Yesterday, Tuesday May 22, 2012, I had one of the most bizarre and fascinating days of my life. Because I have quite a lot of free time in between finals, I decided to spend the day wandering around Cape Town. As I was about to hop in a minibus, my good friend Flaxman calls me and asks me if I want to do a township tour. At first I put down his offer because I already had the township experience early on and with SHAWCO, and didn’t want to pay a guy who would just drive around and provide the normal tour guide bs. He said it was free of charge, so I said what the hell, I’m in. Little did I know I would be getting a tour from undoubtedly the most reputable tour guide in Cape Town, with an amazing lunch included, for about 10 hours. Our guide, Selwyn Davidowitz, had given similar tours to Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, Barbara and Walter Cronkite, and actually turned down Chris Rock in his career.
Selwyn
was one of the most personal, genuine, and intriguing people I have ever met
(for reasons I’ll later explain), but gave us a free tour because he had a
stake in the future of Kayamandi township, and all other townships for that
matter. He has been involved with Kayamandi for close to twenty years,
implementing community development initiatives and becoming an important figure
in the community. The kids all affectionately yell “Laduma”, or “GOAL”, as we
drive and walk by. After the World Cup, Selwyn was given this nickname, and it
stuck. Selwyn had three purposes for the tour: 1) To dispel myths about
township life, 2) To have us intimately engage with people of the township, and
3) to reveal current conditions and expectations of the future (which are quite
alarming, according to his understanding). Before witnessing the inhumanities
that characterize life in these environs, Selwyn would take us to the place of
his college years, a place well known for its wine, rugby, and high culture. I’m
referring to Stellenbosch, the former bastion of Afrikaner Nationalist
sentiment, where the political party that came to power to design and implement
apartheid emerged. To give some perspective, Selwyn recalled a common epithet
of the late rugby coach, who used to say, “A black will never wear the Green
and Gold”, meaning the rugby uniform of the national rugby team. His statue
still stands next to the rugby fields, a testament to the past and enduring
symbol of rugby as a white-only sport. This exercise in witnessing unimaginable
disparity – between that of Stellenbosch and Kayamandi Township – profoundly
amplified the tour experience in a way that is possible in very few places
around the world.
We
arrived in Stellenbosch, where Selwyn had planned a lunch at a small, intimate
bakery. The Panini, desert, and microbrew were individually the best foods I
have eaten my entire stay in Cape Town – and Laduma paid for it all. During
lunch, he gave us the entire, condensed history of South Africa, explaining
what forced the Afrikaner government to impose such drastic racial measures
upon coming to power in the 1940s. He also explained customs, etiquette, and
social expectations that we should adhere to in Kayamandi, but most importantly,
he described the cultural philosophy of Ubuntu. One of the most unique features
of township life, Ubuntu loosely means that your existence is dependent on the
relationship you have with others. In other words, my hardship is our hardship.
Ubuntu is a spiritual ethos as much a social force for efficient communal
organization; this, in my opinion, is what separates traditional African
lifestyles from Western conceptions of the world. Selwyn highlighted the
presence of Ubuntu as a community unifier, an arbiter for conflict, and place
township residents can find solace amidst the destitution that surrounds them.
Selwyn encouraged us to walk into people’s houses without knocking, because to
knock would be like saying to the homeowner, “Are you be proud of your house?”
when in fact they always take pride in their homes and have nothing to hide. Ubuntu
is revealed in the hours after residents return from work, when the streets are
filled with people talking, church services taking place, and groups of
children free to roam and play. The absence of electricity in many homes, and
thus lack of TV, means that the only source of entertainment is each other.
Ubuntu is an overwhelming feeling that you can only fully comprehend by
visiting and immersing yourself in the daily life. We were lucky enough to have
a glimpse of this, and even participate.
Following the lunch, we drove around
Stellenbosch University, whose beauty is comparable only to that of Stanford,
according to Selwyn’s opinion anyway. En route to Kayamandi, we stop to pick up
Lily, a township resident, whom we would later discover is featured on the South
Africa segment of CBS’s 1,000 places to see before you die.
Lily’s segment starts at 3:46 in this video:
At some point she lost
her job and took a financial risk on a small stove top (that is shown briefly
in the video). Again, against the wall of abject poverty, she did anything she
could to make money in an honest fashion – pride is immensely important in
township communities. She was divorced, unemployed, had two children to provide
for, and just enough money to purchase ingredients for scones, the saving grace
that catapulted her life. Because her scones became so popular in Kayamandi,
she continued to make more on that small stovetop, expanding her homestay
restaurant, which she named “Once Upon a Stove”. Gradually becoming a master of
traditional cuisine, and getting in touch with Selwyn, she traveled to Toronto
for an international food expo. Eventually, CBS recognized her story and her
“Once Upon a Stove” homestay restaurant, and that is where she is today – a
person recognizable as a member of the “1,000 places to see before you die”.
Again, this extraordinary opportunity came completely out of the blue for me.
Truly something ethereal.
Lily
continued to tell stories as we left her house, slowly making our way into the
van and then heading to a community center established by Selwyn. He runs a
dance program, which is based off a model in Harlem, that pays for children to
go to better schools if they can commit a full year to learning dance (the
movie Take the Lead is based on this
program). The program has multiple aims: to get kids away from drugs and off
the street, to instill virtues of discipline and commitment, and also to
encourage the boys to have more respect for their female partners. The kids are
chosen by their ability to commit, to prove they could adapt this commitment to
education, not by aptitude, tests scores, etc. The five of us on the tour provided
a unique opportunity for the kids to showcase their talent to someone from
outside the community. After they put on a few dance numbers, they asked us to
join, and taught us a few moves. As I would find out here and the rest of my
visit, participation is far more fulfilling than being a spectator at
Kayamandi.
What
did I mean when I said Lily’s past was not atypical for the Kayamandi
community? Well, to put it simply, Lily’s case is the slimmest-of-the-slim
minority. Although Ubuntu brings joy to a desperate place, the existence of
horror is unavoidable for some. Male chauvinism and the abuse of women are borne
out of the tribal tradition of the circumcision ritual that occurs when boys
turn 18. Nowadays, the friends of boys undergoing this ritual get them
intoxicated beyond belief so that no pain is felt in the circumcision by knife.
Following this archaic medical procedure (which has a 2% death rate due to the
use of a communal knife, possibly infected with HIV), boys become men by
surviving “in the bush”, without medical treatment and by their own devices. This
time period is also an indoctrination session, hereafter they are “taught to
see any woman as a bitch”, according to Selwyn. The cycle of male dominance in
the home is perpetuated, allowing rape and domestic abuse to go on unabated.
Later in the night, Selwyn explained how Friday nights could be a terrifying
experience for women, even young girls. Upon receiving the week’s pay on
Friday, men will head to the bar to get loaded on beer, and rape is widespread
in this context. These are broad generalizations, and the supposition that all
men in Kayamandi have a penchant for sexual violence is an injustice, however. One
of the girls who danced for us earlier in the evening, maybe 15-16 years old,
was the victim of gang rape. In a related tangent, another boy in the dance
program, also very young, had dropped out and fell into a drug habit for a few
months before returning to the program. It is amazing how useful and attractive
a simple dance program can be in the lives of such disillusioned youth.
As we
piled back into the van and headed for the next destination, a boy flagged down
the van to talk to Laduma. The kid had been an original teacher at the dance
center, who had been a student at the University of Western Cape, but dropped
out because he failed an audition. Selwyn, like a concerned high school
counselor, tried to give the boy some direction because he hated to see
stagnation in people with such talent. As we drove off, Selwyn explained his
deep concern for the kid who we learned was gay, for homosexuality is almost
universally condemned. The reality in Kayamandi, as well as other townships, is
that tremendously talented individuals can become enslaved to their own
communities and there is an absolutely giant obstacle to real opportunity.
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