| At 8.30 am we set off on a
tour of the Langa township with Angelo, our tour guide from yesterday. This was billed as
the cultural tour and included a visit to District Six, its museum and the Langa township.
Angelo assured us the tour would only go into safe areas. We drove up through the main
town, watched the market traders putting out their wares and were given a talk about the
Castle and its associated connections with the slave trade. The District Six museum stood
on waste ground with superb views over Table bay and Cape Town. Inside, the cultural
aspects of the tour began in earnest. We soon found out the grisly fate of this area. With
its narrow streets and run down housing, in the colonial style, it was a fascinating
multi-cultural area; poor, but vibrant with the activity of many races living together in
a close community. The government, in the sixties, decided under the Group Areas Act that
District Six was to be designated a white area and would be cleared and rebuilt. In the
ensuing mayhem the hapless residents watched their homes being demolished and families
split up on racial grounds. Some members of the same family were given different racial
classifications. One child could be classed as white and another black or coloured. They
were then forcibly moved to different areas based on these classifications. Blacks were
moved out to the desolate Cape flats area and forced to carry a pass; a simple photo
identity card that, of course, held their classification. The museum was a sombre place.
The walls were covered with photos of what the area had been like. The museum and area
stood as a memorial to all those abused by the apartheid system. The area had never been
significantly redeveloped. We then drove up to Langa and visited a centre, heavily sponsored by UK companies, that was training people from the townships in catering and the hotel trade. We were given a tour by the man who founded the centre. Inside the training room, a large group of students were sitting a test paper. Some looked up and smiled and I thought about the staff back at the hotel. My ideas about South Africa and its people were changing fast. We were shown the kitchens and restaurant. The course syllabus was explained to us. In six to eight weeks these students could be working at our hotel. The centre had an 80% placement rate and were very proud of it. We then moved across the road and visited a community centre. Outside we were shown a shrub planted by Prince Charles. Allegedly it had not grown since. The centre was a ramshackle place, filled with photos from the Royal visit and craft items produced by local residents. I was relieved to leave its gloom and get outside into the sunshine. The next part of the tour was not for the faint hearted. It was my first eye to eye contact with people living in absolute desperate and impoverished conditions. I found it totally daunting and upsetting, struggling to fight the tears back and ashamed that these people were living in such squalor and I was doing nothing to help them. We had a new tour guide for this section and he pounded us with facts and figures about the townships. The area had a sixty percent unemployment rate and three families were living to each hostel. We stopped at a small kindergarten school and I took a photo of the children playing. They all stopped and turned to wave at me with bright smiles on their faces. We then walked on and finished just short of the shacks. I was glad I had come on the tour but just as relieved it was over. Angelo finished the tour with a trip back to the restaurant for tea and a discussion about the trip. All the people we had met were great friendly people, only too aware of their plight and determined to improve their situation with the limited resources they have. In the afternoon we returned to Newlands and watched the England V. Zimbabwe cricket match. The crowd were a lot smaller than that for the South African game and we left the stands to spend sometime watching the cricket in the sun on the grass. Zimbabwe annihilated England. It was an embarrassing performance by England, best forgotten. The match finished early, at 9.30 p.m., and we returned to the hotel. On the way back we were treated to a typical African idiosyncrasy; the Christmas lights still adorned the main high street. Santa and his Reindeers, Snow White and all the usual Christmas crew were ablaze in a stunning display. They had proven so popular that they were to be left on for the rest of the year! Back at the hotel we joined the other cricket fans in the bar. Conversations steered away from England’s defeat and instead concentrated on Cape Town and the safari trip at the Kruger National Park. |