More South Africa

My dad sent me a couple questions about South Africa, so I thought I'd post the answers here too in addition to replying to his e-mail.

LOVE YOU ALL!

South Africa is VERY high on the "go back" list. In fact, I'm thinking of interning there next summer. That makes missing bungee/sharks/table mountain less sad, since I know I can do it then (or whenever I do end up coming back). Even though the apartheid is over and there is no more institutionalized segregation, segregation still exists. It's not like once they were allowed to live together blacks magically had enough money to move into the white suburbs, so there is still a lot of segregation in where people live and therefore work, hangout, etc. And there is some left over racism - coloureds not wanting to be identified as blacks, whites not wanting blacks to be seen as equals, etc. But overall, they've come a long way. There is a lot of interracial mixing. That being said, 90% of whites have never been to the townships (slums where the black people live) and something around 90% of blacks have never been invited into a white person's home. So they still have a ways to go.

Who owns the businesses really depends on what part of town you're in. Mostly, though, I'm guessing it's owned by whites and coloureds.

What it looks like walking down the street also varies a lot depending on what part of town you're in. I would divide the parts of Cape Town I saw into three main parts: 1) The waterfront, 2) Downtown, 3) The Townships

The waterfront area looks oddly, remarkably like Capitola. Well. . . except for all the boats and the freakin' huge Table Mountain in the background. But it has the same feel - REALLY, REALLY safe, cute, touristy, good food, lots of shops, etc. Oh! And there is lots of really, really good live music. Jazz and some African instruments that I don't know the name of.

Downtown is similar to any downtown you might find in the states. The buildings are multistory, there is larger racial diversity, and it's a bit dirtier than the Waterfront area. Differences from the US are that they drive on the left (weird) and it's probably a little bit more rundown than a lot of places. The infrastructure isn't wonderful, but it's getting better. There's a cool little market right in the middle. Like a mini-flea market. Except the vendors are a lot more aggressive than Santa Cruz flea market people. I think that's something I'm really going to appreciate when I go home: the privileged of being able to look around, decide not to buy anything, and leave without anyone hassling me or telling me they have "good price, good price." Downtown isn't somewhere you'd want to wander around alone at night, but I think you can attribute that simply to it being the downtown area of a large city as opposed to it being Cape Town, South Africa.

The Townships are nothing like what we have in America. They don't even approach what I've seen in Tijuana. The Townships, or "Shanty Towns" are the areas where the black people were forced to live during the apartheid and where they have since lived because of lack of resources or money to move elsewhere. But they've actually improved a lot over the last ten years. Now there are beginning to be roads, electricity, and there's a porta-potty every once in awhile. So that's an improvement that you have to give them credit for. Plus there are kind of "half way houses." That's not what they're called, but it's something between Townships and "real" houses that people are slowly moving into as they are provided by the government. But then the spaces in the Townships are quickly filled by immigrants from Zimbabwe and other war torn, dangerous countries. So the government is trying, and making progress, but they have a looooong way to go. The houses are about the size of my closet (I have a big closet, but that's still pretty freakin small). Maybe a little bigger. They're made out of scrap metal and lumber and packed close together with maybe a foot between. MAYBE a foot. If you get a little higher than them, it looks like a solid layer of metal, the houses are so close together. Whole families - sometimes even multiple families - live in these houses. They generally don't have electricity or water. Actually, I didn't see any with water, but I'm guessing there might be a couple. The floors are dirt.

The part of Cape Town that I didn't see was the country area where all the wine tasting is. I heard it looks a lot like Napa, California.

South Africa was rated #1 for a long time about having the greatest disparity between rich and poor (only recently passed up by Columbia). I can definitely see why. It's crazy that the two worlds are only a couple minutes away from each other, and yet whites often completely ignore the Townships and blacks sometimes never venture beyond them. Crazy.