Postcard From Cape Town

8/7/2019 Postcard From Cape Town

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Postcard from Cape Town: The American Dream from Abroad Part 12__________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright 2010 William Jamieson All Rights Reserved http://PeoplesVisionUSA.com

Postcard from Cape Town, South Africa:

The American Dream from Abroad

Part 12

A Personal Perspective

By Bill Jamieson

http://peoplesvisionusa.com/


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without prior permission from the author.

Copyright 2010 William Jamieson All Rights Reserved


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Postcard from Cape Town, South Africa: The AmericanDream from Abroad

Click here to read more posts about Bills journey to Kenya:http:/ / peoplesvisionusa.com/ my-journeys/ postcard-from-capetown/

After spending two weeks in India and Kenya, my first glimpse of Cape Townwas a culture shock to my system.

I had become used to packed sidewalks and congested streets, to standingout as a minority wherever I went, to being careful of what and where I ate

and to the gritty, dusty third-world texture of everyday life.

Then I arrived in Cape Town. On the surface it is a modern, sparkling clean,prosperous, vibrant Mediterranean city of 4.5 million people.

My hotel was five-star luxury, just a couple of blocks from the shops,

restaurants and entertainment of the Cape Town Waterfront. This was anabrupt change from one world to another.

But on my first full day in the city I regained my bearings. Titus Mthandazo,

a young man from the Zulu tribe, took me on a visit to District Six and theLanga Township. The following short history is a summary of my notes from

our conversation.


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Prior to the institution of apartheid in 1948, this district was multi-racial, butin 1966 it was declared a White Group Area and removals started in 1968.

A total of 60,000 people were forcibly relocated, using the Forced Removal

Act of 1950 as justification. The entire community was bulldozed.

The Forced Removal Act grew out of 1886 policy that organized themovement of cheap black labor to industrial areas.

But by 1940 the white population became concerned that there was anuncontrolled growth and concentration of blacks in the city, and the removal

act was the result.

The apartheid government had established a four-tier classification of peopleby race: white, Malaysian, cape colored, colored and blacks. Blacks were on

the bottom rung and were not allowed to vote.

To make sure that blacks were not trying to pass themselves off as colored,

the authorities instituted the pencil test they stuck a pencil in a personshair and if it stayed there they were classified as black; if it fell out they

were colored.

The Morality Act of 1948 outlawed mixed marriages and sex between people

of different races. Mixed-race couples were separated and permitted onevisit at a police station every three months. In 1950 a new law stipulated

that blacks were not allowed to congregate within the city.

A black person who had a job working for a white person in the city wasgiven an internal passport, called a Dom pass (Dom meaning stupid). Thepass specified where he was allowed to go and what times he was allowed to

be there.

Blacks were required to carry the Dom Pass with them at all times. If they

didnt have it, or were in a place not approved in the pass, or were thereeven one minute longer than the pass specified, they were taken to jail.

The policy of racial categorizing, forced removal of non-whites from parts of

Cape Town, and the institution of the Dom pass were, according to Titus,designed to divide, dilute and confuse the black population.

Then on August 9, 1956, 20,000 women rose up in protest of the Dom pass.The government responded with deadly force, killing and injuring many andarresting those who refused to disperse.


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The brave actions of these women triggered the beginning of a series ofprotests across the country, and the day has been set aside as the annual

National Womens Day holiday.

But the world wasnt watching until 1976 when a students uprising in

Soweto (a township in Johannesburg set up for relocation) demonstratedagainst being forced to read and write Afrikaans, the official language of

white South Africa.

Three hundred students were killed, and a journalist was able to smuggle a

picture of one particularly heinous killing of a defenseless student by a policeofficer out of the country and onto the international press wires.

This led to the international boycotts of South Africa, which eventually led to

the downfall of apartheid government.

I asked Titus if racism remained strong across South Africa. He said that

The mindset is still there, many whites think they are better than blacks.But that is changing with the younger people, particularly those who go tomulti-racial schools.

Older communities are still separated by race, but the new housing

communities are mixed.

We then traveled to Langa, the township where many of those evicted from

District 6 relocated. It remains a very poor community.

Fifty thousand people live there, many in small huts built from scrap woodand tin. Unemployment is high, the primary way of making food money isscavenging and selling discarded cans.

Odawa, a 20-year old resident of Langa, took me to the apartment wherehe lives with his mother, father and brother. Their living space is on the

second floor of a two-story building. I entered into a large rectangular room,perhaps 60 feet long.

This room is the community room and the place where 50 residents prepare

food and eat. At both ends of the community room there are threebedrooms, with three or four beds in each. Each bed belongs to one family.

Odawas mother and father sleep in their familys bed, while he and hisbrother sleep next to them on the floor along with the children from theother two families in the room. The have access to a community water pump

for two hours each day.


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I asked Odawa (who spoke perfect English) what his life goal was, and heresponded, to be able to get a good education and a good job so that I can

help my family. I am their hope.

In the afternoon I journeyed to Robben Island, about 30 minutes by boat

from the Cape Town Waterfront. This is where Nelson Mandela wasincarcerated in 1964 after being convicted of sabotage and given a life

sentence.

He spent 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment on the island in a single-person

cell of approximately five square meters. He was allowed one 30-minute visitand one letter every six months, but the letters were often unreadable

because of prison censoring.

Furnishings in his cell consisted of a mattress, a bucket to use as a toilet,and a stool. He spent his days working at hard labor in a rock quarry.

Despite the harsh conditions and brutal treatment, Mandela declined an offerof freedom if he would renounce his opposition to the government.

It is interesting to note that Mandelas given first name is Rolihlahla (whichmeans, appropriately, troublemaker). A teacher changed it to Nelson

because white people couldnt pronounce Rolihlahla.

It is easy to be outraged about the brutality of apartheid and the violent

repression of South Africas black people. But as an American I must look at

that history through the lens of my own countrys racism.

It is a bit disingenuous for Americans to condemn South Africas past whenour own history includes slavery; denial of the right to vote to African

Americans; segregated and unequal schools, parks, hotels, restaurants,transportation, housing, benches and bathrooms; and the violent repression

of those who protested against this gross injustice.

And, as Titus said about South Africa today, the mindset of racism is still

there in America.

While I have been on this journey, my hometown of Asheville, NorthCarolina has suffered through hate crimes aimed at African Americans, with

a cross being burned in the front yard of one family.

So I think I will congratulate South Africa for the great distance it hastraveled from apartheid, and focus my outrage on my own back yard.


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Emails: Dear friends, when I arrived in Cape Town my entire system

was disoriented. After India and Kenya the high-end sparkle of this

Mediterranean city felt quite strange.

But the next morning I regained my balance with a trip along the 'Freedom

Road', into a District Six, a black community before apartheid. All the blackcitizens (150,000) were forced to move into townships, many of which had

no homes and no infrastructure.

One person I met told me he was nine when forced out;it took his fathertwo years to find work and a house. Many of the descendants of those

people are still living in poverty, as you can see in some of these pictures.

The first picture is of a sign from those days... reminiscent of our own

[American] South.

Next are pictures of one of those townships, 60 years later. The woman in

the fourth picture is standing in the doorway of an apartment home I visited.

Twenty year old Odwa was my host and he took me through that door andinto a long rectangular room... the center part was the community area(maybe 20 yards long) where the 50 people who lived in the apartment

cooked and ate their meals.

At either end there were three rooms, and each had three or four singlebeds. Each bed belonged to one family, so three or four families shared the

small room.

Odwa and his brother slept on the floor while his mom and dad shared thebed. Children from the other two families joined them on the floor.

The next pictures are from a kindergarten class where I was greeted with

song and dance. Two pictures down is Robben Island Prison where Mandelawas held, followed by a shot of his cell.

On my second day I toured around the Cape and saw penguins, whales,

baboons, and other assorted animals. The last picture is a street scene of a'beauty shop'.

Tonight I make my turn back to the Western world, catching an Air Franceflight at 8:20p.m. for the 10-hour journey to Paris... where I will then take a

flight to Lisbon. Only 13 more days... Peace and love to everyone, Bill


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Postcard From Cape Town