They call it “the border”: the broad, snaking railway track cutting through a grimy section of the Cape Flats townships. On one side live blacks, on the other mixed-race “coloreds.”
Dumped here by the apartheid government under segregation, little has changed to integrate communities on the sandblown plains 40km from Cape Town, where grinding poverty is the only common denominator.
In Gugulethu, the black side of the track, Nomvuso Sidumo stands outside her shack made of a mishmash of materials, frowning at the suggestion of greater integration.
“No, that side is for the coloreds only. I didn’t see the blacks staying there,” she said. “We are still separated because you can’t see white people staying in shacks.”
Racial disparities inherited from apartheid are still visible, even as South Africa heads into its fourth democratic elections today.
On the Manenberg side, a bleak and deadly place ruled by gangs and drugs, overcrowded blocks of shoddy flats are interspersed by suburban-style homes — showing the preference given to the lighter-skinned people under segregation.
People of mixed-race were classified as “colored” under apartheid laws and are the largest population in Cape Town.
Winston Baadjies, 32, says little has changed 15 years after the world hailed a newly democratic South Africa as the Rainbow Nation.
“Basically it’s still the same. Nobody is coming together they are still living separately, blacks on that side, coloreds on this side and whites more in the upper class area,” Baadjies said.
David McDonald, a professor at Canada’s Queens University who spent 15 years studying segregation in Cape Town, said the problem was nationwide, but that inequality in the city was “among the worst in the world.”
He attributes this to the “economic and spatial character of segregation” and its very visual nature with the wealthy, white and cosmopolitan city of Cape Town in stark contrast to shacks that surround it.
“Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Jakarta all have extreme poverty and wealth, but what makes Cape Town and South African cities in general so unequal is the extent of the physical segregation,” he said.
“This is partly a legacy of apartheid with the highly spatialized character of apartheid planning ... which has very much been perpetuated by post-apartheid planning,” he said.
While walking through the bustling city center of Cape Town reveals a mixed and colorful crowd, the racial profile of poverty means most still return home to either a white, black or colored area.
“There has been so little change it is depressing,” McDonald said.
The physical separation also affects access to decent schools, healthcare and other services.
“When you look at the quality of infrastructure [in black and colored areas], it’s pathetic. Roads aren’t maintained properly and garbage collection isn’t done nearly as frequently,” McDonald said.
“Huge state resources are going into upgrading already wealthy areas ... poor areas are receiving a cup in the bucket.” he said.
Others argue gains are being made, however slowly, through policies of affirmative action, and new housing developments, which tend to be more mixed.
“Today desegregation has gone fastest in the millionaire and middle class suburbs where the new black section of the middle class is moving in,” said Keith Gottschalk, a political scientist at the University of the Western Cape.
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