They call it “the border”: the broad, snaking railway track cutting through a grimy section of the Cape Flats townships. On one side live blacks, on the other mixed-race “coloreds.”
Dumped here by the apartheid government under segregation, little has changed to integrate communities on the sandblown plains 40km from Cape Town, where grinding poverty is the only common denominator.
In Gugulethu, the black side of the track, Nomvuso Sidumo stands outside her shack made of a mishmash of materials, frowning at the suggestion of greater integration.
“No, that side is for the coloreds only. I didn’t see the blacks staying there,” she said. “We are still separated because you can’t see white people staying in shacks.”
Racial disparities inherited from apartheid are still visible, even as South Africa heads into its fourth democratic elections today.
On the Manenberg side, a bleak and deadly place ruled by gangs and drugs, overcrowded blocks of shoddy flats are interspersed by suburban-style homes — showing the preference given to the lighter-skinned people under segregation.
People of mixed-race were classified as “colored” under apartheid laws and are the largest population in Cape Town.
Winston Baadjies, 32, says little has changed 15 years after the world hailed a newly democratic South Africa as the Rainbow Nation.
“Basically it’s still the same. Nobody is coming together they are still living separately, blacks on that side, coloreds on this side and whites more in the upper class area,” Baadjies said.
David McDonald, a professor at Canada’s Queens University who spent 15 years studying segregation in Cape Town, said the problem was nationwide, but that inequality in the city was “among the worst in the world.”
He attributes this to the “economic and spatial character of segregation” and its very visual nature with the wealthy, white and cosmopolitan city of Cape Town in stark contrast to shacks that surround it.
“Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Jakarta all have extreme poverty and wealth, but what makes Cape Town and South African cities in general so unequal is the extent of the physical segregation,” he said.
“This is partly a legacy of apartheid with the highly spatialized character of apartheid planning ... which has very much been perpetuated by post-apartheid planning,” he said.
While walking through the bustling city center of Cape Town reveals a mixed and colorful crowd, the racial profile of poverty means most still return home to either a white, black or colored area.
“There has been so little change it is depressing,” McDonald said.
The physical separation also affects access to decent schools, healthcare and other services.
“When you look at the quality of infrastructure [in black and colored areas], it’s pathetic. Roads aren’t maintained properly and garbage collection isn’t done nearly as frequently,” McDonald said.
“Huge state resources are going into upgrading already wealthy areas ... poor areas are receiving a cup in the bucket.” he said.
Others argue gains are being made, however slowly, through policies of affirmative action, and new housing developments, which tend to be more mixed.
“Today desegregation has gone fastest in the millionaire and middle class suburbs where the new black section of the middle class is moving in,” said Keith Gottschalk, a political scientist at the University of the Western Cape.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not