I had written about half this blog before my comp got stolen, but now I have to start from scratch, which is too bad because the other one was really good. I mean it was poetic. I'm not even going to be modest about it.
I guess I'll start my general reflections with some of the myths and common misconceptions of townships like Kayamandi, some of which I was guilty of believing. Consider how you individually perceive the physical and social geography of a township, or even any major slum around the world like those in Brazil or India. I imagined an utterly dismal pit of misery, desperation, and suffering: widespread crime, alcoholism, gang activity, drug use, rape, and the list goes on. While these conditions do exist and will continue for the foreseeable future, that is only one half to the story. The other is one of Ubuntu and community togetherness. Here, ambition, pride, and honesty surface. You can feel the ambition among the youth - the dancers, soccer players, and singers - the pride in the home of the mother of twelve children, and honesty in the general absence of theft. Joy was to be found in the meager tin, plywood, and metal dwellings. I saw joy in Lily's tears as she was finishing her story, one that she had probably told hundreds of times; fun in the playful competitiveness of kids playing soccer in the street; ambition and commitment in of the youth dance program; talent in the voices of the teenage choir.
The "never be in a township after dark" fear is another of Selwyn's myths. As we walked beyond the vicinity of the tour van after dark had fallen, in the narrow alleys that weave through the conglameration of shacks, with my camera in the front pocket of my hoodie and children swarming all around, I couldn't have felt any safer. Selwyn told us that the kangaroo court system is responsible for community orderliness and the general absence of crime. Because it is so hard to hide in a place where virtually everyone knows everyone, this system of street justice protects people who manage to move up the social ladder. For example, a man who was eventually recognized as a cell phone stealer faced the kangaroo court of township elders for his sentence. They burned a tire around his neck as punishment, a way to convince him to never attempt robbery again and to show the community the consequences of petty theft. Another man was stripped naked, tied to the back of a car, and dragged around the township for a similar crime. This vigilante justice has its merits and flaws. The gruesome punishments and community surveillance system have made theft relatively obsolete, a non-occurrence. Rape, a frequent crime that is an outcome of a violent, male dominated society, contiues without prevention or prosecution by the system. Although, given this scenario you have to wonder, where are the federal police in township justice?
I think Hollywood is part to blame for some of these misconceptions. After all, suffering sells. So does poverty, gang violence, and drug use. Slumdog Millionaire, City of God, Hotel Rwanda, Tsotsi (an so on) informs, in large part, how we imagine places like Kayamandi. South Africa, a country so recently liberated from a violently oppressive system, is highly affected by these prevailing mental images. Understanding that apartheid is the most common association to "South Africa", the World Cup in 2010 provided the SA government a perfect opportunity to showcase the remarkable strides toward "change" that are being made. What better place to do this than in the townships that line the N2 national road that connects the airport to the city center. The government implemented a housing program that would build suitable houses for some of the township's residents. And from the road the houses look comfortable and attractive. Here's a pic of the houses of Project Gateway and an article on its failure. The recipients of these homes would suggest otherwise, as many have moved out and prefer their original (shack) homes. While the appearance is pleasing, the walls are paper thin, the lack of proper ventilation makes them incredibly stuffy in the summer heat, and the contruction is shoddy. The living conditions are fully inadequate, but that doesn't matter. After all, the government completed its objective. The thousands of fans who flew in for the World Cup could drive down the N2 could very clearly see the "progress" being made in the townships. It was little more than a cosmetic charade and a waste of funds, $2 billion. Selwyn was keen to remind that "apartheid is still very much with us".
Speaking of the faults of the The Man, Selwyn had us lured down the rabbit hole once again with a harrowing image of what apartheid really meant. He pointed towards a light that seemed unnecissarily tall and asked, "What do you make of those lights?" Nobody had any idea. Testing us he added, "OK, but what if you think of those lights in relation to this highway?" (Crickets...). "And what if I tell you their is a national road at the other side of this township?" I guess we're just a bunch of imperceptive ignoramuses, because we still didn't put the pieces together. After all the buildup Selwyn finally divulged. He indicated that in the event of an uprising, the army would be able to surround the township in a number of minutes. Because the lights were too tall to be shattered by the throw of a rock, they could light up the township as helicopters flew overhead. The setup of any township in South Africa is similar, with the evenly distributed surveillance lights and enclosure by national roads. As we drove past later that night, and all the lights were lit up, I truly had a sense of how chilling the repression must have been. In his memoir of coming of age in apartheid South Africa, Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane described how traumatic the random night police raids were as a child, as well as the widespread sources of terror in apartheid life.
On the return trip, I was sitting shotgun and wasn't following the conversations in the back, but heard Robbie talking about Kevin Spacey. Selwyn entered the conversation, while I was still lost, and they kept talking about Kevin Spacey. Finally I had to ask what all this Spacey gibberjabber was all about. Selwyn said, "You know the movie 21? That's based off me." In utter disbelief I asked, "What do you mean?" In a conversation that would consume the remainder of the trip (and for close to 30 minutes after we arrived back at the Barrington house), Selwyn told stories from his card counting days: He told us that he was one of four mentors that worked with the MIT students to master cardcounting, he explained where in the movie the true story was adjusted in order to sensationalize it, and told of other gambling schemes from Seattle to Newport. He educate us in the art of legal, casino-style highway robbery. If you take $100 Canadian dollars to American casinos across the border, they will give you $110 in playable chips (to entice the Cannucks). By following basic blackjack strategy, and exchanging the playables with cashable chips you're almost guaranteed to have an 8% return. And when you're playing with huge sums of money (private investments from Europe to the MIT team), the winnings aren't too shabby. Selwyn said he continued this for a while "until he just got bored" and "realized that money isn't everything". He told us how he had discovered, in a Take 5-like computer gambling game at a country club in Newport, RI, a basic algorithm that held the secret to the game. He called up his crew, and they drained the country club dry by exploiting that one machine. He remembered how befuddled the owners were because they were used to oldtimers making casual dime/quarter bets at the clubhouse. All of a sudden, fourteen guys came in and spent all day making $10-$20 bets. This scheme only lasted three days max, but he assured the spoils were handsome. He tested us, like he probably did the MIT team, with riddles, magic tricks, and brain-teasers the entire trip, and added more casino escapades and stories.
You're probably thinking that I'm just a gullible smuck, falling for a cheap scam. But the 21 digression wasn't part of the tour "routine", it was a tangent. Selwyn wasn't even the person to bring it up, he filled us in only after he heard Robbie and company talking about it in the back (Josh's mom had toured with Selwyn when she was visiting, and the rumor had spread). Further, there was something about Selwyn's character that made the story conceivable. He was giving us a free tour, even paid for our lunch, and hung around after his tour to just chat it up because he wanted to educate some young minds about true township culture. He was one of the most down to earth, genuine, and fascinating people I have ever met. A 21 gimmick, simply doesn't make an ounce of sense to me.
The Kayamandi experience was the first time I was witnessed and participated in a non-Western culture, with quite a different worldview. Selwyn's method of engagement instead of spectation -which most tours provide, and is sort of dehumanizing/zoo-like - gave the five of us a glimpse into a world of unexpected social beauty beside the pain of destitution. I felt the essense of revolutionary song in the church mass, I saw the difficulty of life in the communal water pump, I heard pride in the song of the youth choir, and competed with the street footy skillz of Kayamandi's finest. Those kids can ball.
(Special thanks to Seb for the use of his computer for this blog)
