

It’s been a long, lovely month of finding our feet in our new place. Finally having a phone line and internet at home is a big relief, and we have learned how to get around, do our shopping, and get Oscar to slow down just a little bit. We were surprisingly tired, although reflecting on how pressed we were in our last couple months in the States, you probably anticipated our need to “just be” a little bit.  I’ve had neck tension and inflammation, and rest and regular visits to an osteopath has managed it, as well as trying some acupuncture again.  John-Clair missed a day of school last week for a stomach bug going around school, Jacob had a bad jelly-fish sting, and Dan twisted his foot, and now we’ve all taken short turns with the flu, so we’ve all had some reasons to take it easy. But we’ve been settling into our new reality—how far away you all are, the noise of the ocean and the strangeness of the languages around us, the immense complexity of the context of South Africa, the uniqueness of this place.  As Jacob reflected the other day on our way to school, driving past a neighboring township, “It’s kind of weird to live in Africa but in a place where they are used to seeing white people.” I asked if that felt like a good or bad thing, and his response summed it up for all of us: “Both.” Understanding South Africa As some of you have seen from our Facebook pictures, Oscar is taking us around to meet and talk with local government leaders, school staff, and pastor’s forums. He’s enjoying orienting us – directing us to cultural learning such as Robben Island and local museums. Oscar has also given us several good books to read as part of our orientation to our work, including A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652-2002 by Sampie Terreblanche. (We will put reviews of all the good resources we come across on our blog, which will be made public soon.)  I get bogged down in economic discussions, of which we hear many, with talk about the devalued rand and “the black economy vs the white economy.”  Terreblanche, among many others, says that while democratic rights are much improved, systemic change has not happened, government promises are unkept, etc. With a particularly approachable government councilor, I asked the question I’ve heard bantered back and forth for a long time, “Are people really better off now – is your average black South African really better off than he was twenty years ago?” “Oh yes,” he smiled at me, “we are living freely now. We can live with our families, we are united and can go where we want and everything is better.” I was embarrassed by my question, and still not understanding; then we visited the Labor Museum.

Entrance to the museum

Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum “The apartheid dream required the geographical separation of the races” says one plaque. But whites needed the labor of non-whites – what to do? This museum is full of documentation and pictures of the tragic situation that developed: workers that lived in their designated home territories sometimes had to travel as much as 8 hours a day to get to a job, leaving family at 3am to arrive home at 11pm at night, in some instances. Many others opted to move to a hostel, or “bedhold,” and leave their families for 11 months out of the year. Families were not allowed in hostels, and in fact, if you were caught in the hostel neighborhood without a pass, you paid a fine or served prison time. Hostels were strictly guarded with one road in, much like the forced labor camps they developed from. In Strand today, where Lwandle is located, we drive circuitous routes on the limited thru streets to get around. There is much more we learned about – women that smuggled themselves into the hostels to be with their husbands to start families, the lack of food and sanitation, and always, at the end of the day, the constant heritage of this unjust system of exploitation and brokenness. Two hostels were built in the larger Cape Town area. Lwandle hostel was built in 1960 to house 500 men – by 1990, two thousand men, women and children were squeezed into these curtained rooms with bunkbeds. Sometimes sixteen lived in the space for four men the size of a prison cell, the women and children hiding in the cupboard when the guard came around. One woman explained why she took such a risk: I came here to have children because my husband did not have enough time to be at home. He would take leave for only four weeks. We were not able to sit. We did not know each other because we married at a young age. We wanted to know each other very well. In fact, he wanted me to be close to him.

You can see how blocks are laid out, with very little vegetation, and the remaining frames on the roofs for solar water heaters

Inside the block, looking at the cabinets the women had to hide in

How 16 people fit into a room with two bunk beds

Then, as our guide was explaining that by 1991 there was a push to start a school for the children, I slowly begin to get it. I read on – 500 children living in Lwandle, and the government refusing to provide a school because they cannot acknowledge that those children are there. I realize that as we have toured the schools for mainly black and colored neighborhoods, signs over the doorways read things like “established in 2006.” My blood runs cold as I realize there were no schools for black South Africans in this entire area until recently, and in fact, no houses, or families living together, or churches, or shops, or beaches they could go to…

Beach sign

Nathan and Kathryn listening to our guide

I have imagined the end of apartheid as like the end of segregation in the US – and obviously, there are similarities. But I’m finding that much is different, yet even in its different-ness it has a lot to say to the US story. I will be sharing that with you, as much as you want to read of it, and we love to hear back from you your own thoughts on our common stories of injustice, racism and systemic brokenness. To finish the Lwandle story – with the end of apartheid, people didn’t need passes to be wherever they wanted and discrimination laws ended.  Government built schools for the children, families were allowed to live together, and to buy homes in the area (although speculation by whites and lack of resources for blacks made this, what should have been an equalizer, like starting the race several laps behind - Oscar’s words.) Families continued to live in the hostels, but openly, and now they could spread out, live outside of it, open small businesses; and so the various townships developed in the area – low-income housing, with informal housing (read: shacks) that more recent immigrants have put up alongside.  And back to 1991 – the museum noted that the need for a school did not go unheard – a Dutch Reformed Church let their buildings be used for an informal school, supported by the Inner Church Group of Somerset West, the white neighboring suburb. So while I had to leave the museum now even more embarrassed by all that I had seen and heard, I could also be hopeful.  Working with Oscar, who has given himself to the work of holistic transformation, gives us even more hope for a changed future.

Small businesses like these are now allowed in the township