In an era where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, South Africa stands out as a stark example of inequality among citizens. The nation of South African leader Nelson Mandela was supposed to reflect to the world how a new society with equity can be built and the dust of repression and racism The hopes of black citizens have gone so far as to make this country worse than it was in the era of apartheid, with regard to the equality of its citizens.
Disappointment
As the new black middle class began to grow slowly, the small black elite gathered enormous wealth, and many blacks in South Africa saw little change in their material lives. In the meantime, the white minority, which represents about 9% of the population, lives on the advantages gained by the unequal policies of apartheid, which, thanks to the wealth and benefits gained, have become immune to the consequences of the Government's economic policies. The unemployed cook, Wendy Gekirana, complains that "democracy does not feed us." Sheva, 36, lives in a cargo container with her large family in Langa, Cape Town. "They told us in 1994 that blacks would be the dominant class and that things would be better, but now we see only the corruption committed by the black leaders, and the whites still dominate the economy," she says.
Several reasons
The inequality that has plagued this country is multifaceted. Unemployment, weak educational programs and a collapsing public health system play a large role, but the main part is that the land and housing are not distributed fairly. This is evident in the lack of affordable housing for blacks, Especially in urban areas. The number of slums increased from 300 in 1994 to 2,700 today.
The inequality is most evident in Cape Town, where 60 percent of the population, mostly blacks, live in informal towns and informal areas far from the city center, where government services are limited, schools and health care are underfunded, insecurity, And the high cost of transportation to the city center.
Young middle-class whites, as in apartheid, are still living in the center of the city and in the suburbs, which are well connected with transportation and services. Among these towns and the well-equipped central business district are vast tracts of unused land that, if properly developed, could change the legacy of the city's apartheid system by providing affordable urban housing and ending apartheid. As is often the case when it comes to public lands, history, politics, finance, inefficiency of government and prejudices stand in the way of their development.
Displacement within the homeland
Just a few weeks before the election, the black citizen, Susan Lewis, 76, wandered into one of the empty patches of land that had been turned into a temporary parking lot because of its proximity to the bustling center of Cape Town. "This whole area of the land was houses," she says, pointing to several areas. "This is where my friends lived." She also points to a corner of the street now empty, where there is a dilapidated movie theater, a sewing shop, A grocery store, and a halal meat shop. "This is where we all lived, and now it's just a parking lot," she says.
In 1966, the apartheid regime declared Louis VI, the sixth neighborhood, "a place for whites only" and was previously home to a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society of 60,000 people.
The black population, like Lewis, resisted this action, but by 1982 most of the buildings had been demolished and forcibly relocated to towns in Cape Flats, an abandoned plot of land 18 miles from the city. They were uprooted from their communities, churches, schools and jobs, and most of them were shocked.
Sociologists attribute the growing number of gangs in the town, poverty, drugs and violence to the trauma of forced displacement. "We felt isolated," Lewis recalls sadly. She suddenly realized that she spends only half of her salary on transportation to reach her workplace. Schools in this town, if any, will do nothing for students but prepare them for work. The apartheid government never rebuilt the sixth district to become a white population, and the country was affected by the international sanctions imposed on it by 1986. Over the past few decades, most of this area remained empty. This piece of land, 150 acres, Stands as a testament to the injustice of the apartheid regime that tore the heart of the city.
Salafist procedures
Although former residents of that territory have the right to return, under a 1994 law mandating the right of millions of displaced persons to be resettled, the procedure for this has remained very precarious. To date, only 139 houses have been reconstructed for the former residents of the sixth district. Lewis was one of the lucky ones. After nine years on the waiting list, she became one of the first returnees in 2005. The authorities began to build a project to build 300 housing units in 2013, but progress was also slow. Construction was supposed to be completed in 2015, but has been postponed repeatedly. "All this space should have been houses right now. We all need to go back to where we belong," says Lewis, pointing to the fields around her.
The slow pace of development can be blamed on several factors: prolonged claims, disputed ownership, lack of funding, and political infighting. But time is running out, and most original claimants, like Lewis, are older. She wonders if any of us will have a chance to return home before he dies. Private developers have begun to study this neighborhood, but with the price of one-bedroom apartments up to $ 100,000, real estate is out of the reach of the city's working class. "Before that, it was the apartheid government that was driving us out of the city, and now we are paying the cost," says Lewis.
The exclusion of blacks from urban areas dates back to the colonial era, but was consolidated in 1948 when the white government codified a policy of "separation" between races. Under the name of the apartheid regime, which deprived the majority of the country's black population of their land, deprived them of their views and forcibly transferred them to housing specifically designated for each race. The ownership of black houses under this new system was impossible. The demand for equal rights was a resounding cry from the African National Congress (ANC), which fought the policy of apartheid from exile, but for many blacks in South Africa, it was the promise of land reform that kept them enthusiastic about the party.
Land confiscation of eggs
In 1991, shortly after the ANC was allowed to return to South Africa, the party's secretary-general, Cyril Ramavosa, now president, worked to prepare a new constitution that sought to address inequality in apartheid, The population has to live as a citizen. As the 1994 election approaches, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has confirmed this pledge by promising to provide subsidized homes to the poor. The objective was to settle the expropriated lands of the era of racial discrimination.
However, these housing projects, built on the edge of urban areas, replicate the experience of the same towns that were developed under the apartheid system, to keep working black people isolated from the economic engine of the city. "Cape Town is still a racist city. The apartheid government has taken over all the land that is good for us, but now we can not go back," said Seizi Sitello, who spends one-third of his salary on a three-hour trip from his home on the outskirts to his job in the city. For those lands, because that is very expensive. "
The issue of land, and the right to do so, has become a hot topic in the elections. The group called "Combatants for Economic Freedom", a black national group with a large representation in parliament, the confiscation of land owned by white without compensation for it. In response, the ANC adopted a stricter commitment to change the constitution to allow the confiscation of farmland without compensation. The move has raised concern for the South African business community, as well as international investors who remember well the food shortages, civil unrest and economic collapse when neighboring Zimbabwe enacted similar policies two decades ago. "The demand for the expropriation of farmland owned by whites is unwise," says Nadivona Okwazi, co-director of Ndivuna Okwazi, a housing rights organization based in Cape Town. "There is an urgent need for reform in urban areas, where more than 70 percent of South Africans are expected to live by 2030," he says.
Black citizens regain the city
At times, some activists take their own hands. When the city government of Cape Town decided in 2016 to sell the land of an old public school to private developers instead of turning it into public housing, the activists stopped the sale. The case is still under litigation, but a core group of these activists has since merged into a movement dedicated to converting unused public property in the city into homes with no home. The movement used a law that states that it can not be evacuated A citizen of a given place, unless a suitable alternative is found. That is why the "restore the city" group transferred about 1,200 people to a dispensary and to a deserted building for nurses.
The founding member of the "City Recovery" group, Elizabeth Gkubuka, 50, has lived for nearly three years in a second-floor apartment in an old house inhabited by nurses. It has privacy and views of the waterfront of the city, but this apartment is hardly a paradise, it has been cut off and there is one tap running on the ground floor. But she says living there is worth it. "If the government really believes in erasing past grievances, it must be prepared to work harder to change the spatial separation that apartheid has left," she says.
But housing in the city does not just mean finding a place to live near the workplace, as Gkubuka did. It means getting rid of the deep feeling of apartheid, which is to look at the inferiority of the country's black population, who are less deserving of the country's wealth.
- The inequality that plagued South Africa,
Multifaceted, as it plays unemployment, and weak programs
Education, and collapsed public health system, played a big role
In the bugs, but the bulk lies in not
Fair distribution of land and housing.