Shantytowns and Electric Fences

As I was flying to South Africa, I watched a short program describing the township of Soweto, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Soweto was established shortly after World War II as a place where Africans evicted by the ruling white National Party from designated white areas in Johannesburg were relocated. This was the beginnings of apartheid. But Sowetans became instrumental in the fight against apartheid. In 1976, the government’s attempt to enforce the teaching of Afrikaans, the language of the white ruling class, in schools led to an uprising in Soweto. Hundreds were killed by the government, but the bloodshed brought the horrors of apartheid to the fore, both within Johannesburg and internationally.  It was the beginning of the final stage in the fight to end apartheid.

Hector Pieterson is often said to be the first person killed
by police during the Soweto Uprising.  He was 12.

Today, Soweto is still largely black, and although there are parts that are seeing increasing affluence, there are also enormous numbers of black South Africans living in utter, inhuman poverty. Their houses are but crude shacks constructed from cardboard boxes, tarps, and scavenged metal. They sit near trash dumps where, the host pointed out, the residents were also scavenging for food and other essentials. 

This struck me hardest as I was watching the program. The black South Africans who live in these shantytowns have virtually no chance of experiencing any better life. And yet, only a dozen kilometers (I’m trying) away, white South Africans are living in vast, walled estates with electrified fences, driving luxury cars to work and, I would guess, rarely giving a thought to the plight of their fellow South Africans living in these shantytowns.

A typical shantytown in Soweto.

I can’t necessarily blame them for this: when you’re not confronted by this incredible destitution, it’s not something you want to think about. It’s not exactly the most happy of thoughts.

 But what’s also hard for me to understand is how, in a country where many do indeed seem to prosper, so many others are allowed to slip through the cracks, to barely subsist. Certainly, a good deal of it is probably due to racism. Because in South Africa, much like in the United States, if there is a low-wage, low-skill, service related job – a handymen, security guard, bellhop, or janitor, amongst others – black people are more than likely to be the ones filling it. It’s easy to see how this can reinforce the latent racism that these people are here merely to serve you. That their lives are not worth the same as yours. That they are not the same as you. 

But I think I would also attribute this great divide to another set of attitudes that have nothing to do with race: the idea that you are only responsible for your own well being. In other words, we are not all in this together. It’s an attitude that allows you to dismiss the less fortunate because, well, they’re not your problem. What happens to them, it says, doesn’t affect you. 

Except, of course, when you have to place an electrified fence atop the walls that surround your home.