The Cost of Cape Town

Cape Town really is a beautiful, clean, and relatively safe city. However their is a huge amount of poverty as well. The few pictures that I could take out of the window of our car did not capture the immensity of the shanty towns. These informal settlement stretch on for miles, and are home to thousand of people. As we drove by there were children playing by the road, teenagers playing soccor, grannies cooking mealies; people just living out their lives. They live so similiarly to myself in so many ways, and their worries are similiar to mine as well. However, in material goods, they have so much less; and in oppertunities as well.

The people who live in these conditions are the workers that make the Cape possible; they clean it, provide transport and security, they deliver goods, and they work in the docks. They are also all black or colored SA. This is not a unique occurence, most large cities have squater camps, or government subsidized housing similiar to this, on their outskirts. KwaZulu Natal has possibly the highest rate of poverty in South Africa. But somehow, it appears more striking just outside of Cape Town. I had just spent 2 days on holiday, living in luxury almost, and was returning from a tour of the wine lands. To see people living with so little, after I had indulged in so much, made me feel sick.

I don't see people living in these conditions for ever. The segrigation and discrepensy of wealth is to great to be sustained. Either there will be a great amount of change that benifits the poor, or there will be revolution. And if there is another revolution in SA I think it may be more violent and longer lasting than the first.