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 A Visit to Cape Town

By Howard Wayne    (c) 2006
jewishsightseeing.com, July 29, 2006


CAPE TOWN, South Africa—Our trip to South Africa allowed us to stay in Cape Town for a week.  Cape Town is on the Atlantic coast, about as far south of the equator as San Diego is north of it.  There were other similarities to San Diego: the weather, both are port cities, and both have a large tourist industry.  We stayed at a hotel in the Waterfront, an area reminiscent of Seaport Village and Harbor Island.  Every morning over breakfast we looked out at boats in the harbor and at Table Mountain in the background – a vast monolith which towers over the city.

Cape Town began as a “refreshment station” for the Dutch East India Company in 1652 for its ships going to the East Indies.  Supplies for ships were obtained first by trading with the native people (the Khoi) and then by farming.  Slaves were imported from other parts of Africa (the Company gave instructions not to enslave Khois because it would destroy trade with them) and from what is now Indonesia.  There were few European women at the Cape and much intermixing among white farmers, slaves, and the Khoi.  As a result the largest population group in the Cape area is not black Africans (although many are moving in from the southeast of the country), but the “Cape Coloureds,” the products of those racial intermixing.  Because it was impermissible to keep Christians as slaves, the Company encouraged the Islamic religion among the Coloureds.  Cape Town is now the center of Islamic culture in South Africa.  The British permanently occupied Cape Town in 1806.

District 6

District 6 was a working class area on the west side of Cape Town that was largely Coloured, but had a mixed population.  It was a vibrant, crowded and poor community of 60,000 to 70,000 people.  In 1966 the apartheid government declared it to be a “white” area and began both the removal of its inhabitants – who were relocated to other areas based on their racial classification – and the demolition not only of the structures, but of the very streets on which they stood.  This took place over a 15-year period.  Today, except for a technical university, schools and religious buildings, all that is left is grass.  The area was renamed Zonnebloem but not redeveloped, although that had been the plan.

There is now a District 6 museum located near the former community.  Its ground floor is covered with a large map of the street system of District 6.   On the map former residents have labeled the sites of their homes.  The museum contains old photos of the district’s buildings and residents, a collection of the street signs of the no-longer existing streets, and reminiscences of life in District 6.  It seemed to have been a very close-knit community.  The museum is staffed by former residents who eagerly talk to you about their growing up in District 6.  Several have written books of their experiences.  I bought one of them, Noor’s Story: My Life in District Six, about a Muslim family in the community, and talked briefly with the author.

The government is engaged in rebuilding District 6 for its former inhabitants.  Claims have been filed by those who were displaced and homes are being built.  The new housing will probably only accommodate 20,000 people, and cannot replicate the feelings and the sense of the lost community.

The Cape Flats

So where were the residents of District 6 sent?  Townships were constructed many miles east of the center of Cape Town; some for blacks and some for coloureds.  Based on their racial classification by the government, members of a family might be assigned to a coloured township while other members were sent to a black township.  Under apartheid it was possible for a person to petition to be racially re-classified since “race” was based on appearance (notably, few classified as “whites” sought reclassification).  Being relocated to a township meant that one no longer could walk to work; both time and money had to be allocated for transportation – and few of the poor had cars.  There was no economic activity in the area, and blacks were discouraged from starting businesses much larger than a food stand.  The people were just dumped in the middle of nowhere.

Houses in the townships are formal or informal.  The formal structures are small, made of brick or wood, and have electrical and water hookups.  The informal structures, usually on the outskirts of the townships but sometimes in the backyards of formal ones, are made of corrugated metal and whatever else can be scrounged.  Electrical lines might be strung to them, but water, if available, is at a communal tap and toilets are at what looked to be porta-potties.  Drainage is non-existent in the areas of the informal structures, so in heavy rains they flood.  Fire is an ever-present danger because the shabby buildings are heated by burning paraffin.  The risk is not just of a shack burning down, but also of the fire spreading to nearby shanties.  Fire in the “Joe Slovo” housing area burned in excess of 400 dwellings more than a year-and-a-half ago and the residents have not been allowed to rebuild.

I visited Khayelitsha, a huge township southeast of the airport that was established in 1984.  I went to a preschool in an Anglican church that is supported, in part, by the sale of craft items across the street.  Another stop in Khayelitsha was at Vicky’s B&B – the self proclaimed smallest hotel in South Africa with two rooms.  Outside of Vicky’s two women were washing clothes by hand.

In another township, Langa, I went to a shabeen – an unlicensed but tolerated drinking establishment in an informal structure with a dirt floor. The inside was dark – illuminated only by a single small light – and the seating was on low benches.  It serves a corn-based township home-brew beer from a common pail.  The beer, which has a sour flavor, is definitely an acquired taste.  The price is right – 8 Rand (about $1.25) for all you can drink for half a week.

A large portion of South Africans live in townships.  Our guide said it was 75%, but I think that is high.  Still, the lack of decent housing for a majority of the population is a major issue in the country.  According to a news report, Cape Town needs 250,000 additional homes.  That need grows by 16,000 per year, while only 10,000 residences are constructed there annually.

Housing dominated this month’s by-election for a council seat in the Cape Flats.  Not long after the ruling non-ANC party won that election, the ANC premier of the province where Cape Town is located removed the city from managing the construction of a major home building project in the Flats.  Twelve years after liberation, people are not going to put their aspirations for housing on hold forever.

Robben Island

Robben Island is located in Table Bay, some 10 kilometers from the Waterfront.  It has been used as a prison since the days of the Company, and was used by the apartheid government to incarcerate political prisoners.  Nelson Mandela, the president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, was imprisoned there from 1962 until the mid-1980s (interrupted by his trial on another offense).  Other leaders of the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups were also kept there, where they debated issues and engaged in mutual education.  A tour of Robben Island is de rigueur for a visit to Cape Town.

We joined a large group gathered at the Nelson Mandela Gateway (a convenient short walk from our hotel), and were met by a former inmate, Eddie Daniels.  Daniels is a short, slight man in his mid-seventies with steel gray hair.  During apartheid he joined the Liberal Party, was convicted of sabotage (blowing up electric pylons), and was a prisoner on Robben Island from 1964 until 1979.  His memoirs were on sale at the Robben Island museum.  I bought a copy, which he autographed with his prison number.

It was a thirty minute boat trip across the harbor in frigid water– no one escaped from Robben Island - and at the dock we boarded buses that took us on a 45-minute tour.  Prominent was the visit to the lime quarry.  The political prisoners had won the right to leave the walled area of the prison to work there for seven hours a day.  The prisoners had no eye protection and the glare of sunlight off the white lime injured their eyes.  Even today Mandela is sensitive to flash photography.

We went to the prison itself, and Daniels led us to the yard where prisoners were employed breaking up slate rocks into pebbles.  The yard has a large photo of prisoners working with their hammers and another of Mandela and his friend Walter Sisulu.   Daniels said on one occasion he had been too ill to go to work.  Even though Daniels was not an important prisoner and was from an insignificant party, Mandela came to his cell to comfort him, then took his slop bucket and cleaned it out.  His admiration for Mandela knew no bounds.  Daniels also said that Sisulu, who had only a fourth grade education, smoothed out differences between the various factions of anti-apartheid groups.  It was Sisulu who had gotten Mandela his first clerkship with a law firm in Johannesburg.

Daniels also said he had refused parole because it was conditioned on him renouncing violent struggle against apartheid (which had violently repressed non-violent opposition).  He led us to the cell blocks where prisoners had slept on a thin mattress on the floor, covered by a nearly transparent blanket.

I asked Daniels how he came to be involved in the fight against apartheid.  He said it had begun in his youth – he had grown up in District 6 – and in his book he said that was where he saw the police abusing their authority.  It was so circular.  My trip to Robben Island, at the end of my visit, led back to District 6, one of my first stops in Cape Town.