In both the 19th and 20th centuries, industrialisation and urbanisation threw up mass population growth, migration and socio-economic change. With that has always come squalor. Britain’s industrial revolution created its back-to-back houses and tenements: slum housing, in short. Modern day favelas are a feature of Latin America. Every African city has its shanty town; America has its ghettos and trailer parks.
It is also true that migrants are more likely to be men: men looking for work. One common feature of the industrial revolution would be the men’s hostel. It was also true that when families ended up in the big cities they often found themselves living in a one-room tenement. It is also true to say that migrants often come from the impoverished and marginalised, hence the mass wave of Irish immigration into Britain, in both the 19th and 20th centuries.
In some ways, Cape Town was no different. But this is South Africa, so it was. By the turn of the century, the demand for labour in the mines led the government to force Zulu men to become migrant workers in the mines, by imposing monetary tax upon them. From all over rural South Africa, men also migrated to Cape Town. That influx of black men frightened many whites, and the city authorities, and the Cape government. An outbreak of bubonic plague saw blacks moved out to a separate encampment.
Next, the Natives Land Act, 1913, saw blacks right of land ownership restricted, as the new union government sought to placate Boer opinion. That act also required urban blacks to have a pass: without it, they could be deported to the countryside. A 1945 act strengthened those laws. Still though, black people came to the cities. In Urban Areas Act, of 1923, gave local authorities the power to force unemployed blacks to leave the cities. Also, it allowed the creation of townships. Langa was created in 1927, specifically to house blacks who worked in the city. Thus, well before apartheid, blacks were being penned into townships, and living in squalor.
Then came apartheid. When Jan Smuts considered repealing the pass laws, the National Party won the 1948 election, in large part because of a promise to restrict black (and coloured) urbanisation. The Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act now formally confined Cape Town’s blacks and coloured to separate township, of which Langa was the oldest.
Apartheid also forbade men to keep their families with them, so yet more hostels were built, full of single men. Poverty and squalor made matters worse. For all the authorities attempts to control it, those townships grew with makeshift housing and masses of black people fleeing rural poverty and looking for work: vast townships grew. Not surprisingly, they became the focus of protest movements and political activism.
Langa is one of the smallest, holding some 52,000 souls in around three square kilometres. It has all the problems other townships have, though not as bad as some. Unlike, say, the Cape Flats, crime is not overwhelming it. However, unemployment is somewhere around 40%, HIV/AIDS leaves a terrible legacy, as does a high rate of teenage pregnancy and ill-health among young children.
On our walk around, we saw plenty of evidence of Langa’s problems. We learned of its unemployment (a rate of around 40%). We saw the now-familiar shacks and shipping containers that some call home. We saw the men’s hostels. We learned of the ill-health that blights children’s lives, of the high teenage pregnancy rate, and problems of HIV/AIDS. The renovated hostel we saw, actually meant a family living in one small room. Everywhere was litter-strewn.
And yet there was another side. Once more, we visited a nursery and the young children were, predictably, boisterous and as sweet as only small children can be.
They were being taught in English, too, instead of their first language, Xhosa (English will give them a better chance to get a job, in time). At the nursery they have health checks, good food. As well as the squalor, we saw businesses, lovingly renovated houses (that their residents have brought), satellite dishes everywhere and some pretty good cars. Crime is relatively low in Langa too, unlike the widespread criminality that is almost out of control on the Cape Flats.
We then went to lunch at Lelapa, run by Monica Mahloane.
With a mixture of South African music, or popular hits given a South African twist, and an eccentric introduction from the owner, great fun was had by all. Most of all, the food was delicious, and different. And some of us got involved.
So, yes, we saw poverty and hardship. And we saw squalor. But we also saw something else.
Once again, that’s why we tour.
RGS South Africa 2018 