Township Tour and Robben Island

For our last full day in Cape Town, we had set up aTownship Tour and ferry trip to Robben Island. The driver, Titus, picked us up at the hostel a bit before 9. I noticed that his name is the same as the gorilla group that we tracked in Rwanda, haha. We asked him if our first stop could be the District Six museum. District Six was a neighborhood in Cape Town where prior to the 50s (and the harshest apartheid legislation), blacks, whites, and coloureds had lived together peacefully and the community had been vibrant with the arts in particular. But it was one of the last neighborhoods to be subjected to relocations. This meant that all the blacks, coloureds, and Indians had to leave the area, and were relocated to townships in the "cape flats" - clearly a much less desirable neighborhood than in Cape Town itself. Once they got them out, the apartheid government bulldozed all of the houses, apartment buildings, etc where the black people had lived. The only thing they didn't destroy was churches, since they felt only a communist would destroy a church, and even though they hated black people, I guess they thought god wouldn't punish them if they left the churches.

The District Six museum is actually in an old church in the area. It portrays the artsy history of the area, complete with people's stories and profiles of community members, what their lives were like before and after relocation. It was really interesting to learn that after the apartheid government fell, there was a "take back District Six" movement, where former residents reclaimed their old properties and started to move back into the neighborhood.

Driving through the district on our way to the townships, you could see just empty spaces...with a church in the middle of a field. Titus said that the churches used to be surrounded with homes and schools, but that they had all been knocked down when the people were relocated. We drove about 15 minutes to Langa, which is the first and oldest township. It is currently home to about 250,000 people and has one health center. Driving in we saw the skeleton of a police station that people had burned during freedom riots (we later saw the current police station as well). We stopped near some run-down looking apartment buildings, where we were introduced to our local guide, Yandisa. He was a good-looking 27 year old guy who was born and raised in Langa (I was instantly in love, ask Sam). He first showed us the bottom of the line living conditions. It was a room about the size of a Village C dorm room (small) - containing 3 beds, and was home to 13 people! The three beds were just single beds, with the people's stuff all piled on top. Yandisa said that 2 people's share each bed, and then the kids sleep on the floor in the main room (a common area shared by the 4 rooms like the one we saw in the complex. ). It was just staggering to see. Yandisa said that things were actually better for them BEFORE - under apartheid. The first room we saw cost about 20 rand a month per family - less than $3. Next we went to a small apartment, that you had to go up exterior steps to reach. It was a small 2 bedroom apartment, with the cutest little boy ever who was playing air guitar like a rock star! The kitchen was very old looking, with a small electric burner. Each unit has a little box where they turn the electric on and off so they can monitor exactly how much power they are using (and so how much they have to pay for). 7 people lived in this particular apartment, which seemed to be about the norm.

Next Yandisa took us to a kindergarten, where the kids sang and danced for us. They were so super cute. One little girl was playing the drum, and she was really good, and looked so intense while she was playing, it was kind of funny. Sam took a bunch of videos of them as well.


Yandisa encouraging the kids, while they sang South Africa's national anthem in two different languages. They were just adorable.

We then went for a walk to where the shacks are - this is what we would call slums in East Africa. We stopped at one where they were selling crafts and Sam bought a really cute little painting, with raised up buildings made out of soda cans. Inside the shacks:


When it rains, they have to be super careful because the roofs leak (see how they're not exactly solid/substantial) and it can get dangerous when they use the electricity. Any shacks that were built after 2006 technically aren't allowed to be there, so the government comes through and spray paints a blue x on any that they determine to have been built after 2006. So some of the more clever Langa residents have painted their shacks blue so that when they put the x on it, you can't tell:


Clever stuff. Just seeing these townships after our week in basically luxury in Cape Town was like a rude awakening. It's insane to me that people live like this in the post apartheid era. Things were supposed to get better for the Africans in south Africa - but it seems like conditions haven't really changed much in the last 50 years or so since people were relocated to the townships. We walked by a house that Yandisa said is his favorite. It's an actual single family house on a corner, painted yellow, with an impeccably kept garden. He said it makes him sad the the younger people don't keep their gardens anymore, but this house is owned by an old lady who he said is always outside weeding and gardening - we actually saw her as we passed by. S there are single family homes there, just super close together with very little yard space or space in between the houses - like row houses except they don't actually touch, basically. These are about 300 R/month - like $40.

When we left Langa, we drove through Nyanga, another township. Pretty much the same kind of set up - and there are TONs of these townships, all out in the cape flats to the east of the city. The slums/shacks around the townships are continually growing as people move from other parts of South Africa to Cape Town and can't afford to live in the city, so they just set up a shack on the edge of a township and that's home. The disparity in Cape Town is incredible - East Africa is just, everyone is poor, so the slums and shacks are just part of the landscape almost. The rich of East Africa are very few and far between, and they're not Western-rich. The rich in South Africa, are like rich people in the US, and the poor are like the poor of East Africa, so the contrast, like on the N2, the major highway into Cape Town that goes though many of these townships, is just startlingly unimaginable.

We arrived at the V&A waterfront and Titus picked up our tickets for us for the Robben Island ferry. We grabbed a quick lunch after he left us there, and then were on the 1 o'clock ferry to Robben Island. Once you arrive on the island, they put everyone on buses for the tour. The tour guide on the bus is a former political prisoner. Ours was a great guide, he asked what countries everyone was from, and as he gave the tour, managed to work in a tidbit about that country. We stopped at an overlook where you could look out to Cape Town, and see Signal Hill, Lion's Head, and Table Mountain.


We also drove by the lime quarry, which was where Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners worked on the island. Limestone is very white and bright in the sun, and they weren't allowed to wear sunglasses for I think the first 7 or so years that they worked in the quarry, and many of the men suffered partial or complete blindness as a result.



The lime quarry. The political prisoners also used this as a place to stage some of their protests. They would work slowly to prove a point, they would use it as time to communicate amongst each other and to learn from each other, as many of the prisoners sought degrees via correspondence courses with London universities while they were at Robben Island. Next the bus stopped just outside of the actual prison, and there a new guide met us and we went inside. First we went into the F block of the prison, which was where our guide had been imprisoned. It's a fairly large cell, but it housed 60 men. Today there are not only bars on the windows, but glass, too. When the prisoners were here there was no glass and they had minimal blankets. It gets pretty cold in Cape Town, especially out on Robben Island when the wind picks up, which is most of the time. F block was where the political prisoners were who weren't as "important" - so not the guys like Mandela and Soweto. They were kept in the B block, where they each had their own cell, so as to minimize communication between the prisoners. We saw the B block courtyard, where Mandela did his exercises, and where they chopped up pieces of rock into finer gravel. There was also a famous picture of Nelson Mandela in the courtyard where he's wearing a nice outfit with a jacket - the guards gave them nicer clothes for the day the Red Cross was coming to visit. The African prisoners had to wear short pants which Mandela in particular took offense to, and so he led a series of hunger strikes, slow work strikes, and other methods to show their dissatisfaction. The we went inside and we got to see Mandela's cell, B7:


They said it was 2 meters by 3 meters. So tiny to spend 18 years in.

Then we walked back to the boat dock and took the ferry back to the waterfront. We walked back to the hostel along the Sea Point Promemade, past the Mouille Point Lighthouse:


We got back to the hostel and started getting out stuff sort of packed up so we wouldn't have to pack in the morning. We had an 8:30 dinner reservation at Quay Four on the waterfront, but we got down there a little early so that we could ride the ferris wheel (finally). What a bummer, it wasn't working when we got there! Or wasn't running, but whatever. Either way, it's like the sketchiest ferris wheel ever, since we kept trying to ride it and never could! Infuriating. Our dinner was really nice (started off with sushi for each of us, then I had a sesame crusted rare tuna steak, uhhhhmazing). We had a very nice time, including a table overlooking the harbor. Pretty sweet.

Returned to the hostel, and we hung out for a while with our trusty Brazilian bartenders, Renan and Jose. Overall a very enjoyable time for our last night in Cape Town. In the morning, Sam left a bit before me, singer her flight was a few hours before mine. I took a taxi to the city center and then the shuttle to the airport. Flight to Jo'burg went fine, and t the airport I had a steak (obviously had to spend the last of my South African rand!) and my last Savannah Dry (kind of like a cider that they had there, really good). Then it was time for my EPIC 18 hour flight back to DC. I watched The Vow (awful, the only reason I don't totally regret this is because it was that long of a flight), Pleasantville (an always enjoyable classic), The Shawshank Redemption (first time seeing it, very much worth it), and Valentine's Day (had seen bits and pieces of it, but never all the way thru, it's trying too hard to be like Love Actually, but it was just ok). Got home and Gary picked me up as planned, so all worked out.

I'll try to get it together enough to write a final reflection... But if not, it's been real.

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