In 2009 I visited the high school in Manenberg, a so-called township near Cape Town, South Africa and took this photo of nearby housing on my mobile phone and uploaded it to Flickr. For some reason it is used to illustrate an online article in “Daily Maverick” published, er, 7 July 2016. I was notified by a Google Alert as it is, at least, credited with my name and flickr. The interweb is strange.
Daily Maverick, “GroundUp Op-Ed: Manenberg in dire need of more police – DA”
Source: http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-07-07-groundup-op-ed-manenberg-in-dire-need-of-more-police-da
The original “Ground Up” article, by a member of Democratic Alliance, uses a different photo.
“One of South Africa’s most dangerous areas has far less police than it did a decade ago.
Manenberg is a community severely affected by violent crime and gang violence. The SAPS staffing policy of cutting essential personnel needs an urgent rethink. According to official statistics, the area accounted for 63 murders and 89 cases of rape in 2014/15.
With an estimated 56,301 residents living under the constant threat of gang violence and a rate of murders far higher than the national average of 33 per 100,000, it is one of South Africa’s most dangerous places. A resident of Manenberg is roughly three times more likely to be murdered than anywhere else in South Africa.”
It goes on with more shocking details.
This has prompted me to transfer my Cape Town posts from blogger to this site. Some of the links have not been checked.
First, let me insert this quote from The Guardian which is in the last section here:
“If the 2010 World Cup had any significance beyond football, it was to show South Africa’s visitors – and, perhaps, the country itself – that it has no shortage of intelligent, capable, eager young people upon whom, if they are given the chance, a viable future can be built.”
Thoughts before study tour in Cape Town
Met up with the group again on Saturday for the forthcoming visit to South Africa. In part, this is a fulfillment of interest when a student in going to Tanzania. Apartheid South Africa was then, of course, off limits. It will be interesting to talk about the recent endeavours in creating a fair and just society.
And it’s not a holiday, although it will allow the luxury of some thinking time in the company of interesting people. They have, at least, a common interest in taking the experience back into the professional context. This presents just one of the problems to ponder: how can a brief encounter contribute towards a meaningful and, yet, generalised understanding?
I remain convinced that we are what we experience and that it is possible to have a disposition for considering depth and complexity without necessarily posing as deep and clever of special insight. Life-experience is a jig-saw where there is no picture on the box – or predetermined shape for that matter. We can make connections, joining the pieces, in creative and purposeful ways. Some pieces are small and yet together bond together the whole. Other pieces are large have more inter-locking elements.
More later…
Posted 19th January 2009
First impressions of Cape Town
I have always been one for arriving somewhere new and orientating myself – or, strictly speaking, fixing a north-bearing. It’s probably a survival instinct.
On arrival at our Guest house and waiting for our rooms, we were sitting on the sunny veranda with a spectacular view over Cape Town and seeing the CBD, port and coastline familiar from maps. The pool and garden immediately below the veranda clearly benefited from the sun and it (not quite literally) dawned on me that it was a north facing garden. My hemisphere perspective needed adjusting.
Similarly, the grandeur of Table Mountain looms above us, as it does the entire city. The shadows give an ever-changing vista and, in the morning, I saw the famous spill-over effect as the clouds roll over the mountain top. A visit to top beckons.
Landscape dominates, and impacts upon these first impressions.
En passant, a window seat afforded a view of the massive Namib rock and sand desert slipping into the sea. I was on the wrong side to see Table Mountain properly on our eventual descent.
Posted 12th February 2009
Cape Town District Six – “not as races but as people”
“All who pass by
Remember with shame the many thousands of people who lived for generations in district six and other parts of this city, and were forced by law to leave their homes because of the colour of their skins.
Father, forgive us…”“In remembering we do not want to recreate District Six but to work with its memory: of hurts inflicted and received of loss, achievements and of shames. We wish to remeber so that we can all, together and by ourselves, rebuild a city which belomgs to all of us, in which all of us can live, not as races but as people.”
Our guide, a forcibly moved resident of District Six and now 65, said to us, “I love talking about the government because during apartheid I wasn’t allowed to.”
See www.districtsix.co.za
Posted 13th February 2009
Open-top bus, Cape Town
We had the best of intentions to break off from the bus route for the cable-car ride to the top of Table Mountain but it was closed due to cloud. This is an ever-changing phenomenon in Cape Town.
Instead we took the red route followed by the blue route. The first gives a good sense of the city centre (see photo) and then climbs up to the Table Mountain cable-car station and down to Camps Bay and along the beaches, passed Green Point and back to the Waterfront. The second takes a longer route around Table Mountain and along the more lush south side to Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, a birds and monkey centre, Imizamo Yethu township (see photo) and Hout Bay. (see photo)
We had fish and chips at Muriel’s Munchies, Hout Bay, run by an Australian who arrived and stayed in South Africa for the sailing.
See City Sightseeing Cape Town
http://www.citysightseeing.co.za/
Two personal perspectives in Cape Town
Mark Gleeson, sports journalist and commentator, self-styled ‘anorak’s anorak’ concerning Afric an football.
A group travelled out to Constantia to meet in the Mugg and Bean coffee shop in part of a suburban shopping centre.
First, he outlined the inappropriate infrastructure for South African football and the mis-match between its’ community-base and the commercial imperative.
Mark’s assessment of the World Cup 2010 can summed up as three weeks of every month enthusing about the prospect and one week of worry about it going wrong somehow. At one time the estimate for visitors was 900,000 but now it was 300,000 and could still be a flop. It will certainly by-pass the poor as the cheapest ticket will be 10% of the annual wage.
A key issue is the training centres chosen by the major national teams and their commitment, ot otherwise, to engagement with the local population.
A test will be the 50,000 estimated for the Lions tour in May and the organisation of the FIFA Confederations Cup in June.
He gave an interesting personal perspective on education and the wider issues of South Africa and the so-called ‘Born-free’ generation.
Mark recommended Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa by Martin Meredith.
On Mark Gleeson
Blog: the road to the World Cup Mark Gleeson – the man I want to be
The Guardian An evening with the anorak’s anorak
and a version in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian
By Mark Gleeson
World Cup diary 13 March 2007, Daily Sun
Blog: Reuters, Can Bafana live up to World Cup host team billing?
Sport 24, SA legends owed nothing
See unofficial World Cup website
http://www.worldcup2010southafrica.com/
FIFA World Cup 2010 website
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/index.html
Bryan Slingers, businessman
Bryan is a larger-than-life character and shared his forthright views on a range of matters (expletives deleted):
- the negotiated change has left the dominant class as powerful as ever;
- we should start with acting against history;
- to re-imagine the world we have to be deliberate;
- problems are not the fault of government but of social engagement;
- there is a hard-wired xenophobia – a natural state of ‘othering’.
Bryan’s company was behind the ‘A home for all’ initiative with an emphasis of unpacking the community in order to consider the individual to engage and sustain a sense of their own wonder. Affirmation: ‘you are absolutely fine as God made you.’
He outlined the class action behind the Richtersveld diamond mining area which established long-term rights for four dispersed villages. ‘My name is my war cry.’
Advice to young people is ‘get a world view’ and not just skills if they are limited to maths and English. Suggested music as a springboard to creativity.
He cited that in Mallenberg going to prison was an ambition regarded as more valuable than university and recommended a reading of Don Pinnuck on gangs and the drug trade.
“When gangs control the drug trade, corner the pimp market, corrupt the police and even run the city’s tough housing manager out of town it’s fair to say that Cape Town has a major problem. But in the thousands of words being written about gangs in the near-hysterical daily press an important dynamic is being completely overlooked: as social institutions gangs work extremely well. They serve a purpose way beyond the strong-arm needs of gang and syndicate bosses. If they didn’t the kids on the corners wouldn’t join them, let alone fight -sometimes to the death – for the territory they claim.”
Source: http://tigger.uic.edu/~huk/Gang%20History/fightingfire.html
Another reference:
Steye, Melissa ( 2001) Whiteness Just Isn’t What is Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa, State University of New York Press
http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=60406
It was a most stimulating discussion fortified by a delicious flan and Dremersfontein 2008 Pinotage from Wellington, SA.
City of Cape Town 2010 FIFA World Cup
An informed and interesting presentation by and discussion with Riefqah Jappie at the Provincial Government Office. It’s a joint initiative between the city of Cape Town and the West Cape province.
“There are few cities in the world that offer the perfect blend of breathtaking scenic beauty, superb tourist attractions, entertainment and activity options, an internatuonall diverse cultural mix, and an eclectic mix of warm and friendly people.
Cape Town is such a place and as the city prepares itself for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, its people look forward to welcoming you to the unforgettable experience that is the Mother City of South Africa.”
Source: Cape Town: your pocket guide to 2010 FIFA World Cup – Host City: Cape Town
City of Cape Town 2010 FIFA World Cup
http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/2010/Pages/default.aspx
The background to the agreement between host cities and FIFA
www.sa2010.gov.za/guarantees
Athlone Stadium closed for pitch renovation
http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/Pages/AthloneStadiumclosedforpitchrenovation.aspx
Integrated Rapid Transport – IRT
Cheryl Gammon
Four phases in integrate rapid transport with only 1a ready for the World Cup.
City to hold discussions with taxi industry
http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/Pages/Citytoholddiscussionswithtaxiindustry.aspx
Further references:
See unofficial World Cup website
http://www.worldcup2010southafrica.com/
FIFA World Cup 2010 website
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/index.html
Biko : “And the eyes of the world are watching now”
Slavery Museum
Iziko Museums has embarked on a major project which will transform the Slave Lodge into a permanent museum of slavery, using the building itself as a significant artefact. The focus of the exhibits will be on family roots, ancestry and the peopling of South Africa. We aim to increase awareness on issues such as human rights, equality, peace and justice. We plan to transform the Lodge from a site of human wrongs to a one of human rights, to pay tribute to those who have been forgotten, denied and stigmatised. The initial temporary exhibits on show will be replaced in a phased programme over the next few years.
An orientation centre on slavery at the Cape is already completed. An audio guide to take the visitor on a tour of the history of the site itself is available.
New exhibition galleries opened in June 2006 which show that the Cape was an integral part of the Indian Ocean slave trade route – slaves were brought to the Cape from four main areas, viz. Indonesia, India-Ceylon, Madagascar and Mozambique. This in contrast to the route of the transatlantic slave trade that was used by European slave traders to transport African slaves to the plantations of the Americas and Caribbean. An installation evokes the cramped conditions of slaves aboard a slave ship, such as the Meermin. This was one of several ships sent by the Cape VOC authorities in the 18th century to Madagascar, to trade with local rulers and obtain slave men, women and children for the Slave Lodge in Cape Town. An alcove features an interactive column of light, which commemorates slaves through their names. Turning the rings in the column, each inscribed with names of slave inmates of the Slave Lodge, becomes a means of triggering memory, even a metaphorical release. The rings in turn are associated with tree rings, the passing of time, and the story handed down over generations that slaves brought to the Cape were auctioned, as commodities, under trees. Finally, a room uses sound, projected images and animation to take visitors into the dark and oppressive conditions of slaves’ lives in the Slave Lodge.
Source: http://www.iziko.org.za/slavelodge/over_ex.html
BIKO: THE QUEST FOR A TRUE HUMANITY
NOVEMBER 2008 – MARCH 2009
This travelling exhibition, developed and presented by the Apartheid Museum in Gauteng, commemorates the 30th anniversary of the death of Bantu Stephen Biko. Biko is regarded as one of the most outstanding intellectuals of twentieth-century South Africa. As a leader, philosopher, visionary and revolutionary, he made a vital contribution to the struggle against ‘apartheid’, and his ideas on Black Consciousness and the liberation of the African intellectual tradition through self-reliance remain relevant today. The exhibition examines the African and American roots of Biko’s thinking, highlights his vision of a new society in South Africa, and traces his life and leadership role in the anti-apartheid struggle that ended with his death while in police detention.
Source: http://www.iziko.org.za/slavelodge/c_ex.html
Reference: South African History Online, Wikipaedia
Peter Gabriel, Biko
September ’77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead
When I try and sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead
You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead
And the eyes of the world are
watching now
watching now
Source: http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Biko-lyrics-Peter-Gabriel/670319420D56569C482568E400048C2F
Stellenbosch: how different can schools be?
A drive out on the N2 passed the airport and on to Stellenbosch to the Cape Winelands District Service Point (local education department) and organised visits to:
– short presentation by formidable principal, shown around by lively, confident students, followed by an impromptu song and dance (photo) The oldest girls school in South Africa and includes a hostel as it has a large catchment. 667 academic girls of whom 40-45 are non-white. www.rhenish.co.zaKayamandi Secondary School
A new school in old buildings with a focus on commercial subjects. Grades 8-10 and expanding.
Informal housing built right up to school fence, necessitating three guards, on what should have been a rugby pitch, yet the ownership is uncertain. Most parents not working; predominantly black and unchanged. 45 pupils per class.
See photo of an observed scene of universality: a ‘dinner lady’ texting while pupils wait in line. And this one of boys playing playground football:
Klotesville
90% so-called coloured, only Afrikaans spoken. School fees R850 ayear. Lst year had a white teacher
Comment that children now support the national sports teams whereas their parents could not. Adviser says it it is difficult for older generation to forget the exclusion. His brother played tennis at Wimbledon but could not represent his country.Bridges Academy near township of Phillipe
29 residential students grade 8-12, and plans to expand to 100, through US-based sponsor a child scheme. A Christian-based education but driven by development not relief.It had to be done: a tasting at the Graham Beck vineyard. Yep, good wine and not a drop spilled.Returned to Cape Town on the N1 passed the port facilities.
District Six revisited
Photographic Exhibition by George Hallett and others
11 December 19997 – 10 March 1998 and now showing at the Homecoming Centre.
District Six Revisited, George Hallet (editor and photographer, with others) (Hardback, 2007) was out of stock but sells for £40 on Amazon
I bought The Spirit of District Six by Clote Breytenbach (Hardback 2nd edition, 2003), Cape Town: Human and Rousseau.
This cover image is an example of what Geoff Dyer identifies as an ‘Ongoing Moment’. See my Flickr set at www.flickr.com/photos/angus-willson/sets/72157606541343067/
Fields of Play: football memories and forced removals in Cape Town at the District Six Homecoming Centre, 15A Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
The Fields of Play exhibition explores the dynamic intersection of memory, football and forced removals in the history of Cape Town. More than merely a scene of pastime and leisure, football offers us some insights into the complex social history that defined Cape Town as a modern South African city.
The exhibition explores the emergence of football on the Green Point Common from the 1800s until the period of forced removals in the 1950s, and its re-organisation on the edges of an apartheid city. The exhibition is a tentative step towards deepening our understanding of forced removals and its consequences on those who administered, played and watched football in Cape Town. As Green Point Common once again becomes the focal point of football in the city with the approach of the 2010 Soccer World Cup – we wish to recall the routes football has travelled from the difficult days of its emergence on the Common, to its re-emergence on the edges of the city.
The exhibition offers an account of football as it was played on Green Point Common (Greenpoint), Maitland (Royal Road), Langa (Langa Stadium), Kenilworth (Rosmead Sports Ground), Athlone (Athlone Stadium), Observatory (Hartleyvale), Salt River (Shelley Street), Wynberg (William Herbert Sports Ground), Rylands (Rygate) and Stellenbosch.
In presenting Fields of Play, the Museum has built on its methodology of combining oral histories and narratives drawn from vast private and public collections to enliven our understanding of the meaning of forced removals.
Source:
http://www.districtsix.co.za > News and Events > Fields of Play
Breathing Spaces – environmental portraits of Durban’s industrial south
By photographer Jenny Gordon and historian Marijke du Toit
at the Castle of Good Hope
“Breathing Spaces: Environmental Portraits of Durban’s Industrial South is a photographic exploration of three Durban neighbourhoods, photographed by Jenny Gordon, with research by Marijke du Toit. Gordon’s photographs are juxtaposed with decades-old studio and other family photographs drawn from the personal collections of people living in the South Durban neighbourhoods.
Durban’s urban geography reflects race and class inequities that persist beyond apartheid. Wentworth, Merebank and Lamontville (formerly categorised as ‘coloured’, ‘Indian’ and ‘African’ respectively) are located in the immediate vicinity of refineries and other industry. The area has been the centre of much controversy and activism about the levels of industrial pollution experienced by residents. The exhibition is an inquiry into what it means to live in an environment still strongly structured by the geographies of apartheid city planning, by poverty and industrial pollution.”
Reflections on the study tour in Cape Town
Knowing what we know now, what else could we have done?
In most cases our schools visits seemed to indicate a gulf between the school learning experience and that of the home and neighbourhood. I suppose that engagement with families would have overcome this and, notwithstanding the difficulties of such an arrangement, would have placed the schools in their social and economic context. Of course, language and other cultural barriers are significant in such an exercise.
I have purchased a book which I hope will reveal some these realities for the people of the townships – albeit mediated. One of these, I anticipate, is the grind of the walk and rail journey for those who do work in the central city and probably contrasts with our own road vehicle experiences.
Perhaps, a further perspective rests in the high-rise offices (and literally) of ‘mega-corp’, both South African and global multi-national, in terms of the future of Cape Town, internally and to South Africa, and on the world stage of capital and commerce.
A future focus could be the symbolism and reality of the port functions of Cape Town as a cross-roads of the globe.
In terms of our learning, what has been the most rewarding?
1 access to schools – and other interesting contacts
2 group and sub-group exploration and sharing
3 actually seeing post-apartheid South Africa (see 5)
4 the focus or framework really worked
In terms of our learning, what has been the most frustrating?
5 actually seeing post-apartheid South Africa (see 3)
A ‘big-up’ to Scott Sinclair, director of TIDE, for organising and conducting this study tour and many thanks to the fellow-participants and all South Africans (including those we haven’t met yet).
And a final flâneur around Cape Town…
“The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, “loafer”—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means “to stroll”. Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of “a person who walks the city in order to experience it”. Because of the term’s usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur
We strolled, one more time, down to the city centre, out towards Green Point and back to the Waterfront shopping centre. There Darius had the biggest slice of chocolate fudge cake you have ever seen.
Khayelitsha – book recommendation
“The Table Mountain sunset behind us was less than an hour away as we sped along the N2 highway past the turn-off to Cape Town International Airport. The rush hour traffic heading out of the city had thinned out slightly and we were racing down the busy highway towards Khayelitsha at a terrifying speed. But there was more to the adrenalin being pumped into my veins than that: after two and a half years away from the rambling black township I was coming back to live there. Europe could not have felt more distant as I watched the crooked shacks hurtling past on the right-hand side of the road. One of those shacks would be my hoe and the thought filled me with a combination of excitement and anxiety. This was the real Khayelitsha, the massive informal settlements known for their ugly poverty and rampant crime. This was a the nemesis of the rich, where disorganised groups of tsotsis daily made the decision, consciously or otherwise, to take on the beneficiaries of the system.
…
I came to like Ta-fumsa’s three bedroom shack. Wherever I walked I had only to take five steps at the most. Its smallness translated into cosiness, its haphazard yet neat layout appealed to my chaotic but practical nature. Besides his, there were another two bedrooms, with the sunken lounge in the centre of the structure. Up one small step from the lounge was a tiny kitchen containing two small cupboards with the strict necessities for cooking and eating. The shack smelt of paraffin at all times, a pleasant odour to emanate from a stove, although I could never quite get over my fear of fire.”
Otter, Steven (2007) Khayelitsha: uMlungu in a Township, Johannesburg: Penguin. pp.251-2 and p.257-8
Invictus: “Surprise them with your compassion”
Invictus is a great story and makes a good film. Although the Springboks rugby team symbolised the apartheid regime, Nelson Mandella realised the opportunity of keeping on-board the power of sport as ‘one team, one country’ rather than alienating that support by abolishing the team.
As he says to colleagues who do not initially comprehend his strategy: “surprise them with your compassion and forgiveness”. And he demonstrates the point by making an appearance wearing the green and gold rugby shirt. There is a great sense of occasion in the set pieces of the nation-building diplomacy and the rugby matches, and the geo-political landscape of South Africa is conveyed with meaning. This covers the government buildings, a visual treat of Cape Town, the players’ tour of Robben Island and they are made to visit townships for coaching sessions.
Morgan Freeman provides a magnificent Mandella. There’s a far amount of bone-crunching rugby towards the end and having no interest in rugby I hadn’t remembered the outcome from 1995 – and I wont provide a spoiler here. But Invictus is really a human interest story of real political significance and, therefore, well worth seeing.
It’s obviously a very narrow focus within the early post-Apartheid era but it is timely as what may be regards as the second phase, or counter-point, occurs later in the year as South Africa hosts the World Cup soccer which is the sport of choice for the black population. A year ago on a visit to Cape Town we were told quite firmly that soccer holds little interest for the white community.
The film takes a South African perspective, naturally, so does not address how the international governments and public opinion responded to calls for boycotts in opposition to apartheid. Or how the rest of the world adjusted to the new ‘rainbow nation’. I never understood the viewpoint that ‘politics should be kept out of sport’ as if any human activity could be declared a values-free zone for the purposes of self-interest. It often seemed a special characteristic of sporting-types that they refused to see the connections.
It seemed that personal avoidance of products imported from a certain political regime, such as South African fruit, was a modest gesture, at least, or a legitimate action. Sometimes it has been suggested that economic boycotts have a more severe impact on the victims of oppression than intended. In the case of South Africa we now see the positive consequences of that debate.
Good luck to them in making a good impression while hosting the international stage of the World Cup football.
South Africa: “given the chance, a viable future can be built.”
On visiting Cape Town, in February 2009, we asked young people and adults what the World Cup meant to them individually and for South Africa as a whole. Everyone had an answer.
But the events have a way of passing and promises about legacy often fade fast. So, good see a considered item in The Guardian reflecting what we felt then.
“If the 2010 World Cup had any significance beyond football, it was to show South Africa’s visitors – and, perhaps, the country itself – that it has no shortage of intelligent, capable, eager young people upon whom, if they are given the chance, a viable future can be built.”
World Cup 2010: The real legacy, The Guardian, Richard Williams
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/12/world-cup-2010-real-legacy