Townships are such a difficult thing to understand or even attempt to explain, really. The thing is they’re not the same as “the projects” in the states, and if you try to understand them through that lens you’re bound to encounter many misunderstandings. From what I can understand, the most essential difference between segregation in the US and apartheid in South Africa was the sheer extent of oppression. While the US had segregationist policies implemented in things like water fountains and schooling, the equivalent of these policies were only considered acts of “petty apartheid” in South Africa’s book. The US never implemented the policy of territorial segregation that South Africa did under apartheid. Although this seems like a minute distinction in two stories of massive oppressive it actually makes a huge difference, both in historical terms, and in terms of effects on contemporary lifestyles. The difference is, while blacks in the US were forced into places like projects and slums because they were excluded from the economic opportunities to grant them purchasing power, blacks (including Coloureds and Indians) in South Africa were forced into townships by law.
So what does this mean for South Africa today, you ask? It means that the townships are very confusing places, and areas of astounding socioeconomic diversity. You could be living in an informal settlement (effectively a tin shack), or you could be living in a house like that of the family with which I stayed, where they certainly possess the purchasing power to live outside of townships but decide not to. Furthermore, there is often very little spatial division between these two extremes; for example, there was only a one-street-separation between the house I lived in and the informal settlement housing. This disparity was extremely baffling to me upon my arrival to Langa Township and inspired some of the very first questions I asked my homestay brother, Odwa. He explained that people tend to stay in townships because of the community and camaraderie that lies within, irrespective of the amount of personal wealth one possesses. He added that the townships also provide a certain extent of free amenities such as water and electricity, which makes staying in the township more convenient on a very basic level. What this cracks down to is that there’s, perhaps, not as much of an ultimate goal to “move on up to the east side”, or to the suburbs, as would be the equivalent here. Although complex, to me it seems to exemplify the African concept of “ubuntu”, or humanity, in which the value of our neighbors and communities is emphasized over our own personal goals and desires.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Not to scare you Mom and Dad, but…
… there’s some guy here who’s calling me his traditional newlywed: a “makoti” (I can see my mom reaching for the telephone right now). But really don’t worry, I’m actually learning so much about the intricacies of South African cultures from this guy, and I’m 95% sure he’s only joking. He’s of Sotho (pronounced “soo-too”) heritage, meaning although his family now stays in South Africa, their historical origins are in the country Lesotho, one of the two small landlocked countries that lies within South Africa’s borders. My introduction to this guy, who we’ll just call “Kamani”, involved a host of combinations of and contradictions between tradition and modernity, a classic tension in the rhetoric surrounding Africa. Kamani is the cousin of my homestay bhuti (brother) from Langa so I met him at a family gathering on my very first day, in which the uncles had come together to praise the ancestors through song, prayer, and the home brewing of a traditional beer. All of the females of the family were in a room to the side preparing and sharing heaps of freshly prepared dishes, which is where I had my first taste of traditional South African food. All of the cousins in the family who were more or less around my age were in a room to the side of the ceremony watching MTV and chastising the young cousins for being too rowdy.
I realized that Kamani and his cousins, upon arising to take a walk around the block, all wrapped themselves in these huge, vibrantly adorned woolen blankets, picked up wooden walking sticks, and put on farmer-like straw hats. It turns out that the outfits that Kamani and his cousins were wearing are a requirement for their initiation ceremonies as Sotho young adult males to become men. The ceremony starts when the boy turns 18 years old, at which point he goes “into the mountains”, to get circumcised and to learn the trades of becoming a man. When the newly initiated males come back into society, now as men, they must dispose entirely of their old boyhood wardrobes and acquire new clothes that will lay the foundations of their manhood attire. In addition they must wear the traditional outfit described above whenever they are in public irrespective of the weather or occasion. Although the format of this initiation stays the same from ethnic group to ethnic group, the required dress changes. Whereas a newly initiated Sotho man must wear traditional beads, a blanket, a straw hat, and a walking stick as I explained above, a newly initiated Xhosa man, who has his roots in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa must wear a full suit with a Kangol-style cabbie hat during the first few months post-initiation. The newly initiated men tend to take the demands of their initiation very seriously. There was one time where, out of curiosity, I attempted to touch Kamani’s walking stick, and he quickly took it away and got upset with me for the first time. I later asked my homestay bhuti why Kamani had reacted the way he did, and he explained that it was because the stick was “for him, and him only.”
Despite the heavy emphasis on these traditional practices, it is impossible not to notice how “westernized” the South African youth is - not just young males, but females as well. The very first thing I bonded over with my 24-year-old bhuti was our mutual love for Coldplay and (don’t judge) Keeping Up with the Kardashians, my infamous guilty pleasure. It totally makes sense when you look around; the youth is flooded 20 out of the 24 hours in a day with images of western media and culture, predominately steered by the US music and television industries. Furthermore, it seems as if it is a matter of pride to be a young person in South Africa to be recognized as understanding and emulating western culture; it’s apparent in the brands they seek, the music they listen to, the rich people they aspire to follow, etc. It creates this interesting dynamic of young South Africans weaving in and out of their various identities, and outsiders learning to accept this weaving as legitimate, for culture inevitably becomes something of its own when it is appropriated by a different group. In the case of my friend Kamani, the transformation from a reckless, hip, young adult, to a dutiful and responsible man guarding his traditions and heritage, and then back again, or perhaps the combination between these two, created the perfect grounds for being able to understand the predominate tone of South African youth culture on a more personal level.
I realized that Kamani and his cousins, upon arising to take a walk around the block, all wrapped themselves in these huge, vibrantly adorned woolen blankets, picked up wooden walking sticks, and put on farmer-like straw hats. It turns out that the outfits that Kamani and his cousins were wearing are a requirement for their initiation ceremonies as Sotho young adult males to become men. The ceremony starts when the boy turns 18 years old, at which point he goes “into the mountains”, to get circumcised and to learn the trades of becoming a man. When the newly initiated males come back into society, now as men, they must dispose entirely of their old boyhood wardrobes and acquire new clothes that will lay the foundations of their manhood attire. In addition they must wear the traditional outfit described above whenever they are in public irrespective of the weather or occasion. Although the format of this initiation stays the same from ethnic group to ethnic group, the required dress changes. Whereas a newly initiated Sotho man must wear traditional beads, a blanket, a straw hat, and a walking stick as I explained above, a newly initiated Xhosa man, who has his roots in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa must wear a full suit with a Kangol-style cabbie hat during the first few months post-initiation. The newly initiated men tend to take the demands of their initiation very seriously. There was one time where, out of curiosity, I attempted to touch Kamani’s walking stick, and he quickly took it away and got upset with me for the first time. I later asked my homestay bhuti why Kamani had reacted the way he did, and he explained that it was because the stick was “for him, and him only.”
Despite the heavy emphasis on these traditional practices, it is impossible not to notice how “westernized” the South African youth is - not just young males, but females as well. The very first thing I bonded over with my 24-year-old bhuti was our mutual love for Coldplay and (don’t judge) Keeping Up with the Kardashians, my infamous guilty pleasure. It totally makes sense when you look around; the youth is flooded 20 out of the 24 hours in a day with images of western media and culture, predominately steered by the US music and television industries. Furthermore, it seems as if it is a matter of pride to be a young person in South Africa to be recognized as understanding and emulating western culture; it’s apparent in the brands they seek, the music they listen to, the rich people they aspire to follow, etc. It creates this interesting dynamic of young South Africans weaving in and out of their various identities, and outsiders learning to accept this weaving as legitimate, for culture inevitably becomes something of its own when it is appropriated by a different group. In the case of my friend Kamani, the transformation from a reckless, hip, young adult, to a dutiful and responsible man guarding his traditions and heritage, and then back again, or perhaps the combination between these two, created the perfect grounds for being able to understand the predominate tone of South African youth culture on a more personal level.
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