SA: Immensely beautiful, innately ugly THE UGLY SIDE OF SA . . . South Africa’s impressive infrastructure in terms of economic and social utility offers a depressing contrast where expensive and posh villas of the rich stare down bulging urban poor settlements, like Alexandra Park (above)
THE UGLY SIDE OF SA . . .  South Africa’s impressive infrastructure in terms of economic and social utility offers a depressing contrast where expensive and posh villas of the rich stare down bulging urban poor settlements, like Alexandra Park  (above)

THE UGLY SIDE OF SA . . . South Africa’s impressive infrastructure in terms of economic and social utility offers a depressing contrast where expensive and posh villas of the rich stare down bulging urban poor settlements, like Alexandra Park 

My Turn with Tichaona Zindoga

In South Africa, there are many things that you cannot quite make sense of. It is a country of great contrasts. Call some of the contrasts, paradoxes. One second you may be assailed by the sheer beauty of the country but the next you may well and truly be disgusted by it. Take for example, the beautiful infrastructure, of which mega buildings and the razzmatazz of transport infrastructure are emblematic.Price Waterhouse Coopers calls South Africa the continent’s largest economy, “the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa with the most advanced transport infrastructure . . . The need to move goods to inland centres of commerce have created a transport-intensive domestic economy.”

But South Africa’s impressive infrastructure in terms of economic and social utility offers a depressing contrast where you can see expensive and posh villas of the rich staring down shanty settlements and bulging urban poor settlements.

Some scholars say generations have been like that as black families live in these settlements – and the attainment of freedom has not assuaged such disparities.

They may even be growing worse, even.

Unicef notes that: “When we think of poverty, the image that traditionally comes to mind is that of a child in a rural village . . . But today, an increasing number of children living in slums and shantytowns are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world, deprived of the most basic services and denied the right to thrive.”

According to Unicef, about 2 million (some authorities put it above that) South African households are living in informal dwellings, such as shacks or shanties in informal settlements or in backyards.

“The percentage of households living in informal dwellings gradually increased from 13,0 percent in 2002 to 13,4 percent in 2009 according to Statistics SA,” says Unicef.

It can be worse; growing worse.

Says Unicef: “Families living in poverty often pay more for substandard services. Water, for instance, can cost 50 times more in poor neighbourhoods where residents have to buy it from private vendors than it costs in wealthier neighbourhoods where households are connected directly to water mains . . . deprivations)… are often obscured by broad statistical averages that lump together all city dwellers – rich and poor alike. When averages such as these are used in making urban policy and allocating resources, the needs of the poorest can be overlooked.”

Which brings out a significant pointer regarding what developmentalists call the poverty gap.

South Africa is classified as the country in which the gap between the richest and poorest is widest in the whole world, a shameful and dubious honour the country shares with Brazil.

And it is salutary.

Massive shanty settlements or shacks – called “mikuku” – often suffer poor comparisons with plush neighbourhood suburbs.

The great contrast between Alexandra Park in Johannesburg and Sandton is emblematic.

It is even shocking for someone who comes from a country that may be considered poorer.

Alex is a massive revolt of an old crowded mass urban settlement whose buildings are non-descript core structures that are invariably enmeshed in rudimentary backyard shacks made of corrugated iron sheets, plastic material and cloth.

A network of electric cables are suspended in the air just above the rock-fortified roofs in a strange tarantula of illegal connections: you should see the spectacle as you drive down into the township.

Those who connect and consume electricity do not believe in paying for it.

An academic study found out that there are an estimated 20 000 shacks of which approximately 7 000 are located in “backyards”, in Alex.

Notes the study: “The significant, unplanned population has overloaded the infrastructure such that water pressures are low and sewers frequently block and overflow. Maintenance of such systems is very difficult because the high densities and congested nature of the backyard shack development makes access for maintenance very difficult or impossible in places.

“In addition to backyard shack development, since the repealing of the apartheid laws, which restricted movement for the black population, there has been considerable population increase in Alexandra from within South Africa and from neighbouring countries seeking employment opportunities. This has resulted in not only overcrowding in hostels but also in informal settlements developed on the Jukskei river banks and its three tributaries which pass through Alex.”

Yes, it’s something that you have never seen in Zimbabwe.

Perhaps never.

Do not even talk about Mbare at its worst.

Here is a bastion of crime (real scary crime), poverty and hate.

Alex has been a theatre of xenophobia and hate crimes against foreigners – where they are burnt alive – over the years.

And Alex has the bulk of its soul in other places, at least around the Johannesburg area, such as Diepsloot, Tembisa and Honeydew.

Boy, you have never seen such teeming disorganisation, poverty and crime.

But they also drink and make merry.

They also marry.

Zimbabweans are there also and they contribute to the ambivalence, beauty, ugliness and spirit of such places.

Some advantages are seen, or rather claimed, like in the guy who spat out how he, like his Zimbabwean brother, could not live in a “decent” place like Randburg which would be acceptable, aspirational even, back at home.

I can’t pay R4 000 for a flat, Uncle, says he.

He has become part of the society.

As if to confirm it, he has not been back home for long.

And may never come back.

In happiness and tragedy: the latter struck just a fortnight ago when homes in Alex and other informal settlements were swept away and destroyed by flash floods that eventually left – at the last count – a dozen dead.

More are coming, this year of floods.

Yet life continues.

In strife, unpredictability and insecurity – as in opulence and safety of posh neighbourhoods and serenity of Johannesburg.

For the former, a Zimbabwean and his Malawian friend who are employed to deliver bread in the Orange Farm area could count themselves lucky they have jobs but it is a perilous affair.

Robbers are on the prowl.

They rob for cash at gunpoint – often hijacking the truck and tearing and blasting away the cash boxes.

In this particular bakery, a car is hijacked every so often – like once every three weeks.

The driver says just recently he lost cash and phones to robbers who pounced on him but could not hijack the truck.

He was lucky, and he counts himself as such having been relatively safe.

There is another danger.

When his partner is taking bread into the shop, unemployed people who mill at the premises often pounce and grab crates of bread and make off.

To the uninitiated, many losses are made that way, especially in the early days.

But the driver has to learn fast to be clear of the shop fronts – which themselves are heavily secured to avoid heists – and maintain a keen watch out.

Cigarette deliveries are more precarious because of the high value of goods.

A private security escort team is thus necessary.

Perhaps this is why there are a lot of jobs in this country, an explanation is preferred by the driver, which reminds one of a sociological theory of functionality (the driver did not reach that level of education).

With a surfeit of crime, the whole criminological, justice and social work fields benefit, we discuss.

Not that jobs are in superabundance though.

Unemployment is rising – and just this week reached an official 27 percent which is being billed as a 13-year high.

Heaven knows there are many more unemployed than this figure could reveal and the aforementioned places of poor people and attendant social ills speak to the fallacy of such figures.

As indeed would someone who may have been tempted to think that the grass is greener on the other side of the Limpopo, who, just to illuminate the reader, at the time of writing was on a hasty retreat back home, at least to tend to his maize fields just after a fortnight of gloom in South Africa.

Space and more time may yet be availed for more insights and features into life in South Africa (watch the space).

South Africa is immensely beautiful.

It is innately ugly, too.

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