|
History > 2004-2005 > South Africa
http://www.dolphins.org.za/rsa.jpg
Children roamed the blighted landscape of Foreman Road,
a teeming hillside
slum of 1,000 tiny hovels
typical of South Africa's shantytowns.
Vanessa Vick for The New York Times
December 25, 2005
Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa Protest Sluggish Pace of
Change
NYT
25.12.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/international/africa/25durban.html
Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa
Protest Sluggish Pace
of Change
December 25, 2005
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 24 - Sending what some call an ominous
signal to this nation's leaders, South Africa's sprawling shantytowns have begun
to erupt, sometimes violently, in protest over the government's inability to
deliver the better life that the end of apartheid seemed to herald a dozen years
ago.
At a hillside shantytown in Durban called Foreman Road, riot police officers
fired rubber bullets in mid-November to disperse 2,000 residents marching to the
municipal mayor's office downtown. Two protesters were injured; 45 were
arrested. The rest burned an effigy of the city's mayor, Obed Mlaba.
Their grievance was unadorned: since Foreman Road's 1,000 shacks sprang up
nearly two decades ago, the only measurable improvements to the residents' lives
amounted to a single water standpipe and four scrap-wood privies. Electricity
and real toilets were a pipe dream. Promises of new homes, they said, were
ephemeral.
"This is the worst area in the country," said one resident, a middle-aged man
who identified himself only as Senior. "We don't so much need water or
electricity. We need land and housing. They need to find us land and build us
new homes."
In Pretoria that week, 500 shantytown residents looted and burned a city council
member's home and car to protest limited access to government housing. Two weeks
earlier, protesters burned municipal offices in Promosa after being evicted from
their illegal shanties. In late September, Botleng Township residents rioted
after a sewage-fouled water supply caused 600 cases of typhoid and perhaps 20
deaths.
And just Thursday, Cape Town officials warned residents of a vast shantytown
near the city airport that they faced arrest if they tried to squat in an
unfinished housing project nearby.
South Africa's safety and security minister said in October that 881 protests
rocked slums in the preceding year; unofficial tallies say that at least 50 were
violent. Statistics for previous years were not kept, but one analyst, David
Hemson of the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, estimated that the
minister's tally was at least five times the number of any comparable previous
period.
"I think it's one of the most important developments in the postliberation
period," said Mr. Hemson, who leads a project on urban and rural development for
the council. "It shows that ordinary people are now feeling that they can only
get ahead by coming out on the streets and mobilizing - and those are the
poorest people in society. That's a sea change from the position in, say, 1994,
when everyone was expecting great changes from above."
In fact, the government has made great changes. Since 1994, South Africa's
government has built and largely given away 1.8 million basic houses, usually 16
feet by 20 feet, often to former shantytown dwellers. More than 10 million have
gained access to clean water, and countless others have been connected to
electrical lines or basic sanitation facilities.
Yet at the same time, researchers say, rising poverty has caused 2 million to
lose their homes and 10 million more to have their water or power cut off
because of unpaid bills. And the number of shanty dwellers has grown by as much
as 50 percent, to 12.5 million people - more than one in four South Africans,
many living in a level of squalor that would render most observers from the
developed world speechless.
For South African blacks, the current plight is uncomfortably close to the one
they endured under apartheid. Black shantytowns first rose under white rule, the
result of policies intended to keep nonwhites impoverished and powerless. During
apartheid, from the 1940's to the 1980's, officials uprooted and moved millions
of blacks, consigning many to transit camps that became permanent shantytowns,
sending others to black townships that quickly attracted masses of squatters.
Privation led millions more blacks to migrate to the cities, setting up vast
squatter camps on the outskirts of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and other
cities.
From its first days, South Africa's black government pledged to address the
misery of shanty life. That the problem has instead worsened, social scientists,
urban planners and many politicians say, is partly the result of fiscal policies
that have focused on nurturing the first-world economy which, under apartheid,
made this Africa's wealthiest and most advanced nation.
The government's low-deficit, low-inflation strategy was built on the premise
that a stable economy would attract investment, and that the wealth would spread
to the poor. But while the first-world economy has boomed, it has failed to lift
the vast underclass out of its misery.
Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent
many analysts say; the government, which does not count those who have stopped
looking for work, says joblessness is lower. Big industries like mining and
textiles have laid off manual laborers, and expanding businesses like banking
and retailing have failed to pick up the slack. Many of the jobless have moved
to the slums.
So far, the shantytown protests have focused exclusively on local officials who
bear the brunt of slum dwellers' rage. But while almost all those officials
belong to the governing African National Congress, and execute the party's
social and economic policies, "the poor haven't made the connection as yet,"
said Adam Habib, another scholar at the Human Sciences Research Institute who
recently completed a study of South Africa's social movements.
On the contrary, national support for President Thabo Mbeki's governing
coalition appears greater than ever before. Still, Mr. Mbeki has been visiting
shantytowns and townships, promising to increase social spending and demanding
that his ministers improve services to the poor.
For now, nearly half the 284 municipal districts, charged with providing local
services, cannot, the national ministry for local government says. Their
problems vary from shrunken tax bases to inconsistent allotments of national
money to AIDS, which has depleted the ranks of skilled local managers.
Incompetence and greed are rife. In Ehlanzeni, a district of nearly a million
people in Mpumalanga Province, 3 out of 4 residents have no trash collection, 6
out of 10 have no sanitation and 1 in 3 lack water - and the city manager makes
more than Mr. Mbeki's $180,000 annual salary.
The frustrations of slum dwellers began to boil over in mid-2004, when residents
in a shantytown near Harrismith, about 160 miles southeast of Johannesburg,
rioted and blocked a major freeway to protest their living conditions. The
police fatally shot a 17-year-old protester. Since then, demonstrations have
spread to virtually every corner of the nation.
In Durban, the city is erecting some 16,000 starter houses a year, but the
shanty population, now about 750,000, continues to grow by more than 10 percent
annually.
The city's 180,000 shanties, crammed into every conceivable open space, are a
remarkable sight. Both free-standing and sharing common walls, they spill down
hillsides between middle-class subdivisions, perch beside freeway exits and
crowd next to foul landfills. They are built of scrap wood and metal and
corrugated panels and plastic tarpaulin roofs weighed down with concrete chunks.
Their insides are often coated with sheets of uncut milk and juice cartons, sold
as wallpaper at curbside markets, to keep both the wind and prying eyes from
exploiting the chinks in their shoddily built walls.
The 1,000 or so hillside shanties at Foreman Road are typical. A standpipe at
the top provides water, carried by bucket to each shack for bathing and
dishwashing. At the bottom, perhaps 400 feet down a ravine, are four hand-dug,
scrap-wood privies - each one, on this day, inexplicably padlocked shut.
Residents say they seldom trek down to the privies, relieving themselves instead
in plastic bags and buckets that can be periodically emptied or thrown away.
The one-room shacks provide the rudest sort of shelter. A bed typically takes up
half the space; a table holds cookware; clothes go in a small chest. There is no
electricity, and so no television; entertainment comes from battery-powered
radios. Residents use kerosene stoves and candles for cooking and heat, with
predictable results. A year ago, a wind-whipped fire destroyed 288 shacks here.
A fire at a Cape Town shantytown early this month left 4,000 people homeless.
A few shacks are painted in riotous colors or decorated with placards hawking
milk or tobacco, or shingled with signs ripped from light poles, once posted to
warn that electricity thieves had left live power lines dangling in the street.
The residents say Mayor Mlaba promised during his last election campaign to
erect new homes on the slum site and on vacant land opposite their hillside.
Instead, however, the city proposed to move the slum residents to rural land far
off Durban's outskirts - and far from the gardening, housecleaning and other
menial jobs they have found during Foreman Road's 16-odd years of existence.
Lacking cars, taxi fare or even bicycles to commute to work, the residents
marched in protest on Nov. 14, defying the city's refusal to issue a permit. The
demonstration quickly turned violent.
Afterward, in an interview that he cut short, a clearly nettled Mayor Mlaba
argued that the protest had been the work of agitators bent on embarrassing him
before local elections next year.
"Of course it's political," he said. "All of a sudden, they've got leaders.
There weren't any leaders yesterday. Are they going to be there in 2006 or 2007,
after the elections?"
Also suspecting agitators, South Africa's government reacted initially to the
shantytown protests by ordering its intelligence service to determine whether
outsiders - a "third force" in the parlance of this nation's liberation
struggles - sought to undermine the government.
Residents here scoff at that. "The third force," said the man called Senior, "is
the conditions we are living in."
In a shack roughly 7 feet by 8 feet, a third of the way down Foreman Road's
ravine, Zamile Msane, 32, lives with her 58-year-old mother and three children,
ages 12, 15 and 17. Ms. Msane has no job. A sister gives her family secondhand
clothes, and neighbors donate cornmeal for food. In seven years, she has fled
three wildfires, in 1998, 2000 and 2004, losing everything each time.
Yet Ms. Msane, who came here from the Eastern Cape eight years ago, said she
would not return to the farm where she once lived, because there was nothing to
eat.
Ms. Msane said she joined the Nov. 14 march for one reason.
"Better conditions," she said. "It's not good here, because these are not proper
houses. There's mud outside. We're always living in fear of fires. Winter is too
cold; summer is too warm. Life is so difficult."
Shantytown Dwellers
in South Africa Protest Sluggish Pace of Change, NYT, 25.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/international/africa/25durban.html
A Freedom Park,
misère et séropositivité
règnent toujours sur le bidonville des mineurs
01.12.2005 | 16h16 • Mis à jour le 01.12.2005 | 16h16
Article paru dans l'édition du 02.12.2005
Le Monde
JOHANNESBURG
CORRESPONDANTE
Fabienne Pompey
Personne, à Freedom Park, ne prononce jamais le mot
"prostitution". Pourtant, dans cet immense bidonville, ce "camp de squatteurs"
selon la terminologie locale, des centaines de femmes se vendent pour trois fois
rien. Les clients, pudiquement appelés "boyfriends", petits amis d'une heure,
d'une nuit ou d'un mois, sont des mineurs d'Impala Platinium, l'un des plus
grandes mines de platine du pays. La mine, situé dans la Northern Province, à
quelque 200 km au nord de Johannesburg, a attiré des milliers de ruraux, venant
de toute l'Afrique du Sud et des pays voisins. Aujourd'hui, à Freedom Park, il y
a environ 5 000 " shacks", des baraques de tôles alignées à perte de vue,
peintes en rouge vif, jaune ou bleu, des couleurs pour cacher la misère.
La plupart des 20 000 habitants du bidonville sont sans
emploi. Ici, il y a quelques hommes, en attente d'un job à la mine, et des
femmes vivant de la "générosité" des mineurs. Les liaisons ne sont jamais
qu'éphémères. Le mineur cherche une femme pour une heure, une soirée, parfois
pour plus longtemps, mais un jour il repart dans son village, laissant derrière
lui ses amours illégitimes. Environ 40 % des femmes de Freedom park sont
séropositives.
Boniwe avait un "boyfriend", qui veillait sur elle depuis plusieurs années.
Quand il est mort, sa femme est venue vider la maison. Dans son shack, il n'y a
plus rien qu'un lit, une petite table et quelques écuelles. Elle vit là avec ses
quatre enfants, parmi lesquels des jumeaux de 11 mois. L'un des deux est
séropositif. Comme plus de 500 personnes, essentiellement des femmes, Boniwe a
pu avoir accès à un traitement gratuit dans la clinique du bidonville. Mais ce
matin, elle n'a pas pris ses médicaments. "Je n'avais rien à manger. Et on peut
pas les prendre le ventre vide", explique-t-elle.
La clinique, qui existe grâce à des dons privés et à un fonds américain, a été
créée par l'association Tapologo de Mgr Kevin Dowlings, archevêque de
Rustenburg, la grande ville voisine. Il est le seul évêque catholique du pays à
avoir préconisé publiquement l'usage du préservatif.
PAS D'EAU COURANTE
Selina a été l'une des premières à bénéficier de la
distribution d'antirétroviraux. "Avant, c'était facile de trouver un boyfriend
capable de payer jusqu'à 1000 rands (125 euros) pour une passe. Les types qui
étaient virés avec une prime, ou les retraités, ils dépensaient beaucoup
d'argent avant de retourner chez eux. Maintenant, tu peux difficilement avoir
plus de 100 rands (12,5 euros)", explique-t-elle. "Et si tu demandes qu'ils
portent un préservatif, c'est moins encore", poursuit-elle. En réalité, la passe
se négocie souvent à 20 rands, à peine 2,50 euros.
Il n'y a rien ici, pas d'eau courante, pas de robinet public. Des camions
passent chaque jour pour vendre de l'eau. Pourtant, il y a des citernes un peu
partout. "Ils viennent les remplir avant les élections : après, c'est fini",
raconte Batsesana, qui dirige l'équipe de bénévoles.
Tout, ici, est provisoire. Même la clinique, faite de quelques containers, est
prête à être déplacée. Les Sud-Africains peuvent prétendre à l'une des petites
maisons que l'Etat bâtit non loin de là. Les étrangers, eux, n'ont droit à rien.
A terme, l'objectif de la municipalité est de raser Freedom Park, d'effacer à
coups de bulldozer la misère et ses prostituées.
A Freedom Park,
misère et séropositivité règnent toujours sur le bidonville des mineurs, LE
MONDE | 01.12.2005 | 16h16 • Mis à jour le 01.12.2005 | 16h16, article paru dans
l'édition du 02.12.2005,
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3212,36-716348@51-689430,0.html
South Africa Court
Removes Barriers to Same-Sex Marriages
December 1, 2005
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's top court said on
Thursday it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry, putting
it on track to become the first African country to legalize same-sex marriage.
The Constitutional Court told parliament to amend marriage laws to include
same-sex partners within the year -- a step that runs counter to widespread
African taboos against homosexuality.
``The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of
marriage ... signifies that their capacity for love, commitment and accepting
responsibility is by definition less worthy of regard than that of heterosexual
couples,'' Justice Albie Sachs said in the ruling.
The court said if parliament did not act, the legal definition of marriage would
be automatically changed to include same-sex unions. That would put South Africa
alongside Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada in allowing gay marriages.
Elated gay and lesbian couples and supporters hugged each after the judgment,
although some said they were disappointed they had to wait longer to get
married.
``We would've liked to get married as soon as we could,'' said Fikile Vilakazi,
wearing a yellow T-shirt with the words ''Marriage -- anything less is not
equal.''
``I'm very happy though that finally our courts have discovered that the common
law definition of marriage is unconstitutional.''
Post-apartheid South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the
world and the only one to enshrine equal rights for gays and lesbians.
Many African countries, by contrast, outlaw homosexuality and turn a blind eye
to persecution of gays and lesbians.
South African gay activists have won a string of legal victories in recent
years, including the right to adopt children and inherit from partners' wills,
but so far the right to marry has eluded them.
THE SECULAR AND THE SACRED
South Africa's ruling African National Congress, which under Nelson Mandela led
the country from apartheid to democracy, said the ruling affirmed the state
should not discriminate against its citizens.
``Today's ruling, like other before it, is an important step forward in aligning
the laws of the country with the rights and freedoms contained in the South
African Constitution,'' the ANC, which dominates South Africa's parliament, said
in a statement.
The case stemmed from an application won a year ago by a lesbian couple to have
their marriage recognized in a lower court. Government lawyers appealed, arguing
only parliament should have the right to change the country's laws.
The couple was backed by the country's leading gay rights group, the Lesbian and
Gay Equality Project.
Only one of the court's 11 judges dissented from the ruling, arguing it should
have legalized gay marriage immediately instead of allowing 12 months for
parliament to act.
Sachs dismissed religious objections to gay marriage, saying the country's
constitution gave no reason why gays and religious groups could not co-exist.
``In the open and democratic society contemplated by the Constitution there must
be mutually respectful co-existence between the secular and the sacred,'' he
said.
South Africa's biggest Christian party, which has taken a strong anti-gay stance
in the past, held to its objection.
``Studies of previous civilizations reveal that when a society strays from the
sexual ethic of marriage, it deteriorates and eventually disintegrates,'' the
African Christian Democratic Party said.
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Njonggonkulu Ndungane, whose church has been
riven by a dispute between African and western congregations over the issue of
homosexuality, said the church ``valued diversity'' as expressed in the court
ruling but would not change its stance against gay marriage.
``We have repeatedly affirmed that we do not regard partnership between two
persons of the same sex as a marriage in the eyes of God,'' Ndungane said in a
statement.
South Africa Court
Removes Barriers to Same-Sex Marriages, NYT, 1.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-safrica-gay.html
Man who fed farmhand to lions jailed for life
September 30, 2005
The Times
By Jenny Booth and agencies
A white farmer convicted of feeding one of his black workers
to lions was jailed for life by a South African judge today.
Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, a white building contractor, and farm labourer Simon
Mathebula, 43, were found guilty in April of murdering Nelson Chisale, whose
bloodied remains were found last year in an enclosure for rare white lions near
the Kruger National Park. Little more than his skull, shards of bone and a
finger were recovered.
The incident was apparently sparked by a dispute between the deceased and his
then employer Scott-Crossley.
The grisly killing of 41-year-old Mr Chisale provoked an outcry in South Africa
where, more than a decade after the end of apartheid rule, some white farmers
are still accused of abusing and exploiting black workers. Protesters demanding
life sentences for Scott-Crossley and his co-accused have picketed some sittings
of the court.
The state also called for life imprisonment for both men, citing the
exceptionally gruesome nature of the crime that took place on January 31, 2004
near Hoedspruit, in north-east South Africa. But although Judge George Maluleke
of the Phalaborwa circuit court sentenced Scott-Crossley to life imprisonment,
he gave Mathebula 15 years, of which three years were suspended.
Scott-Crossley, who minutes earlier married one of his prison visitors at a
nearby courthouse, showed no emotion as the sentence was read out at the
hearing.
"We did expect a heavy sentence," he told journalists following the sentencing.
"We are sorry that the family didn’t accept our offer of financial compensation.
It was not an effort to try and bribe them, but we really feel sorry for them,
and we are going to fight the sentence."
About 100 people packed in the courtroom cheered and ululated after the sentence
was read, while Chisale’s niece Fetsang Jafta declared "I’m satisfied with the
outcome."
During the trial that opened in Phalaborwa in January, a year after the murder,
a judge heard that Chisale was savagely beaten with pangas at Engedi farm where
he had returned to collect his belongings, two months after being fired for
apparently running a personal errand during work hours.
Chisale was tied to a tree and later loaded onto a pick-up truck and driven to
the Mokwale White Lion Project where he was thrown over a fence into a lion
camp.
Farm worker Robert Mnisi, who was accused along with Scott-Crossley and
Mathebula but later turned state witness, testified that he heard Chisale scream
as the lions devoured his body.
A third accused, Richard Mathebula, who is apparently suffering from
tuberculosis, will face trial separately due to ill health.
The start of the sentencing hearing was delayed for 30 minutes as Scott-Crossley
tied the knot with Sim Strydom, whom he met just a few weeks ago when she
visited him in prison, adding an unexpected twist to the saga.
Before handing down the sentence, judge Maluleke said his ruling was based on
the severity of the crime and not on the presumption that it was a racist
killing.
"The racial undertones in this case did not play a role in the conviction,"
Maluleke said. "It will also not play a role in the sentencing."
Membathisi Mdladlana, the Labour Minister, had expressed his "shock" and"anger"
over the murder while the main labour federation said that the killing showed
that many farmers treat black workers today as badly as they did during
apartheid.
In one particularly brutal incident, a white farmer in eastern South Africa was
sentenced to 25 years in 2001 for killing a black employee by tying a rope
around his neck and dragging him along a gravel road behind a pick-up truck.
Man who fed farmhand
to lions jailed for life, Ts, 30.9.2005,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1805372,00.html
A Bleak Symbol of Apartheid,
Soweto Sees Signs of
Prosperity
September 9, 2005
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
SOWETO, South Africa, Sept. 6 - They held a wine-tasting
festival here this past weekend, the social event of the month in this sprawling
township of a million-plus people just west of downtown Johannesburg. Among the
1,500 who showed up, Maureen Makhathini of Diepkloof needed a lift to get there.
"My car's in the shop," she explained. "The BMW, I mean."
If something seems wrong with that picture, well, something is. Soweto, after
all, is famous as the hotbed of rebellion in apartheid's dying days - a place of
endless poverty, seething anger and, too often, mindless violence by oppressors
and oppressed alike. Say "Soweto," and educated palates and Bavarian roadsters
do not jump quickly to mind.
That, Mrs. Makhathini says, is what is wrong. "It used to be very, very, very
rough," she said. "Now you can see that it's exactly the opposite."
It is possible to gloss over Soweto's - and South Africa's - many problems. The
rich-poor divide in this nation remains among the widest on earth, and Soweto,
the oldest and biggest township, remains deeply rooted on the poor side of that
gap. The racial divide persists, too, and ordinary Sowetans may not have so much
made peace with their old white oppressors, as they have rendered them
irrelevant to daily life.
But something else is going on here as well. From the ashes of apartheid, Soweto
is emerging as a springboard into the black middle and upper classes, an
economic hub in its own right and, its proponents say, an example to which other
townships can aspire.
"Ten years ago, there was no excitement like there is now," said Mnikelo
Mangciphu, a grocery and dry-goods distributor who has sprung into Soweto's
burgeoning wine market. "There is a drive by the government and by the people to
invest in Soweto. Roads are being tarred, all the infrastructure is being
upgraded, and that on its own encourages more investment."
In fact, Soweto no longer looks like an archetypal township, with its ragtag
collection of concrete block huts and waterless, powerless shacks, but instead
resembles a typical if modest suburb. So-called informal settlements of shanties
account for fewer than one in 10 dwellings; most homes now are made of brick,
and utilities are a given.
Some neighborhoods, Diepkloof and Pimville among them, are now comparatively
high-income areas, with homes and real-estate markets to match. A recent market
study pegged the average household's income at about $4,900 a year - above the
average for black South Africans, and high by African standards in general,
though such statistics can be unreliable.
And while the nation's latest census, from 2001, concluded that the great
majority of Sowetans made less than $12,000 a year, it also found that nearly
20,000 of the 300,000 households made more - some of them hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year, in fact.
Since then the region has embarked on what looks very much like a development
boom.
A $16 million complex that includes offices, shops and a tourist center
commemorating South Africa's Freedom Charter opened in June in Kliptown,
Soweto's historic heart. Richard Maponya, a self-made millionaire in retailing,
broke ground in July on a 650,000-square-foot shopping mall in central Soweto
that he says will be aimed squarely at up-market consumers.
Another consortium announced plans last month for an 18-hole golf course near
Pimville that is being designed by Gary Player, the legendary South African pro,
and will be surrounded by housing. Coincidentally, the announcement follows a
warning by President Thabo Mbeki that such golf estates are gobbling up prime
land, marginalizing the poor and worsening racial divisions.
Caxton Newspapers, a big South African chain, is rolling out 11
free-distribution weeklies in Soweto neighborhoods, written and published by
local residents, to complement the 90 it hands out in white communities.
"They've opened a very large shopping mall in Protea, there's a large mall in
Dobsonville, and one opening in the future in Pimville," Kevin Keogh, the chief
executive of Caxton's urban newspapers division, said, ticking off Soweto
neighborhoods. "That all adds up to advertising dollars."
Local merchants claim to see the changes as well. The Backroom Restaurant in
Pimville, open just four months, does a brisk business serving food, blues and
jazz to upscale patrons, not just from Soweto, where surveys say 4 in 10 workers
are white-collar employees or professionals, but from blacks who have moved out
of Soweto to wealthier suburbs north of the city.
"Our target market is middle class to top end," said the owner, Patrick Mrasi
(pronounced m-GHA-si). "I wanted to create a networking place, one where guys
can come and have their business meetings. A lot of these guys are successful
and live in the suburbs, but they still have families in the township, and even
in the week, after work, they come here. Soweto's where they spend most of their
time."
As a draw, the Backroom has begun offering an extensive list of South African
wines, served by stewards trained by the Cape Wine Academy. "Since I opened,
there's been a nice, steady growth," Mr. Mrasi said. "Nobody would have thought
I could reach these levels."
Some did, actually. Last weekend's wine festival, which showcased the wines of
10 black-owned wineries among the 86 exhibitors, was conceived by Mr. Mangciphu,
the distributor, and the Cape Wine Academy's local manager, Lyn Woodward, over a
cookout at Mr. Mangciphu's Pretoria home. "I was drinking beer out of a glass
from the Soweto Beer Festival" last November, he said, "and so she said, 'Guys,
why don't we have a wine festival?' "
Ten months later, the festival was successful enough that some late arrivals on
Sunday were turned away and the promoters have decided to make it an annual
event. Mr. Mangciphu and Ms. Woodward, with two others, have formed a company to
market and distribute fine wine in Soweto and, later, other townships.
Their target is people like Mrs. Makhathini, a 52-year-old entrepreneur who
seems to have the fingers of each hand in different pies. A dental nurse at a
local hospital, she also runs a dressmaking business from a backyard office,
rents still more space to a hair salon and - in her spare time - run a small
charity for 100 local orphans.
Her latest plan is to add a second story to a house she owns in Pimville, using
the proceeds from rentals to reopen a computer school and begin a
videoconferencing center for Sowetans who want to communicate with friends and
business contacts abroad.
As for wine, Mrs. Makhathini does not often partake. But the festival may change
her mind. "I really had a good time," she said. "Unexpectedly."
A Bleak Symbol of
Apartheid, Soweto Sees Signs of Prosperity, NYT, 9.9.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/international/africa/09soweto.html
Des hausses de salaires
ont mis fin à la grève
des mineurs
d'or sud-africains
12.8.2005
Le Monde
CARLTONVILLE (province du Gauteng) de notre envoyée spéciale
Les mineurs n'ont pas le droit de parler aux journalistes !
Dégagez immédiatement ! Vous avez trois minutes pour quitter la propriété !"
Flanqué de deux "gros bras", le responsable de la sécurité de la mine d'or de
Driefontein ne plaisante pas avec les consignes. Sans autorisation de la
direction de Goldfields, aucun étranger n'est admis autour de cette mine, l'une
des plus grandes du pays, située à une cinquantaine de kilomètres au sud de
Johannesburg.
L'accueil est à peine moins froid dans la mine voisine, propriété de l'autre
géant sud-africain, Harmony. Cette fois, ce sont les syndicalistes qui
rechignent à parler. Eux aussi veulent un feu vert de la direction. "Les choses
ont un tout petit peu changé depuis 1994, depuis la démocratie. On est libre, on
a le droit de s'exprimer", tient à souligner Bhongo Mvimvi, membre de la
direction locale de l'Union nationale des mineurs (NUM), qui a organisé du 8 au
11 août la plus grande grève depuis 1987. Pour parler, il faudra tout de même
s'éloigner de quelques kilomètres.
Les mines se ressemblent. Plantées dans les champs, ce sont de véritables
petites villes avec, autour du puits, les terrils, les petites villas des
cadres, les immeubles des mineurs, les terrains de sport et les débits de
boissons. "Dans notre vie quotidienne, franchement, rien n'a changé. On vit
toujours dans les "hostels". C'est ça le plus dur", explique Vincent Skondo, qui
"travaille au fond" depuis vingt-cinq ans. Les "hostels" sont des vestiges du
régime d'apartheid : dans ces baraquements, s'entassaient des mineurs vivant
alors à 15 ou 20 dans une chambre. Il y a dix ans, il y avait encore 530 000
travailleurs dans les mines d'or sud-africaines, aujourd'hui ils ne sont plus
que 110 000.
"Avec les licenciements de ces dernières années, c'est moins peuplé. Il y a huit
personnes par chambre, mais c'est toujours trop. Il n'y a aucune intimité",
ajoute Bhongo Mvimvi. La direction d'Harmony assure que la moyenne est de 4,2
personnes par chambre.
Les salaires des mineurs, qui débutent à 2 200 rands par mois (277 euros), ne
leur permettent pas d'avoir un logement en dehors de la mine. La prime de
logement, l'un des enjeux de cette grève qui a paralysé tout le secteur des
mines d'or pendant quatre jours, vient d'être portée à 1 000 rands par mois,
encore loin des 1 500 rands réclamés par les syndicats.
"On n'a toujours pas le droit de faire venir nos femmes. Alors il y a plein de
prostituées. Comment voulez-vous qu'on lutte contre le sida ?" commente Vincent
Skondo. Il vient de la région du Cap-Oriental, située à des milliers de
kilomètres, et ne rentre voir sa femme et ses sept enfants qu'une fois par an.
Un mineur gagne deux à trois fois plus qu'un travailleur agricole. Mieux
organisés, les syndicats ont déjà obtenu de notables avancées sociales.
Soucieuses de leur image, désastreuse sous l'apartheid, les entreprises minières
ont, de leur côté, consenti quelques efforts. Les mineurs ont désormais une
couverture sociale, des assurances "funérailles", des allocations logement que
d'autres travailleurs leur envient.
A l'issue d'une épreuve de force qui aura duré quatre jours et mobilisé 75 % des
effectifs, les mineurs ont obtenu des augmentations de salaires de 6 % à 7 %.
Les quatre grandes compagnies minières qui se partagent l'essentiel de la
production annoncent des pertes de 16 millions d'euros par jour mais devraient,
selon les experts, s'en remettre. La Bourse de Johannesburg n'a pas bougé, le
rand reste fort face à l'euro et au dollar et les cours mondiaux de l'or n'ont
pas réagi.
Des hausses de
salaires ont mis fin à la grève des mineurs d'or sud-africains, Le Monde,
Fabienne Pompey, Article paru dans l'édition du 13.08.05,
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3212,36-679601@51-644650,0.html
South Africa sticks to its guns
January 23, 2005
The Sunday Times
RW Johnson, George
SOUTH AFRICA’S draconian Firearms Control Act, a decisive
attempt to limit gun ownership in a society awash with weapons, has confronted a
gun culture that is every bit as deep as America’s.
It is hard to imagine better representatives of this culture than Piet and
Rossouw Botha, the two sons of former President PW Botha. The first member of
their family to settle in South Africa in 1679 was a gunsmith and many of his
descendants have been involved in the gun trade. Faced by the new law, both men
are talking of emigration.
Piet Botha and his wife carry .40 Smith & Wessons constantly. “She has to drive
past three squatter camps on her way to work,” he says. Both of them are good
shots and spend hours on the shooting range every month.
Piet points out that one of his best friends was shot dead in the garden, that
there have been five attempted burglaries of his Pretoria home, that he has
twice been attacked by muggers in the past few years (he saw them off by pulling
a knife — he carries three knives), that his son was badly beaten by other
muggers and that his son-in-law was nearly killed in another incident.
His son responded to his ordeal by becoming a fully trained gun and knife
instructor and learning martial arts. His daughter, who works in Britain, arms
herself with guns and knives whenever she returns. “In our family it’s always
been the tradition that children learn to handle guns from the age of five or
six and we all belong to shooting clubs,” he says.
Although Piet is a sports shooter too, he says the most important thing is the
defence of his family: “I can’t compromise about that. If I’m forced to give up
my guns here, I’ll emigrate to the UK”.
Reminded that British gun laws are equally tough, he replies: “No problem. There
you have law and order and the police are magnificent. My family will be safe
there without guns.”
Rossouw Botha, who runs the gun shop Redneck Tactical Supplies in the Western
Cape town of George, is only too aware that many gun shops are closing down
because of the new law, which requires weapons in private hands to be
re-registered every five years and, in some cases, every two years.
The regulations are bewilderingly complex and the licensing department is so
slow that at its present rate it will take 65 years to re-register all South
Africa’s 4.5m legally held private guns.
If Rossouw wants to continue to ply his trade, he may have to do it in the
United States. “The guys I really feel sorry for are the poor, mainly blacks,”
he says. “Well-off whites can retreat inside high-walled houses with expensive
alarm systems and security companies offering instant armed response. But 95% of
my customers are black and they can’t afford that.
“They buy my guns but have to leave them in my safe because they can’t get
licences for them. They are all going to be driven into becoming illegal gun
owners.”
Both men are determinedly modern and progressive Afrikaners who insist that they
never supported apartheid in the days before the African National Congress came
to power.
“The ANC is the democratically elected government of this country and that means
its laws have to be respected,” says Piet. “This new gun law is completely
wrong, but I absolutely will not break the law.”
The other side of the argument, put by the Gun Control Alliance, is that South
Africa has the world’s highest murder rate — 11 times higher than America’s.
Between 1994 and 2004 215,000 people were murdered in South Africa — more than
58 a day — and the proportion caused by guns has risen from 41% to half.
For gun control groups, such figures show the absolute necessity of reducing the
number of weapons in circulation and regulating their ownership. The gun lobby
reads them the other way round, pointing out that 51,004 armed robberies were
reported in 1996 and 88,178 by 2000, with huge numbers going unreported.
“The situation is running out of control,” says Abios Khoele, chairman of the
Black Gun Owners’ Association. “The criminals are extremely well armed.
“The ANC smuggled huge numbers of guns into the country and after liberation
made no effort to collect them back. Those same weapons are now often used in
hold-ups.
“We blacks only want arms for self-defence — after all, crime is worst of all in
the townships. The trouble is that the government is clearly targeting white gun
owners and they really aren’t the problem any more. The extremist white right is
dead and buried. It’s criminals — murderers and rapists — who we have to defend
our families against.
“For most of the apartheid period blacks weren’t allowed to own guns and now a
black government is taking away our right to self-defence. Already illegal guns
outnumber licensed weapons by 10 to one in townships, but now the number will
rocket.”
Not only is it easy to smuggle guns into South Africa, but there is a huge
leakage of weapons from the army and police who often sell them at a profit.
Another source is home-made guns, turned out in township backyards.
Although the government says it merely wants to regulate private gun ownership,
critics have suggested that it really wants to end it. In one letter to the Gun
Dealers’ Association the minister for safety and security, Charles Nqakula,
stated: “Licences for firearms should not be granted to private individuals.”
Later attempts to snatch that phrase back have merely left gun owners and
dealers resentful and distrustful.
Like Rossouw Botha, other gun dealers talk of emigration.
“You can buy an AK-47 or an R5 army assault rifle in any taxi queue for £30 or
£40,” says one, who did not wish to be named. “The government thinks it is going
to tame the jungle but it’s going to grow a gun jungle like you’ve never seen.”
It will, he suggests, be the arms equivalent of prohibition in the US, an
enormous boost to arms smugglers and the illegal arms trade, with gun-owning
remaining widespread.
“The criminals are heavily armed. People don’t buy guns for fun, but for
self-defence,” he says. “You can’t legislate against the survival instinct.”
South Africa sticks
to its guns, STs, 23.1.2005,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1452178,00.html
We carried panic alarms
and slept in an anti-rape cage
April 28, 2004
The Times
By Michael Dynes
South Africa's reputation for violent crime is unequalled, one in nine is HIV
positive and poverty and unemployment are rampant. But as he prepares to leave
after five tumultuous years as The Times bureau chief there, this correspondent
explains why he will always find the country seductive
I HAVE SURVIVED cerebral malaria, several doses of amoebic
dysentery and two near-fatal car crashes. I live with my wife and children in a
fortified home inside a fortified compound, under permanent threat from
murderous intruders. We can’t walk or take public transport anywhere for fear of
attack; even when I drive, a carjacker could shoot me for less than £1. One in
nine of the locals has HIV, and there are bent cops, massive unemployment and
grinding poverty, with beggars at every traffic light.
It is, in short, a vision of hell. So why is it that, as I prepare to leave
South Africa after five years to return to England, I have such a gut-wrenching
feeling of loss?
This country is not for the faint-hearted, but somehow it gets to you. There are
the obvious things, of course: the all-year sunshine, the sky that seems to go
on for ever, the beaches, the barbecues, the big house with the huge garden and
the swimming pool. And most of all, there are the people. Our children,
Laurence, 5, and Emilia, 2, have grown up here. Laurence loves to get out his
toy mower and help Sam, the gardener, cut the lawn. He won’t be doing that in
London — there isn’t any grass. Emilia will miss being strapped with a towel to
the back of Winnie, our domestic worker, the way African women traditionally
carry their children, and which she adores. Sam and Winnie have become close
family friends, and we could never afford them in London.
Of course, there have been bad times too. I still remember the day when our
first domestic worker announced that she was seven months pregnant, and was
going to give birth at the same time as my wife, Nicol. At first I thought
nothing of it. Then a South African friend told us it would be too dangerous to
keep her on after she gave birth. “It’s illegal to test employees for HIV,” he
said. “But she ’s from a rural area, and no matter how many times you tell her
not to, she will pick up your child and breastfeed it. Are you prepared to take
the risk that she might infect your child? You have no choice. You have to pay
her off.”
South Africa has the highest HIV rate in the world, so we had little option but
to take his advice. On several occasions since we have read stories in the local
press about domestic workers infecting the children of their employers with HIV.
It was a sobering experience. But then, Africa is not the Home Counties.
In the fortified northern suburbs of Johannesburg, we have become accustomed to
living behind an 8ft remote-controlled gate and sleeping in a special section of
the house with steel bars on the windows and a steel gate in the corridor, known
as an anti-rape cage. We all carry panic buttons so that an armed response team
can be summoned in seconds if there is an intruder. Even Laurence understands
this. “That’s for the baddies when they come, isn’t it Daddy?” he said once.
Nothing dominates dinner-party conversation in Johannesburg like tales of
violent crime. Everyone has a story to tell, and they delight in telling it,
terrifying the tourists, demonstrating how macho and fearless South Africans are
and helping to orchestrate a collective hysteria in the process.
Our own experience was limited. Two intruders broke into the master bedroom
while I was away. Nicol was in the adjoining bedroom putting Emilia to sleep.
She heard a noise, and thought little of it. But for weeks friends and
colleagues bombarded us with the possible horrible consequences had she walked
in on the intruders. By the end of it, I was more frightened of them than the
robbers.
Then one day we woke up to the news that an elderly couple near us had been
killed when someone broke into their house and stabbed them in the head with a
pair of shears. Nicol and I exchanged glances, tried not to panic and went about
our day.
The image this extraordinary, if deeply troubled, country has in Britain as one
of the most dangerous places in the world outside a war zone enrages the South
African Government, which sees this as a legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
Violent crime is only an aspect of South African society. It does not define it.
If it did, no one would ever want to live here, black or white.
There is another side to South Africa, which keeps people here who could leave
if they wanted to, and which pulls back many who have already left. The fact is
that, ten years after the fall of apartheid, South Africa is the powerhouse of
the continent. As one white South African who left and then returned told me:
“This is a dynamic society. Everything is in flux. It’s a society trying to find
its feet. There is no more exciting place to be.”
As representatives of more than 100 governments, including 40 presidents and ten
prime ministers, arrive at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to celebrate the
tenth anniversary of freedom and democracy, it is worth bearing in mind how much
the country has changed in ten years.
Armoured vehicles no longer storm the black townships and fire on impoverished
residents who object to being politically and economically marginalised by a
white-minority government who saw them as sub-human because of the colour of
their skin.
The Government no longer pays scientists to carry out research into
race-specific bacterial weapons, schemes to sterilise the majority black
population, or experiments with such notable contributions to warfare as
chocolates laced with botulinum, cigarettes spiked with anthrax and bottles of
beer adulterated with thallium.
At shopping complexes all over the country, blacks, whites, Coloureds and
Indians casually sit next to each other in restaurants and bars, share a meal, a
drink and a conversation — all of which were once criminal offences. It is hard
to believe that only ten years ago South Africa was a totally segregated and
intolerant society. Today, for the most part, South Africa’s people get along
remarkably well.
Black political leaders periodically remind the white community that a little
over a decade ago they actively or passively supported the violent oppression of
the majority of the black population, turned a blind eye to the apartheid-era
death squads and sanctioned the violent destabilisation of neighbouring black
states. But there hasn’t been a hint of the vengeance that so many whites
feared. White people whinge about affirmative action, falling educational
standards and the lack of job and promotion prospects for their children. But
that’s because the country’s resources are being used to benefit all its people,
not just a privileged white elite. A decade after black majority rule, white
people continue to dominate corporate South Africa.
Afrikaners, the descendants of 17th-century Dutch and French settlers who
account for some 60 per cent of South Africa’s four million white people, and
who erected the edifice of apartheid, complain that their culture and heritage
are under siege. Their language, they say, is disappearing from schools, courts
and government offices, and they feel threatened by affirmative action. But few
whites would seriously argue that South Africa is not infinitely better now than
under white minority rule. Most of those who think otherwise have already left.
Racial tolerance and reconciliation are the official government goals. That has
bred a new climate in which words such as “kaffir” and “coolie” are beyond the
pale. Maids are now called “domestic workers,” and non-whites are respectfully
referred to as “the previously disadvantaged”.
South Africa, for all its shortcomings, is no longer the skunk of the
international community. On the contrary, it is held up as an example of how
apparently intractable violence and conflict can be resolved in an increasingly
volatile and hostile world. The hate, fear and paranoia which characterised the
country in the dying years of apartheid have all but gone. South Africa is now a
much happier and relaxed place in which to live and work.
When Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson swore in Thabo Mbeki yesterday for his
second five-year presidential term, South Africans celebrated the peaceful
transition from apartheid to democracy at a time when the rest of the world was
convinced a bloodbath was inevitable.
But they are also celebrating a decade of stability under black majority rule,
which has been responsible for a dramatic turnaround in the country’s fortunes,
the revival of the bankrupt apartheid-era economy brought to its knees by years
of sanctions and the lowest rates of inflation and public debt for a generation.
In contrast to the South Africa of a decade ago, today it is getting richer, not
poorer, an achievement for which the ruling African National Congress is rarely
given credit. South Africa is now regarded by the international financial
community as one of the most disciplined of all the emerging markets, with low
labour costs and a potential for economic growth that is among the most
attractive in the world.
The fears of white people who stocked up on canned goods before the first
democratic elections in anticipation of Armageddon now seem ridiculous, as do
the predictions from white alarmists that once the ANC took power it would
nationalise everything, from “swimming pools to children”.
Of course, despite many reasons for optimism, the country’s problems are far
from over. The hopes and expectations of millions of impoverished black people
who believed that the end of white minority rule would bring wholesale
improvements in their wretched lives have not been realised. Unemployment is
increasing, and now stands at more than 40 per cent. Fewer than 7 per cent of
school-leavers each year will find a job in the formal economy.
For most people, life has got harder, not easier, under black majority rule. For
the thriving black middle class, estimated to be up to 15 million people, who
have been in a position to benefit from the transition to democracy, the past
ten years have brought considerable gains. But the same cannot be said for the
estimated 20 million of the country’s 45 million people who live outside the
formal economy.
In the squalid squatter camps or “informal settlements” that have sprung up like
festering boils, millions of people live in conditions of abject poverty, with
little or no sanitation, water or power, and no visible means of support. Having
lived in a tin shack in the Diepsloot squatter camp north of Johannesburg for a
few days, I soon realised that the depths of anger over such conditions is the
gravest threat to the country’s stability.
Few white or for that matter affluent black people ever venture out to visit
these hell holes on their doorsteps. These are the people that residents of the
wealthy suburbs, black and white, have fortified their homes against with all
the latest that security technology can offer. Here, amidst the stench of human
urine and faeces, the fury and despair of the poorest of the poor is palpable.
It is here that South Africa’s answer to Robert Mugabe is most likely to emerge
— a firebrand demagogue who could tap into the festering resentments against
rich white people in their fancy houses, and mobilise millions of landless
peasants to march on the shopping malls and golf courses.
This is where most of the crime comes from. Bringing this vast underclass into
the mainstream of society represents the biggest challenge facing Mbeki in his
second term of office. Unlike the black urban elite which has benefited from a
decade of black majority rule, this seething underclass has little in the way of
education or skills. It is unemployed, and largely unemployable.
It is going to be a Herculean task. Many critics think that it is beyond the
ability of the ruling party, that the country’s social and economic problems are
just too big to be solved. Mbeki does not share such views. He is adamant that
the ANC has done more in ten years to improve the lives of the black majority
than all previous white governments put together. Unemployment, he says, can be
defeated, just like apartheid.
South Africa’s black electorate has just delivered Mbeki and the ruling party
their biggest election victory since Nelson Mandela became the country’s first
black President. Despite the ANC’s failure to rescue millions of them from
poverty and despair, they seem prepared to wait a little longer for it to do so.
After five exhilarating years, our time here is up. Living in South Africa was
always only going to be temporary. We are Europeans, not Africans, and must
return home, despite flirting with the idea of becoming South Africans as some
of our friends have done. It would be fascinating to see if the squatter camps
can be removed from the landscape. That might just be the first step in ending
Africa’s image as the “basket case” continent.
Sitting on the Tube or walking through a London drizzle at some point in the
future, I know that images of South Africa and its people — from the Afrikaner
farmers of the Free State to the impoverished residents of the squatter camps —
will always return to haunt me. Perhaps I will return one day. On the other
hand, perhaps I won’t leave at all . . .
We carried panic
alarms and slept in an anti-rape cage, Ts, 28.4.2004,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1089893,00.html
SA newspapers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/feb/05/world-news-guide-africa
https://mg.co.za/
https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/
Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia
Apartheid
|
