Langa Tour

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Today Jason and I went on a tour of Langa Township. I may have written a bit about this yesterday but a township is essentially an area set aside by the apartheid regime that was reserved specifically for a certain racial group to live in. The Langa township was one particular area established for the black population outside of Cape Town. It had one road that allowed people in or out. This was so the government could restrict the flow of people into or out of the township in the event of violence or anything else that the white apartheid government might not approve of. The township is approximately 400 hectares (don't ask for the conversion to acres... I don't know what it is) and originally was designed for 5,000 residents. Today the Langa township is home to approximately 120,000 people.

There are lots of different parts to it and each is really different. There are some areas with regular houses, yards, driveways and they look like a small suburban community. In this part of the township it won't be uncommon to find what we could consider many "middle class" professionals. People like teachers, lawyers, and perhaps doctors. The guide said lots of people who can afford to move to a better place choose to remain there because it is what they know and culturally they feel comfortable. It is not uncommon for many traditional South Africans to slaughter a goat for important events and it is acceptable to do that in the township whereas if they moved to the suburbs and slaughtered a goat it would be frowned upon. We went into a few people's homes as well. One was what they called a hostile, which had 16 families living in one building. Each bedroom had 3 twin size beds and holds 3 families. There is one communal living room/kitchen for everyone which is converted to another bedroom at night. Then we went to another house which is built for a single family. This house was slightly smaller than the hostile and had one kitchen/communal area, one bedroom and a bathroom. Finally we went into a shack which is just made of scrap wood, metal, and garbage bags. Many families choose to build these shacks themselves out of whatever scrap they can find otherwise they are able to have shacks professionally built. There is a huge difference between the self-built shacks and the professional ones. A professional shack could cost up to $700 to have built. We also went to a shebeen, which is like an illegal pub (not illegal anymore) and sampled some of their homemade beer made from cornmeal and sorghum. They ferment it in 55 gallon plastic barrels and it got served to us in a 5 litre paint can. It was white and looked almost like milk. I just took a sip but it was surprisingly good and the whole paint can cost only 20 Rand (less than $3!!). While this was the experience that Jason and I were both looking for from our trip here, we couldn't help but feel uncomfortable throughout much of our time in the township. Many of these families probably rely on tourism for income but it felt odd to be walking through these areas which give the impression of abject poverty with our expensive cameras and nice clothes. In addition I couldn't help but notice a very strange dichotomy in many of these shacks. All the shacks have electricity but in many of them we saw televisions, large stereos, microwaves, and even people talking on cell phones. When you look at a tiny, 100 sqaure foot shack that houses an entire family it is odd to see them with these things. It was a strange thing to look at but I kept trying to remind myself that, according to our guides, many families choose to live here because it is the only thing they know and what they are comfortable with. I couldn't help but imagining what it must have been like here 20 years ago when these families had no electricity, did not have the ability to travel freely throughout their own nation and could not vote. It is this type of abject inequality that caught my interest in South African history in the first place.

After our township tour we had the opportunity to watch a building implosion outside of Cape Town. There are (or were) two cooling towers for a coal power plant outside of the city that were set to be demolished today at noon. Our guide found a spot on the side of the road with a clear view for us and we were able to watch them go down. Although the implosion went off a few minutes early so we were caught off guard without our cameras it was still a cool thing to witness. In addition, it was interesting to see because this power plant once was a boundary for the Langa township and it was interesting to see it being demolished.

Our Robben Island tour was cancelled due to choppy seas again so we spent the rest of the day wandering around the waterfront for lunch, walking through District 6 and making our last purchases (expensive brandy!). We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, had a nice Thai dinner and are getting ready for our final full day in Cape Town tomorrow. Since we had Robben Island cancelled today it means that we are going to miss out on one of our two final tours. Tomorrow we are either going to go to Robben Island or go great white cage diving. While we already know what we are doing tomorrow, you'll have to check back here for a new post to see what we decided.

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