Township Tour

Last Tuesday (July 13), our group was taken on a walking tour of Langa, one of Cape Town’s townships, or poorest neighborhoods. Langa was built in the early 1900s as a place to live for black men who worked as construction workers on the Cape Flats, or windswept plains outside of Cape Town. These men were housed in crude barracks, many of which are still there today. Later on, other people came to live there as well and actual houses were built. We saw some small houses that were originally built in the 1930s and had been refurbished and added on to many times over the years as they changed owners. During apartheid, the Group Areas Act forced black and coloured people to leave the nicer areas of Cape Town and settle in the Cape Flats. The poorest people, mostly black, ended up in these township areas, where housing was cheapest. The same thing happened all over the country. The previous Friday (July 9), we visited the District 6 museum in Cape Town, which displays artifacts and stories about people who used to live in the District 6 neighborhood before the Group Areas Act dispersed them.

Even though apartheid has been over for 16 years now, thousands of people are still stuck living in these townships, unable to break the cycle of poverty. Many foreign nationals who immigrated to South Africa from countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Somalia also live in the townships. Some people take buses and taxis out of the townships every day to work menial jobs as servants, laborers, or store clerks, while others set up shops in the township to sell food and other goods to the people living there. Most of the people here speak very little English. English is taught in schools, but most families speak Xhosa or other native African languages at home. In a way, townships like Langa are very self-contained with their own businesses and schools.

Township store

The level of poverty varies in the townships as well. Some people own their own houses and cars, although frequently an entire family – grandparents, children, and grandchildren – live in one house. Others live in the former barracks and have next to nothing. Some of the barracks have been refurbished into slightly decent apartments while others look like no one has touched them in fifty years. In other townships, people have built their own crude shacks from corrugated iron and pieces of wood. The horrible poverty is absolutely heartbreaking. It’s kind of like the equivalent of the inner city in the U.S., but ten times worse. In one barrack unit, there was a tiny kitchen with a bed to the side where one person slept, another small room where 10 people all slept together, a sparse dining area with just one bare light bulb for light, and a small room with just a hole in the ground leading to the drain to serve as a toilet. Seeing these living conditions really makes me appreciate the life I live and everything I have. I should never take anything for granted when so many people live with so little.

"Middle class" township home

Barracks

What touched my heart the most about the township was the children we met there. When our tour guide took us into the barracks a group of five girls about five or six years old saw us coming and shyly made their way over to our group. They took our hands and wanted to swing from our arms and have their pictures taken. They got really excited when we showed them pictures of themselves on our digital cameras. They would reach their arms up to us and want to be picked up and carried too. More children kept appearing and they followed us all through the barracks, clinging on to us the whole time. It’s sad to think that these kids get so little attention at home that they seek it out from visitors. It also possible that kids this young have never left the township and know nothing yet about the world outside. When people like us with white skin and nice clothes come in they are curious and want to find out more about us. They loved examining our cameras and jewelry, playing with our hair, wearing our sunglasses, and touching our faces. One little girl reached out to me to be picked up and while I was holding her she patted my face and said, “White!” They also took us to visit a preschool/day care center in the township where the children sang and danced for us. When we left they swarmed around us, clinging to our legs, and trying to climb on to us. They even clung on to the chain link fence surrounding the day care center yard and reached out for us as we walked away. It was adorable and sad at the same time.

Some of the kids we met

In the preschool

I only saw a small glimpse of what these children see every day. I don’t know what will happen to them or who they’ll grow up to be, but they touched my heart and I’ll always wonder about them. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the things I saw in the township that day.