Cape Town is a tourist destination for a reason. Before the plane even touches the ground, you can see the gorgeous layout of the mountains and sea from above, as well everything that has been built into the geography. Being at sea level is equally stunning; in any direction you turn, can almost always see the mountains or the ocean that make Cape Town so iconic. It was only when we began to learn about the ways in which apartheid was implemented here that my perspective on the scenery began to change a bit.
Apartheid didn’t really happen here the same way it did in Johannesburg. Whereas the racial segregation in Joburg was created along pretty arbitrary lines, its architects used the natural landscape of Cape Town to carry it out. White people stayed in or near the Central Business District (CBD) and the water, colored people were moved to the Cape Flats, and black people to the townships on the other side of the mountains. Today, the demographics of those areas haven’t changed much at all. The townships are still black, the Cape Flats still colored, and areas like Sea Point are still overwhelmingly white.
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| Cape Town's CBD from above |
Along with the lack of integration in the city, apartheid has left South Africa as the most unequal society in the world. We saw so many examples of the extreme economic stratification that can be traced back to the country’s history. In Johannesburg, we visited Alexandra, the oldest township and also one of the most impoverished. Less than ten minutes down the road, we stopped in Sandton, the richest square mile in all of Africa. The glitz and glamor of the mall we saw was barely even comparable to a nice mall in America. It was also, not coincidentally, one of the only places I saw white people in Johannesburg.
As if segregation via geographical barriers weren’t enough, the architects of apartheid wanted to make sure each racial group was physically separated by a buffer zone. These could include highways, railroad tracks, green space, or golf courses, to name a few. These kinds of “neutral” places are actually not neutral at all, and it is very thought-provoking as a student to use these spaces knowing that they were constructed to divide people. In Cape Town, we visited a township called Khayelitsha, which is located about a 45 minute drive outside the city. (Many people who live in the township do this commute on a daily basis for work, relying on transportation such as minibuses.) The quality of housing changes rapidly as you drive further outside of the CBD. The tall buildings disappear and are replaced with either government-subsidized (RDP) houses or informal settlements that are built across the land rather than up. As we drove on the highway to Khayelitsha, many of us were surprised that a place this far from the city could still be considered a part of Cape Town. (Johannesburg was even more spread out; you could drive straight through the city for an hour without traffic and still not be in the next town.
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| Khayelitsha from Lookout Hill |
The physical scars of apartheid are pretty obvious if you know what you’re looking for, but there are a lot of nuances when it comes to social exclusion in the cities as well. Throughout our time in South Africa, we have tried to grapple with these ideas and how this kind of legacy has had dire consequences for people seeking economic opportunity in places like Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Caroline Panchelli
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