Apartheid – GW Blogs from Abroad

Enkanini Homestay

AdminSeptember 29, 2014December 14, 2018

This past weekend, I had a homestay in Stellenbosch’s informal and illegal settlement – Enkanini. Enkanini, translated as “Taken By Force” is only a few years old, but is already home to about 8,000 people (all black) living in shacks. As an illegal settlement, the entire community is not connected to the electric grid, has very limited shared toilets, and is traditionally ignored by the town municipality. For most of Stellenbosch, Enkanini is an ugly parasite that one can see from almost anywhere in town. Located on a hill overlooking the city, Enkanini has some of the most beautiful views of the area, but ironically is home to some of the poorest too. The town wants to get rid of Enkanini, but has no idea how to. My time in Enkanini was an eye-opening experience on the inequalities that still exist in South Africa, and specifically just in the Stellenbosch commmunity.

From the front door of the shack I was staying in, one could see the entire town of Stellenbosch directly in front of me. I could clearly see the red-tile roofs of the university buildings, and even a faint outline of my dorm a few kilometers away. Shockingly, before leaving for Enkanini, many of my South African friends had never even heard of Enkanini, the first of many signs of the “apartheid” that still exists today. To get to Enkanini, one has to drive across the railroad tracks that split “white” Stellenbosch from Kayamandi (the black township of Stellenbosch), go through the industrial area of Stellenbosch, and drive all the way to the end of a cul-de-sac. On one side of the cul-de-sac is a steep dirt road that leads into Enkanini, and in what is land-allocated for a nature reserve, one will find several hundreds of shacks cramped into very small quarters on a steep hill.

During my time in Enkanini, I was able to walk around the community and meet many of the people who lived there, play with many of the kids growing up in Enkanini, play pool with some of the older guys, watch the biggest soccer game of the year (Kaiser Chiefs vs Orlando Pirates in a Cup final), attend a church service, and eat some amazing homemade food. What I learned from all of these experiences and more are too hard to recount in full, but I hope I can hit some of my most important impressions.

On weekends, Enkanini does not sleep. Both Friday and Saturday night, loud music, church singing, and drunkards could be heard well into the early hours of the morning; so much so that the noises of the previous night smoothly ended as the roosters started their morning wake-up calls. There is also a strong sense of community, and almost everyone is outside their homes talking to friends, walking around the community, tending to errands, etc. Just sitting outside our home we were able to meet countless people, and children flocked to us to teach us new games and hang out with some new faces. Hanging out with the children, it was evident to us that the entire community raises children rather than just the parents. We never saw the parents of the majority of children we were able to interact with, and any and every passerby would pick up the kids and play with them before continuing up the road. In such tight spaces, it is not surprising that such a culture exists within Enkanini.

Because of this tight knit community, safety and security in Enkanini also is an interesting subject to look at. Our host told us how Enkanini, although known for its crime, is actually quite safe compared to neighbouring Kayamandi (a formal settlement) because people know each other in Enkanini. When a mugging occurs, people come out of their homes and immediately make an issue if they recognize the victim. In places like Kayamandi where people are living in formal settlements and with greater space, muggers are left alone as it becomes less and less of the community’s responsibility to prevent crime. With that said, Enkanini finds itself in a difficult conundrum when it comes to crime as it is located just on the other side of a hill home to some of the richest in Stellenbosch. Thus, robbers and criminals tend to run into Enkanini for refuge, importing crime that the community otherwise would not have. As an illegal settlement, the municipality fails to give the resources the community needs to prevent this, and now Enkanini is known as a crime hotspot.

Living in Enkanini is difficult considering all the homes are shacks, there are very few running water taps, no formal sources of electricity, limited toilets, and steep roads that are prone to flooding. The two nights we slept there were very cold, and gave us a taste of the complete lack of insulation and heating most people live through in the town. With no streetlights and only informal dirt roads, nighttime also means pitch-dark alleyways and great challenges in both safety and navigation through community. The informal settlements leaves little private space, which leads to numerous other issues.

As always though, people find a way to be happy, and we were constantly greeted with happy faces, friendly jokes, playful children, and a very accepting community. The overall beautify of Enkanini’s location make it almost easy to forget all the underlying problems of its existence. How could 8,000 people be living in an illegal settlement only a few minutes walk from some of the richest in Stellenbosch? Why is every single one of those people black? Looking out from our homestay porch, it is hard to imagine a more segregated and unequal city in the world. As evening approached one night, we saw as the rest of the city lit up, while most of Enkanini stayed dark. While many of my friends were going out for a fun night in downtown Stellenbosch, a forgotten community just a few minutes away continued living a life completely separate, and for the most part, completely forgotten.

Khoisan

AdminSeptember 5, 2014

Traveling anywhere in Africa, you can’t help but notice the effects of colonization. It’s an eerie thing to see, especially if you’ve traveled to countries in Europe who took hobby in colonizing. I’d seen a brief hint of colonization in being part native, and knowing that what was once estimated as a population of 1-10 million in the United States before the Europeans arrived, now makes up 1% of the population. However, the effects of colonization are much more prominent in African countries.

Similar to the United States, South Africa also had a native people known as the Khoikhoi or the Khoisan. Also similar to the native tribes of North America, the Khoi lived off the land, were primarily nomadic, knew the land better than the back of their hands, and defended themselves with instruments like bows and arrows rather than guns. True to colonizing form, the Dutch-when deciding to finally settle some people in Cape Town (they’d originally just used the area as a place to stop, restock and regroup on the way to India) they made friends with the Khoi, traded their goods, learned their ways of the land, and then brutally murdered all of them.

There remains a small population of Khoi left in the Southern section of Africa- that being South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. However, even the more modern population of Khoi got the short end of the stick in government policy.The Native Land Act of 1913 aimed itself at “regulating” the acquisition of land by “natives”, or as the rest of the world calls them, blacks. It was the first and arguably most destructive first step in introducing a formal apartheid system- as remember the actual implementation of what we know as “apartheid” didn’t actually happen until 1948.

The Native Land Act stated that only certain lands could be owned by blacks, and by certain lands, they meant 10% of the land in South Africa. Keep in mind, white’s at the time only made up less than 20% of the population, and yet were declaring 90% of the land their own. Imagine this from a practical standpoint. It’s like when packing up my college dorm room, I attempt to, instead of scattering my various things in separate boxes, cramming everything I own into one tiny box. It doesn’t work. People were forcibly removed from their land, and considering many blacks made a living off of farming, their one source of income was taken away. Additionally, the land they were given was so overoccupied and overfarmed that land quickly lost it’s lushness, causing food supply to slowly diminish and people to starve.

But going back to the Khoi- they too lost the land that was so vital to their culture and lifestyle. Between hunting, migrating, and teaching their youth the intricacies of nature and the wild, these things weren’t possible anymore.

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to what might be called a Khoi-reservation, though Khoi don’t actually live there. Rather, it’s Khoi land and one gets to see where, in concept,they would be, and how, in concept, they would have done things like hunt and make clothing and build a fire, etc. I assume this visit would be much like visiting a Native American reservation in a place like North Dakota or Washington, where as enthusiastic your native tour-guide is about their culture and the jokes they tell and the culture they share, you can’t help but feel like it’s a mask for an unfairly dying culture. Our tour guide, as I have no better term for it, seemed to be the single person there who was able to recall the traditional ceremonies, way of dress, and how to hunt. His counterparts were learning as he did things, and the clothes, tools, and instruments were passed around with care and returned to saddles afterwards as they were some of the only left.

It made me sad and slightly uncomfortable to stand there and not think about the elephant in the room. In the years after apartheid law ended, and land restitution act has come forth to give back land to those who lived on it previous to apartheid laws being enacted. Despite the Khoi receiving land back, it’s too late and things won’t be the same when you wait about a hundred years to give a group their land back. It’s a great gesture, but it’s just that, a gesture. It makes me wonder whether populations like this losing their culture or even disappearing constitutes itself as a natural part of the world evolving and moving. Can these populations survive in modern days and live side by side to industrialization? I don’t know.

On a funny note, our guide told us how the Khoi ask someone to marry them. In this case, the male gets a little arrow that almost looks like it’s for a toddler Robin Hood, and they stalk the girl they are interested in before eventually hiding in a bush. They then shoot the girl in the butt with an arrow and if she’s nice but doesn’t like you, she will politely pick up the arrow and hand it back to you. If she’s mean and doesn’t like you she will break the arrow over her knee. If she wants to indicate yes, then she will pick up the arrow and place it over her heart. We proceeded to ask him how many broken arrows he had, of which we got no answer.

Week 5: Wildlife and Wineries

AdminAugust 25, 2014December 14, 2018

By rbhargava

Another week gone and many more adventures to talk about! This past week I was able to visit a game reserve on Tuesday, go on a tour of Stellenbosch with the university's Senior Director of Community Interaction, help paint a classroom at the Lynedoch school, and revisit Cape Point/Cape of Good Hope and the penguins at Boulders Beach on Sunday. At the game reserve I had my first "safari," as we went on a tour of the reserve and saw springbock, zebra, giraffes, kudu, and others. Nothing like a real safari, but its a start! This week I want to focus on wineries here at Stellenbosch (this is the wine capital of the country...and Africa), and my second time to Cape Point and Boulders Beach.

From an economic standpoint, Stellenbosch is known for one thing only - wine. Along with two other towns nearby - Franschoek and Paarl, the majority of wine on the continent is produced here. Just in the Stellenbosch area, there are over 200 different wineries. This means Stellenbosch is one of the richest areas in the country, with some of the poorest people working on some of the nicest wine estates in the world. One can drive from the illegal and informal settlement - Enkanini - to a posh wine estate like Delaire Graff in less than 10 minutes. To see such a stark difference in wealth in one area is always shocking, and I always wonder how the owners of many of these wineries can live the way they do when their neighbors live in such poverty. Thanks to my Cities, Sustainability, and Community class I have been able to learn about some of the history behind a few wineries, and what a few of them are doing to combat the vast inequalities that exist in the Stellenbosch area today, and the problems that apartheid created.

Rewinding a bit, in the early 1990s when it became evident that apartheid was ending, the local government here gave decades-long land contracts to wineries and farms in the area to keep blacks from owning property. This left much of the area as they were before - white-owned wineries with underpaid black employees. Some wineries took a stand. Spier, for example, a few years ago decided to give some of the land that it was unjustly given years ago through these land contracts to a black farmer. This man, Eric, still farms the land today, but officially the land is still owned by Spier. More recently, another winery by the name of Salms Delta excavated the entire site to uncover its history - from Africans living there thousands of years ago to the slave labor that the winery used in the 18th and 19th centuries. The owner of the winery then decided to give back to the community by creating a museum displaying the history and honoring those that were oppressed for hundreds of years at the winery. He also made all the employees at the winery part-owners, so that it became one of the first, and possibly the only, winery in the region that is owned by the workers. Many other wineries in the area are becoming sustainable, both environmentally and socially, which is a great step in the right direction. But as I mentioned earlier, I think there is still a long way to go until the wine industry here becomes a more respectable and conscious industry.

Moving on, today I returned to Cape Point and Boulders Beach on a trip organized by the international students office at Stellenbosch. Luckily, today was the warmest and sunniest day yet, with temperatures going up into the low 80s! Seeing the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point in the sun was a rare occasion, as the Cape of Good Hope used to be called the Cape of Storms for a reason. The cape is located at the end of the peninsula and marks the south-western most point in Africa (the southern-most point is further east down the coast), and is home to one of six floral kingdoms in the world - the Cape Floral Kingdom. There are over 9,000 species of fynbos in the floral kingdom, with over 2,000 just on Table Mountain...more species than all of the UK. So, hiking up Cape Point and then to Cape of Good Hope meant hiking through one of the most diverse and unique floral regions of the world. We managed to also hike down to a pristine and empty beach in between Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope and run into the freezing cold water.

Following our time at the tip of the peninsula, we drove up to Simonstown to go to Boulders Beach, where there is a large African penguin colony. The African penguin is the only penguin native to Africa, and only lives in South Africa. The beach has raised wooden walkways so that the penguins are not disturbed and can move freely, and every which way you look you can find penguins hiding underneath the walkways, sleeping in the bushes, or chilling on the beach. This time around, many penguins walked right up to the walkway and stared at us, almost as if we were the ones in the zoo. As an endangered species, one has to worry about the safety of the penguins, and Boulders Beach definitely seems like an encroachment of one of the few spaces the penguins have left. While walking back to our bus from the beach, we found a penguin inside a large sewage pipe hiding in the shade. I don't know how he ended up there or if he was stuck, but I hope efforts are increasing in protecting such a wonderful animal.

A New Semester

AdminAugust 12, 2014

quad — The Quad at the University of Stellenbosch

It’s hard to explain how it feels to have just finished the first week of my second semester here at Stellenbosch University. After a long semester break, of which I stayed in town to save money and explore, I was happy to see the town slowly fill back up again with excited students greeting each other and catching up. For us here in South Africa, our academic year runs from January-December, with this semester being the second of the two.

South Africa has the top three universities on the continent- University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, and the University of Stellenbosch (where I attend) as well as seven of the top 11 universities in Africa. The closest top tier universities are in places like Nigeria and Egypt. As such, students from Southern Africa flock here for their studies, making for a diverse population of students from places like Namibia, Botswana, and Lesotho, as well as South Africa. This being said, both the University of Stellenbosch and University of Cape Town are predominantly white- with 68.5% of Stellenbosch and 38.6% at UCT. Many of the universities have historical racial relationships, as universities such as the University of Witwatersrand, or Wits as they call it, was created for black students to study at, University of Western Cape was for only coloured students (mixed-race), while universities like Stellenbosch only admitted white students.

Seeing as policies regarding which racial groups could apply to which colleges only changed in the last several decades, the university’s demographics remain largely the same nowadays. However, more and more non-white students are attending college here every year.

Students doing the same major at university take a set sequence of classes each semester and each year. This makes it a little difficult for someone coming from the looser American system, in which I can take a second year course, fourth year course, general education requirement, and an elective all within one semester. Additionally, different degrees take different amounts of years, so college is not considered a 4-year process, but rather dependent upon degree (no surprise here- science degrees take longer than humanity degrees). Seeing as the South African university system was set up by their lovely colonizer, England, schools concentrate on lateral learning as opposed to rote memorization- something I appreciate coming from a system which many times focuses on regurgitation rather than engrained knowledge.

Unfortunately, South Africa- like many developing countries, has a problem with “brain drain”. With only 12 of every 100 high schoolers in ZA qualifying for university, and university drop-outs outnumbering graduates, there is a lack of highly skilled labor in South Africa. Even still, those who are educated rarely remain in the country, opting instead to work in places like the UK or various places in the developed world. In an interesting read by Business Future’s in 2010, it is stated “The African human resource pool is continuously depleted as the educated choose to emigrate and apply their skills abroad. It is estimated that since 1990, some 20,000 skilled professionals have been leaving Africa on an annual basis, depriving the continent of the doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers it needs to break the cycle of poverty and under-development” (Roux 2010). It sort of connects ZA having such good universities and yet poor leadership, eh?

The bibliotek at the University of Stellenbosch

This being said, universities are universities, and college kids are the same everywhere. Between hazing first-year students, to professors who seem to have it out for you, to the library having an exponential population spike just before exams- it’s really not so different than back home. For me, it’s mind-blowing that one semester here has already come and gone, but I am so happy with how it turned out. My first semester was full of exploring cities, making friends, and attending events ranging from competing in a cooking competition to a masquerade ball at the student theatre. Based on this week, I am confident that my second semester will be no different!

First Week at Stellenbosch

AdminAugust 11, 2014December 14, 2018

By rbhargava

Hello friends and welcome to the first edition of many blog posts to come on my adventures and experiences at Stellenbosch University. Although I'm no expert on the region, I want to start off this post with a little background on the region and the university. Stellenbosch is in the heart of South Africa's Cape Winelands, and is 30 miles away from Cape Town. Today, its wine may make it famous, but the university keeps this city alive. With about 30,000 students, the university is ranked second in South Africa after the University of Cape Town, and is a major academic center in the country. As such, the city attracts some of the smartest minds in the country and is an important part of the Western Cape's economy. What I really want to highlight is the university's history. As the top Afrikaan university, Stellenbosch is unfortunately also known as the birthplace of apartheid. With that said, the university and city today ironically face many of the repercussions of the policies it helped create. The city is one of the most unequal places on Earth, with deeply segregated communities ranging from the wealthy whites on one side of town, coloreds on the other, and blacks in a far off corner. A foreigner would never see these differences, as Stellenbosch does well to hide these systemic problems behind the facades of beautiful Cape Dutch architecture and the majestic mountains that make Stellenbosch the beautiful valley town that it is. It is important to keep all of this in mind, as 20 years after apartheid - Stellenbosch is both the perfect example of the rainbow nation, and the perfect example of everything that has held South Africa back.

With the scene set and on a lighter note, let me talk more about my first week here in South Africa! As part of the CIEE study abroad program I am on (called Sustainability and Community), I spent my first week at the Sustainability Institute in a small town outside Stellenbosch called Lynedoch. Set in the midst of some of the country's best wineries, I had the chance to get my first exposure of South Africa from a sustainable development perspective - learning about issues of food security from a local farmer, hearing about one winery's efforts to become greener from a former VP, and talking to researchers about efforts being taken to improve the living standards and environment of the informal settlement in Stellenbosch called Enkanini. Hearing from these individuals and many more gave me a great overview of what Stellenbosch is all about.

Skipping ahead, after a fantastic praxis week at the Sustainability Institute, I went on a tour of the peninsula with my program (there's only two of us on the program) on Saturday. Having only been at and near Stellenbosch since arriving, I had yet to see the Cape Town. Driving there, we passed an endless line of informal settlements that was a strong reminder of the stark divisions that have come to define the country today. Cape Town of course was as beautiful as any city I've seen, and we had the chance to drive up Signal Hill, a beautiful vantage point from which most of Cape Town can be seen. Driving down the peninsula, we were able to stop at Boulders Beach in Simonstown, where hundreds of penguins were waddling around on the beach...a sight like no other! We also stopped at the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point at the very end of the peninsula - the southwestern most part of Africa. Reflecting back on this day trip around the peninsula, the Cape Town area is full of absolutely beautiful places and is blessed with some of the most diverse wildlife on the planet, but the abundant inequalities among whites, coloreds, and blacks make it difficult to call Cape Town a great city.

"They Call Me Umlungu."

AdminMay 15, 2014December 14, 2018

By iobrien1093

While it seems like most study abroad students are heading back to the U.S., I still have about a month and a half left to wrap up my research and volunteer work in Cape Town. This Tuesday, I’ll be teaching my fourth pre-primary workshop at the Phumlani Village DayCare. I’ve spent the last week painstakingly perfecting this weeks lesson plan after what I would call last Tuesday’s disappointing failure. Although I had gone to the Daycare center confident in the literacy activities I had planned for the children, the day quickly turned from productive to chaotic in a matter of seconds. Hyperactivity and lack of discipline have been major problems in implementing my project in Phumlani, even more so than the language barrier. The children who are focused and excited to participate in the activities are often overshadowed by students who are unable to sit still, who yell, and who fight one another on a constant basis. The group of children I’m working with has now grown in number to about thirteen five year olds, when initially my goal was to work with 6-8. The Mamas who work at the creche are able to calm the rowdy students down for a few minutes, but soon after their backs are turned the chaos ensues. The lack of discipline is not unexpected, though, since most of the children have never been in a classroom environment or any kind of formal and structured setting before. Moreover many of the children lack parental supervision and structure at home.
I’m working with my capstone supervisor Val, who has worked in primary education for the last thirty years, to develop some classroom management tools for my program. She recommended using incentives, most likely in the form of candy, to positively reinforce good behavior and motivate the less focused children. Initially she had suggested talking firmly with them and explaining that their behavior was unacceptable, but I explained that there is a complete lack of respect for authority among a few of the children that I am working with. To many of the children that I work with I’m just “Umlungu,” meaning white person. They don't see me as a teacher, I just seem like something foreign to them. Val, was extremely upset when she heard this because she immediately identified the children's actions as one of the many consequences of Apartheid and how the past is still negatively impacting the education system in South Africa.
Val suggested that rather than try to formally teach the kids literacy, I should take more of a Learn Through Play Approach to pre-primary education. She helped me pick ten workshop topics, ranging from Colors to the Environment, that I could center my lesson plans around and encouraged me to focus more on games and crafts. This week I’m creating a lesson plan on Colors which will include activities like making patterned, colored macaroni necklaces, making rainbows with coffee filters and food dye, and making puppets relating to the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Val also gave me a Grade R Curriculum guide, which has really helped me understand not only what pre-primary students should be learning at this stage, but how they should be learning.
I know that when I return to GW I’ll continue to work with DC Reads as I have for the past two years, but I think when I return I’ll have a greater respect and appreciation for the teachers that I work with. Especially, the kindergarten teachers who work with ESL students. I hadn’t realized how much time and energy goes into creating lesson plans. It’s not just fun and games even when the lesson plan literally includes games. I’m never going to forget the time that I’ve spent in the Phumlnai community. Even though there were times when I felt like I could cry in frustration at myself for not being able to communicate with the kids the way I wanted to and at the kids for not listening to me the way I wanted them to, there were so many more times when I felt inspired and motivated by being around them. I can’t predict how the rest of my time in South Africa will go, but now that I’m working with Val my spirits have lifted and I feel determined to make the best pre-primary program possible for the children of Phumlani.

-Isabel