David Explores an Informal Settlement

Lauren, David & Emily K at TAC march

In my time in Cape Town so far, I have had the opportunity to enter the informal settlements on two distinct occasions. Usually seen from the road or highway as I drive by, on both these occasions I was able to navigate the settlements on foot and enter people’s homes. The first time was when Isaac from Africa Unite brought a group of us to his home in Europe before we had lunch at Mzoli’s. The minibus trundled down the narrow dirt road, barely passing shacks and fences and children by inches on either side, and Isaac showed us his home and his immediate community. I have detailed this experience in a prior blog post.

           

The second time I entered the informal settlements was with TAC, when we were canvassing and mobilizing people for the mass action march on Parliament. Lauren, Emily, Rachel, Sarah Joe, myself and several mobilizers from the Khayelitsha district office were driven to an informal settlement within Khayelitsha, at the southern edge of the township by False Bay. Once out of the van, we received a quick briefing from Mike and I paired myself up with Nonqaba, one of the mobilizers. As a group, we set off into the settlement to go from shack to shack.

           

I feel like I have not adequately described the informal settlements, and will do so here. Khayelitsha itself is a massive township, with somewhere between 450,000 and 800,000 inhabitants, almost all of whom are Xhosa. It’s important to realize that Khayelitsha is not a city of shacks- there are many neighborhoods and areas with government built homes on foundations that are suitable for habitation. Khayelitsha is famous, however, for its massive swaths of informal settlements, where impoverished people and families have set up housing using any materials they can purchase or scavenge.

           

Khayelitsha itself only dates back to the 1980s; these informal settlements are of more recent origin, and are continuously growing. The Western Cape has experienced a massive influx of migrants from the Eastern Cape since the fall of Apartheid, as people and families leave the rural and impoverished Eastern Cape in search of work in Cape Town and the surrounding areas. The massive influx of immigrants has not been matched by the construction of housing, so many of these immigrants were forced to construct their own homes.

           

The informal settlements in Khayelitsha seem to have developed organically; a shack is built there, then five more there the next day, then three more the next. Roads are few and far between, and by roads I merely refer to stretches of sand or dirt that are wide enough to negotiate by car. Travel through the informal settlement is by foot, along sandy and trash-laden footpaths that wind among shacks, yards, public toilets and taps. Khayelitsha itself was built on a massive stretch of sand dune that was pulverized and flattened to allow for development. In Khayelitsha and much of the Cape Flats in general, there are few trees or grass, but rather sand, bush, and trash.

           

As I mentioned before, we entered the informal settlement as a group, and went door to door, calling out to those inside and introducing ourselves. Nonqaba and I would enter yards and knock on doors, calling “Molweni” and even letting ourselves in to see who was home. Nonqaba would always politely greet each home’s inhabitants and introduce the two of us in the traditional Xhosa manner. I was listening and several times attempted to produce the necessary phrases to perform this introduction and describe our purpose. My Xhosa is getting better, but it’s still terrible, make no mistake.

           

We wound down a hillside, negotiating down sandy and rocky paths, squeezing past metal walls, fences, and barbed wire. On the ground, tires and food slats are used to prop up land, to make fences, to designate walkways. Trash and the bones of animals litter the sand. I specifically recall coming upon multiple jawbones, with the teeth still embedded in bone.

           

Upon our entry into the first few shacks, I was shocked by home hospitable they seemed. Like Isaac’s home in Europe, these first few shacks had sturdy foundations and walls, with solid roofs and windows and doors that had glass and even sealed shut. All homes had electricity, and many had small entertainment centers and a couch or two, photos of family on the walls and handmade blankets and pillows, and many were clean and well taken care of. These were people’s homes, it struck me. And these first few, despite the lack of running water and many other resources and amenities, didn’t repel me. Was it strange to not be horrified, I wondered?

           

That impression did not last. The quality of housing varied widely, and we soon came upon homes that left me with a completely opposite impression. We came upon a house where two toddlers were sitting in the yard, among piles of discarded trash and refuse, sitting there blankly, a mangy dog laying out next to them. The next home was filled with flies. There were at least four or five children and toddlers within and one woman, cleaning in her rudimentary kitchen. The place was oppressively hot and smelled musty, the floor dirty, the roof barely attached to the walls, with light shafting through the cracks and exposed nails twisting out of the ceiling beams. The roof was hardly tall enough for me to stand, and the door was a piece of metal on a hinge. The flies buzzed through the air and stopped to land on the children’s faces and bodies, and they stood there the whole time, staring at us blankly. A baby lay on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and sleeping. Black flies crawled on the crouch around her and across her face, clustering around her mouth. I reached over and waved my hands to disperse them, but only a few flew away. As a guest in this woman’s home, I was unsure of how to behave, and worked to keep my revulsion hidden while Nonqaba educated the woman on health resources in the community and the availability of ART therapy for pregnant women. I was relieved when we stepped out at last.

           

Another home consisted of a small fenced-in yard bordered by three shacks, a seemingly communal area for a large family. Just within the gate of this yard, a female dog nursed a litter of newborn puppies, greedily sucking her milk. What fate awaits these puppies, so new and innocent of the world? They will grow up to be like the other mutts in the townships that wander about in search of a bone to gnaw on or water to drink, that are kicked and thrown about by men, who die and decompose and leave their bones in the sand of the footpaths. For the children of this community, how will their lives be? What about the humans who live there? Is there any escape? Is there hope for a decent life?

TAC activists at the health manifesto rally at Khayelitsha Site B