Post-apartheid aspirations of change turn to ashes
Another fire flared on the mountain behind us in Hout Bay last Friday. Luckily, it died down quickly, partly because much of the bush-covered slope burned the previous weekend.
That was nothing, though, compared with the inferno that raged over the mountain on the opposite side of the valley.
This is, in a way, the story of modern SA.
The Hout Bay vegetation is tinder dry. Helicopters, with water buckets swinging underneath, flew all day to scoop up sea water to fight the flames. Yet the two sides of this valley are as stark, socially, as life was under apartheid: a fact emphasised dramatically by the prospect of homes being burned down.
On our side, we spent two nights with packed bags at the front door, ready for an emergency evacuation.
But if the wind direction had changed, resulting in our house burning down, we are fully insured and could start again with resources.
This is not so for the residents of Imizamo Yethu, the township I can see out of our living-room window, clinging to the side of Skoorsteinkop mountain on the other side of the valley. The fire there started high up, where the newest and poorest residents live in the area known as Dontse Yakhe (“pull your own shack”). It spread swiftly through the flimsy tin and wooden shacks, fuelled by explosions from gas and paraffin stoves.
One family of four died, and by the time the flames had been doused an estimated 4,000 homes had been destroyed, with up to 15,000 left homeless.
A large part of the problem for the fire crews was that there is only one rough road into the settlement, and residents, desperate to save their few possessions, had dragged out their belongings, blocking the path of rescue efforts.
There is no insurance for those left destitute on that side of the valley. The Cape Town municipality is providing emergency relief and, along with charities and support from the wider public, will provide a “starter kit” for the homeless: enough timber and tin materials to rebuild a shack.
Officials had hoped to clear much of the razed area in order to put in better infrastructure, but so far they have been stymied as families have already returned to reclaim their meagre spot in that charred landscape. Although by far the worst conflagration, devastating fires happen regularly in Imizamo: a tragedy replicated in townships all over the country.
RACIAL PLANNING
Hout Bay is unusual in SA in that there are three separate communities in this valley: white, black and “coloured”, all within sight of each other. Elsewhere, townships are mostly still out of sight of more affluent areas. Yet this rigid racial planning is something that the government seems to have neither the will nor imagination to change.
The result is that black workers travel further to work and pay a higher percentage of their wages for transport than anywhere else in the world. But, like everywhere else in the world, the poor from rural areas flock to cities in search of work, adding to overcrowded townships and exacerbating apartheid exclusionary planning.
Given the history of dispossession under colonial rule and later Afrikaner nationalism, land — and access to it — festers as an emotive issue.
Recently, President Jacob Zuma, to deflect criticism from his chicanery and the avarice of his coterie, called for a change in the Constitution to do away with the “willing-buyer, willing-seller” principle. This, he claims, will speed up the redistribution of land.
It is a cynical ploy because there is no such clause. While the question of land redress may be complex, the sluggish pace to date is as much to do with incompetence and corruption. And the issue of land access in urban areas — where the majority of South Africans live today, mostly in poverty — is far more pressing.
So, where will newcomers to Imizamo Yethu start now as Dontse Yakhe looks like an ashs-trewn bomb site? In the past, on seeing those shacks, people from rural areas have been known to ask: “Is that where you keep your pigs?”