Our country (South Africa) has a vast number of different communities. These are housed in different geographic areas of the country ranging from the informal settlements in Diepsloot, the matchbox houses surrounded by dusty grounds in Soweto to the mansions in Clifton. These communities reflect on our history as a country, the dispossession of our land as people of colour through forced removals inflicted by the people of authority during the apartheid era and the persisting underdevelopment of townships due to the economic balance post-apartheid, corruption and poor service delivery.
Communities in the country vary in size, economic growth, development, etc. but they all have common threads, a link in history. My community is housed at Chief Albert Luthuli Ext 6, a township located on the outskirts of Benoni, Johannesburg. It’s densely populated by underprivileged black people, reflecting the lack of diversity brought upon by the apartheid government. It displays the aftermath of the segregation of our people/communities through its poor infrastructure, limited access to resources, poverty, the list is endless.
The township is a constant reminder of being stripped off our freedom…remnants of who we once were until violently and suddenly we were not! Memories of the horrors and terror of watching helplessly the white man distort our identity, and seize our humanity. Growing up, I never saw the problem, I never realised how hungry my community is until we were exposed to other communities that gave us more ‘food’ than we usually get. You know there’s a problem when you grow to define success as the ability to move out of the township.
At the township, when you ask a young child of colour what they want to be when they grew up, a typical response is “I want to be white”. That we people of colour find no value in our being, our traditions and way of life. Therein lies in the true tragedy of growing and living up in a township, that we are born into and inherit a belief of the true “purpose of life” as one that constantly invalidates our lives and lived experiences. One that says we live, to learn not live like we live now. People of colour, especially those in townships spend most of their lives working towards living the “white life”, changing our language and accent, changing our food, clothes, beliefs and lifestyle, just anything to avoid being perceived as a “typical black person”. This perpetuates the belief that people of colour are uncivilised savages, that we need to be taught how to be human! When for most people humanity is intrinsic to their existence, for people of colour humanity is earned, and so we cannot claim any identify. For what use is an identity, for a subhuman?
My community is associated with crime, overpopulation… It’s characterized by; the dusty roads, uniform houses, children running around the streets on sewage water, loud sounds of music emerging from different houses, the women at the street corner selling chicken feet. Or that one neighbour who always brings the township’s latest scoops by dawn, the patriarchal nyaope guys at the corner who whistle for every girl that passes, the guy who always walks around drunk yet shouting out loud different scriptures from the bible, the well-known friendly repeat offenders that have been in and out of jail, the anger that drives the unity of mob justice. We carry the burden of “our story of shame” everywhere we go, but we are much more than what an observer can see, and we are much more than we believe.
Despite the torments of our past, the burden of our inheritance, we survive as a community by finding refuge within each other, our shared struggles and strong sense of togetherness. This the spirit of Ubuntu within the township which gives the place life, the connectedness of its people, the unity of its inhabitants.
Our experiences are directly linked to our communities, the space and those around us. Alysha Speer once said, “without your experiences, you are an empty page, a blank notebook, a missing lyric.” As a people, we are who we are today because of our communities and our history embedded in them. So, we continue to mend, we continue to pick up the fragments of our identity to rebuild our communities…an attempt to develop the community we would fit in post-apartheid…23 years into democracy, as people of colour we are still at work to regain our dignity.