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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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impression was that things looked much better in this area, at least the houses were much bigger and nicer. However, Frank explained that drugs, gangs and violent crime was a much larger problem here than in the black areas. According to Frank, everybody had to join a gang for "protection", and these gangs were at war with each other constantly.
In one of the townships called Guguletu, we stopped in the side of the road near a petrol station. The place didn't look particularly interesting until Frank told us that an American student called Amy Biehl had been killed here some years ago. None of us had heard of her, but apparently this murder had been quite a big story in the news. She had come to South Africa to help the black population in their struggles, and had been putting in a lot of work for their cause.
However, one day there had been a black demonstration which had gotten out of hand. Some of the protesters had decided to take their anger out on the first white person they saw, which turned out to be Amy. When the news about Amy's murder spread to the many black people who knew about her work, they reacted angrily by seeking out the guilty ones and punishing them severely.
Frank claimed that as a consequence of the reaction of the black majority to Amy's murder and the blind violence against random whites, it was now completely safe for white people to walk around in Guguletu. Amy's parents had later founded the Amy Biehl foundation to continue her work.
We drove around in some other coloured areas. In one place where they had electric streetlights, a lot of people had reconnected the wires from the lights through to their homes, and were thereby stealing electricity! However, this set up looked quite dangerous as the wires were often hanging so low that anybody could just reach out and touch them.
In another area the government had demolished the old buildings and built new small houses.
...
See photographs from:
South Africa Gallery
,
Swaziland Gallery
