14th day: 2 sides of Cape Town

This was my last day, before leaving Cape Town and South Africa. I wanted to make it special, so I booked a guide to show me the "other side" of Cape Town.

I started my day in Langa, which is a suburb found in Cape Town. It was established in 1927 in terms of the 1923 Urban Areas Act.  Langa is one of the many areas in South Africa that were designated for Black Africans before the apartheid era. It is the oldest of such suburbs in Cape Town and was the location of much resistance to apartheid.

Like every village, Langa also has different social levels of living. We started straight in the middle. The ISO containers below are separated in the middle, each part accommodating a whole family, each of 4-6 people. There is no water only electricity in there.

An other type of living space are brick houses, with a communal area used by several families and small rooms like 8-10m2 attached to it, used mainly for sleeping, shared by 2-3 families!!!

There is also a kind of "Beverly Hills" of the township, where people live who got good education, good work and became financially successful. Because of their cultural background and personal relations, they feel comfortable in the township, they do not leave.

The other end are the shaky wooden huts like below. People, who seek privacy or do not get any space in the different accommodations above build these, to have a roof at least for themselves. Since it is usually made of wood and nylon it is very sensitive to fire. It happens often that several 1000 of these huts burn down, making people homeless.

The townships used to be the reservoir of South Africa for workers. Almost 50% are still unemployed and try to live on social benefits or if no other choice money coming from criminal acts. You can hear a lot of stories about gangs and crime in the townships, but I had the impression that the story is not  about that. There are criminals, not because they have fun to do so, but because there is no choice...... Looking at the million worth villas just a few kms on, I can fully understand their motivation. Anyway most people living in the townships are against crime, they really trying to their best to survive.

I met a lot of friendly and especially happy people here. The most nice experience was, visiting a local kindergarden. I think people are still happier in their poverty as many of us in western cultures.

    

During the visit I also got some language lessons from my guide, who was a native Xhosa speaker.

Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said with a rising or falling or high or low intonation. One of the most distinctive features of the language is the prominence of click consonants; the word "Xhosa" begins with a click. Anyway Nelson Mandela was a Xhosa speaker as well. Click to hear the first lesson:

I recommend the tour to everybody, to get a full picture about Cape Town and South Africa.
http://www.townshiptourscapetown.co.za/


I still had the whole afternoon free and drive out to see again the beaches and the coastline. Since it was very windy (100kmh), beaches were empty and quiet.

See my pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/szaipandras/SouthAfrica#


Tomorrow I'll leave early and fly in 30 hours via Johannesburg and Dubai to Amsterdam. Probably winter is waiting for me. If you liked my trip and would like to comment it or need help for custom made trips wherever in the world, write me:

http://www.facebook.com/szaip.andras
or
szaipandras@hotmail.com