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Before flying to Durban we went on a guided tour of the black and coloured townships of Cape Town. It was a very interesting to see the conditions which a large part of the population had to endure, but we also learned that the situation was not hopeless and improvements were certainly happening. After spending the night in Durban we travelled back to Swaziland to stay at an orphanage in Nhlangano which was run by Borgny, a relative of ours.
South African Adventure 1999, Part 8: From Cape Town back to Swaziland via Durban
Jan Arild Teland2006-05-08 20:24:05
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the families had to stay somewhere.
However, Frank pointed out that the people living here were continously improving their houses, and that if we were to come back six months later, there would be real houses where some of the shacks were now standing. This was also evident from looking around the street. For example, in one place there was a very long house, belonging to a doctor. He had probably bought up all the properties around him and used them to extend his own home. According to Frank, the people who lived in this area were actually quite lucky as they had room for extending their houses. They were not really poor, he said.
On driving a little bit further into Langa we came to a quite busy street where we all got out. We followed Frank into a socalled "migrant hostel". Again, this had been rented to black workers during Apartheid. There appeared to be three persons living in each of the very small rooms here. It was not very clean and looked very crowded. The people who lived had no extra space where they could put up shacks to accomodate their family. Consequently, their family had to live somewhere else. We would soon find out where.
There had originally been exactly the same type of hostels across the street, but these had been renovated and now looked really nice in bright colours. They had also been rebuilt from hostels into proper houses, which however had the disadvantage that there was not space for the same number of people inside, and some families were forced out. Each family had been given their own rubbish bin, which seemed to make an enormous difference. On the "new" side of the road everything was clean, while on the "old" side rubbish was floating around everywhere.
The streets around here were really crowded with people. I guess if you live in one of these hostels, there's nothing much to stay inside for. Lots of people were selling various stuff, including meat which was just lying outside, and
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See photographs from:
South Africa Gallery
,
Swaziland Gallery
