Townships

Remember when I said that South Africa can continue to shock you no matter how long you’ve been here for, well today I felt it. Another shock and I’ve been here almost 4 months now.

I’ve spoken about Kuyga, it is the township that the Baha’is in P.E are currently focusing on. Well Kuyga and townships in general shocked me. That the governments solution for the poor was to build them a crummy little shoebox where sometimes 10 people were living inside was very shocking to me. Seeing the way people lived in this township, driving around on a Saturday morning and in ever front yard was people sitting around getting drunk, the fact that there are more liquor shops than grocery stores, that children wander the streets completely unsupervised sometimes even carrying their younger siblings around. In my experience of life whenever a child wants to hold a little baby parents are so protective of the baby. “Sit down and I’ll put baby in your lap, careful of her head, put this arm like that and your other arm there, very good. Awww look how cute, now give baby back.” Here if you are old enough to walk you are old enough to care for your younger siblings. I guess you could look at it as a sign of maturity that a 7 year old knows how to take care of a baby but I’m not so sure. So Kuyga is bad according to my standards of how people should be living. The streets are dirty and by the way all made of mud, there are no tar roads in Kuyga, there are dogs everywhere and I mean everywhere as well as the random cow or goat walking the streets and with stray animals means animal doo doo, you have to wear closed shoes walking around otherwise you will end up with a thorn or glass in your foot. It’s just not that nice a place.

Yesterday I was talking to someone about the difference between government housing in Aus and in Kuyga and I was explaining how if anyone were to attempt to raise children in a house like a township home in Australia they would have their children taken away from them for child neglect. He looked at me with surprise and then said something I most definitely did not believe ‘Kuyga is one of the good townships’.

Well at the time like I said I didn’t believe it, not that I didn’t think it could get worse, this is Africa it can always get worse, but more so that I couldn’t conceive what could be worse than Kuyga. More mud? More dogs? More drunk people? Today I saw it, I saw what worse looks like and it shocked me.

I don’t even know how to describe what worse looks like, a township is a concept that I don’t think you can fully comprehend when you’ve been raised in a country like Australia. I could explain to you what it looks like I could even show you photos and videos but you can never really understand until you’ve seen it. What I saw today was disheartening, it made me feel hopeless and upset and confused. I saw people stealing electricity, they would get a chair and 2 men would stand on it, one pushing the other up, to reach the power lines. They would pull a line down and then attach another line to connect to their homes. Mr Fudu who works for the council said that the council is powerless to stop this because most of the councillors stand up for these people. I mean they don’t have electricity what are they supposed to do light a candle? These people are living in shacks, these shacks are small and filled with people and there are way too many stories of them burning down with entire families trapped inside. I was shocked.

Now let me explain something about the shack houses. In a township your house is given to you for free and you don’t pay for your water. The only thing you have to pay for is your electricity. Sounds like a fair deal, a free home with minimal costs it sounds like the government is doing a great job to help tackle poverty and homelessness. Here’s the flaw. There are no restrictions on who can get a free house, there are no regulations, there are no checks. Anyone can own a house in a township all you have to do is build a shack somewhere in the township and within maybe a year the government will build you a brick house. You don’t have to be poor to live in a township and unfortunately people are abusing the system. I own a home, I want another home, I build a shack, I get a free home. It is taxpayers that are covering all these costs and with no regulations people are taking advantage of the offer.

Don’t get me wrong it’s not like these townships homes are luxury living but it’s land and a house and anyone can cash in on the offer. Sometimes you go into a township and see huge houses with nice gardens and a fancy car parked in front. People are definitely abusing the system. So why not regulate the townships and then you realise it’s all about politics. People need votes to get power, regulating townships isn’t going to make you Mr. Popularity. And so it continues, more shacks are set up surrounding the brick homes and eventually some family gets a place to live. A corrupt system is better than no system at all, at least people will have a roof over their heads. I still don’t like the idea of it, the whole system is in need of a renovation. When you continually hand out freebies there’s no incentive to work for what you have. There’s so much alcohol and crime in the townships, without even stereotyping or making an unfair judgement township lifestyle is based around alcohol. When you grow up in this world it ends up being all you know, there is this cycle that continues around and around, each generation starting earlier than the last.

So today I was shocked again. Another interesting lesson learnt. I wonder what the next will be.