Category: Africa

Poverty. This is what I live in.

Poverty line. This is what I live below.

Someone once asked me, “What is Soweto?”

Soweto is sharing a port-a-potty with 200 other people.

Soweto is getting up in the morning before the sun rises, on a stained mattress and filthy blankets and knowing I have to work. I fetch water for my brothers and sisters to bathe. I fetch water for us to drink.

Soweto is a smell of urine, blood and filth. My baby sister wets her bed every night. The cloth diaper I made for her isn’t enough.

Soweto is being tired before I arrive at school. Every morning I fetch water for my family, wake up my siblings, and feed and dress us all. I have no energy by the time I get to school. I sleep during class, because like all the other girls, I spend all night laying awake, protecting my body and few belongings. Our bodies do not belong to us. Our bodies belong to older men. Men who have more money than we do. These men come with the promise of an iPhone or money, in return for our bodies. Many girls in my class are pregnant. Some have children as old as three. We are in grade nine.

Soweto is watching my younger sisters go to school, hoping they will not be faced with the same challenges as every other girl in our community but knowing they will. I hope when they go to school they learn. I watch my brothers go to school. I hope they will not turn into the older men in our community but I realize they will become like every other black man. Enslaved by alcohol and drugs.

Soweto is taking turns with my mother on cold nights, tending my fire and others. If something catches fire, all of our few belongings will go with it. We’ll take the rest of our village with us because only a tin wall and palm hair separate my family’s room from our neighbors’ on all sides.

Soweto requires a lot of hope. Hoping is something everyone can do, no matter how much money you have. I hope for many things. I hope one day blacks will be equal to whites in South Africa. We have laws to support equality, but people’s hearts and minds are still catching up. Yesterday a white boy called me a monkey. I hope our community shapes itself up, people can get jobs, and people will not live off of recycling and food scraps. I collect food scraps from under the tables where white people sit. I collect them the same way the dogs do. The only difference is the dogs get their food scraps in a bowl.

I hope for a job. I don’t want to follow in my mother’s footsteps. I want to follow in the footsteps of a life worth passing on and remembering. I hope for education. A good education. Not the free one the government is so proud to provide — 1 tired teacher for 70 students is not going to teach us enough to get a job.

I hope for an education to teach me how to live outside of this township. I hope to become a lawyer. I hope to fight for others, who cannot fight for themselves. I will not charge any money. I will help communities like mine.

I hope for a stable government. Not a corrupt one. For a president who is literate. For police who do their jobs, not for ones who ask for money to go in their pockets.

My family does not live only with sadness. We find fun things to keep us occupied. We play hopscotch with sticks from the trees. We laugh and enjoy each other’s company.

We see others around us who have the same as us, and we see some happier and some more depressed. You don’t need money to live a rich life. Friends and family always are right by your side. Money is not.

Soweto is the place I live. Where do you live? Imagine yourself living in my life. Can you picture it? Would you lose hope? Or would you keep hope and try as hard as you can to hold onto it?

They pronounce it “Sowetu.” It’s the South West Township outside of Johannesburg. Back in the day, the European settlers found a whole lot of gold near here. The problem: native people were living on top of it, and the racist government wanted them out of the way. So, they made it illegal for black people to live there, built new homes in townships, rounded up the native South Africans and put them in this collection of ghettos.

The white rulers kept the blacks under control with a series of increasingly severe laws that restricted movement, access to education, and jobs. Critics and protesters were handled in the harshest ways: tortured, imprisoned and killed. Sometimes hundreds of school children were gunned down from military tanks to quell any dissent. This was life in Soweto. This was life under apartheid.

Apartheid finally ended in 1991, but racism is still a driving force here. Soweto is the most famous township today, the recipient of numerous grants, capital infusions and attention from tourists. Nelson Mandela, the figurehead of South African freedom, lived there. Desmond Tutu, the pacifist bishop who helped mount peaceful resistance, lived there. And today, unlike many parts of South Africa, there is even a functional internal economy with black-owned businesses that support local needs.

This township is over 1.4 million people and growing. Some of them have nice houses. Many live in steel shacks. We overlook one slum as children walk home from school. Eighty thousand people pack into a small gully between a stream and the highways. We can see the whole shantytown beneath us, scarcely larger than a city park in Palo Alto, but holding a larger population than our whole city. A single-room tin house may hold thirteen people. Rocks hold down its roof to combat windstorms. Tarps cover holes to slow the leaks, but we see an old man sweeping water out his front door after today’s rain.

Watch out for wires. Bare wires snake precariously from the base of a street lamp into the village. They used to be laying in the grass, but too many children were dying from stepping on them. So townspeople suspend them in the air now, held up by sticks or trees to bring city power to light the few lamps that people have in this village. Unlike the electric fences that merely hurt intruders of the affluent homes down the road, these electric fences will kill you if you touch them.

Despite the poor conditions of the village, the children look clean and healthy as they walk home from school in their matching uniforms. Our guide Thabo warns us, “I can tell you something — none of these kids will make it. They will advance in school, but the pass-rate is now 30%; they can get only 30% on their end of year exams and still pass on to the next grade. Most of these kids will never learn to read and write.” Although the World Factbook claims that 93% of the population can read, our guide tells us that many kids actually finish high school unable to read and write. It seems even their president can’t read simple numbers put in front of him – so what must this mean for the poorest of the poor?

Thabo worries most for the girls. Many of them are lured by the appeal of “Blessers” or “sugar daddies” who are easily found online on “dating” sites like BlesserFinder. A fifty year-old blesser will offer a scantily clad fifteen year old the chance for an iPhone and fancy clothes to be his “girlfriend.” He will pay her for a year, or two, or three, until he is done with her. She may get pregnant, she may not. But someday she will be on her own to find a new blesser, or she may end up standing on the street like Thabo’s friend did working for a Nigerian pimp. Why do some South Africans carry 3 or 4 cell phones? Mistresses. One for each woman. It’s easier to keep them separate that way.

Unemployment is over 50% for youth here. People know president Zuma is corrupt. They know he steals all the money. They know the police will “make a plan” with you they pull you over (i.e. extortion) rather than give you a ticket. But what can the people do? Their choices are grim: they can vote for the ANC again, who ended apartheid but has horrible corruption, or vote for the DA who are associated with apartheid. It is no choice, and people vote largely for the ANC. Things are not getting better.

This seems like a pattern in poorer countries: there is not enough money to go around, so the people in power (i.e. the ones with guns) steal it. Government corruption means not enough money for education. So, kids don’t learn enough, and the nation ends up with an uneducated workforce. People are not educated, so corruption tends not to improve; people’ votes are bought by crooks! Furthermore, foreign investments are slim and when companies do invest, profits flow out of the country to the foreigners, keeping the country poor.

I hope things turn around for South Africa, but after two days diving into current affairs in Johannesburg, I worry. While racism is clearly less severe than in the 1980’s, it is still prevalent, and the majority political party seems deeply damaging. And the locals don’t seem to be supporting each other. Black entrepreneurs are few and far between because locals are deeply jealous of each others’ successes. So, Chinese and Indian immigrants tend to fill the entrepreneurial vacuum, with South Africans working for them. The result: money continues to flow out of the country. What’s not stolen by the government is earned (and taken offshore) by enterprising immigrants.

When will things improve here? I don’t know. Despite abundant natural and human resources, it seems that people here are not set up to capitalize on them to make things better for themselves.

Corruption is all over. In subscriptions. In websites. And especially in government. Cambodian government. Chinese government. Korean government. United States government. Egyptian government. Vietnamese government. Australian government. I do not know which. Maybe half of them. Maybe all.

South Africa. I do not know about the rest of the world, but corruption is what keeps our government going. The only way our politicians are working together is by stealing together. As a citizen, I have to pay taxes every month so my roads will be safe enough to drive on, and my sick child can have better medical care, and my house will be able to fit my family. But I along with everyone else am paying taxes, and Africa is not getting richer. Our no-good president and lousy vice president are. Our secretary who doesn’t care at all about the country is. Everyone tries to get our president kicked out, but he says no.

He got himself elected by paying people. Eighty dollars per person could be all it takes.

If you look it up online, you will see we have a 93% literacy rate. But I am literate and South African and I know that almost 2/3 of the population are not fully literate. Over 50% of young people are unemployed. Our president targeted those people to get to vote for him. Most of them voted for him because they needed the money that he gave, and the jobs and houses he promised to provide.

If you look up South Africa on the web, you will find facts. There is free medical care. There is free housing. Everyone who goes to school has successfully passed all of their grades. But if our world was held up by facts, we would have never had the invention of the lightbulb, or a toaster to make our sandwiches. We wouldn’t have even figured out the law of gravity. You have to be in South Africa or go a little bit deeper to see the true story.

Good medical care is difficult to come across. And I am not talking greedily, wanting specialty doctors. I just want a good enough one. There is a saying in South Africa. “Go to the hospital with a headache and they will amputate your leg.” We have to be extra careful to not get sick. The housing situation looks great from the outside. Perfect tiny little apartments. But that is the thing. They’re so tiny. In my house, there is one bathroom, two tiny bedrooms, and nothing else. They are basically a box with heat, beds and running water.

School seems to get worse with time here. My child pays very good attention in school, but he only has a good teacher for the first time in seventh grade. You may think that all of that is normal, but my son is the second best in his class, and he only got 64% on his school exams. He passed onto the next grade. None of his classmates’ stayed behind because the lowest kid missed it by a bit and got 32%. You only have to get 30% to go to the next grade. And if South African children do not learn, how are they supposed to get a job when they grow up? How are they supposed to learn to be doctors, so that South Africa has some good ones? The answer is no answer.

My countries president is not fully literate. He cannot read numbers. How is our country supposed to thrive if our president cannot make deals, write checks, or do the things any other president can do, I do not know. And worse yet, he is not only our head of government but also our chief of state. Too much power for too much bad.

All of our power is in the hands of thieves. All of our money is in the hands of thieves. All of our lives are in the hands of thieves.

What would South Africa have done seven years ago if we knew where our fates lay? What would South Africa have done if we had control over where our money went. I do not know. But I think that if South Africa had the chance to start over now, we would. We would redirect the taxes. We would make our houses larger. We would get ourselves better medical care. We would send our children to better schools, where they don’t pass their tests by guessing. We would not vote for Jacob Zuma. We would do anything and everything that we could to make our lives worth everything we have been through.

If we could have a better government, we would finally be one peaceful country.

Bigger better homes mean our children having more sleep. Having more sleep leads to paying attention in school. Paying attention in school means learning more. Learning more means getting better jobs they are good at when they are older. They can get a job as a doctor and South Africa will have good ones again. They can be a teacher so the next generation will learn. They could have any job they want. Being good at their job means they make more money. Having more money means being able to buy a big house so their children get more sleep and pay attention in school. If everyone made enough money, there wouldn’t be corruption in the government, because people wouldn’t be desperate enough to do it (be a part of it?). It is all one big chain. We just have to make one change in the government and it will change everything.

We can’t just keep on waiting.