The Wrongologist

The Wrongologist and
Ms. Oh So Right concluded their visit to South Africa last Monday with a tour
of Soweto.

Soweto is an acronym
for SOuth WEstern TOwnship. The creation of townships south and west of
Johannesburg that would later become Soweto was the product of white city and state
authorities evicting black Africans from Johannesburg. Black South Africans came
from rural South Africa to work in the gold mines that were established in
Johannesburg after 1886.   

After the Afrikaner-dominated
National Party gained power in 1948
and began to implement apartheid, the pace of forced removals and the creation of
townships outside legally designated white areas increased. The name “Soweto”
was adopted in 1963.

Soweto came to the
world’s attention on June 16, 1976 with the Soweto
Uprising, when mass protests erupted over the government’s policy to
enforce education in Afrikaans rather than English.
Police fired on 10,000 children marching from Naledi High School to Orlando
Stadium, On the first day of the rioting, about 200 people (there is no accurate
count of the dead), died in Soweto.

The first to be killed when the police
opened fire was Hector Pieterson, who was 13 years old.

Below is a photo of Hector being carried
on that day by his brother, taken
by photo-journalist Sam Nzima.
This picture captured the defining moment of the student uprising for the rest
of the world. The impact of the Soweto protests reverberated throughout South
Africa and across the world. This
photo popularized the revolution and precipitated a 18 year period of uprising
that culminates in Nelson Mandela being freed from prison and ultimately, in the
new South African constitution, the first democratic elections in the country
and the end of Apartheid.

Soweto is synonymous
with oppression and unbelievable poverty. It was the poster child of black
slums worldwide.

Many parts of Soweto still
rank among the poorest in Johannesburg. The economic development of Soweto was
severely restricted during Apartheid, where the state provided very limited
infrastructure and prevented residents from owning their own businesses. Roads
remained unpaved, and many residents shared one water tap among four houses.

Today
Soweto has 858,000 people in 41 square miles. It is mostly composed of old
“matchbox” houses, or four-room houses built by the government to
provide cheap accommodation for black workers during Apartheid.

After the African National Congress
(ANC) took power in 1994, the government began building new houses in
disadvantaged areas like Soweto under a program called Reconstruction and
Development Program, (RDP). Between
1994 and 2001, over 1.1 million cheap houses were built, accommodating about 6
million of the estimated 12.5 million South Africans without proper housing. Between
1994 and May 2000 around 1.75 million homes in disadvantaged areas had been
connected to the national grid, while the proportion of rural homes with electricity
grew from 12% to 42%.

Many people who still
live in the “matchbox” houses have improved and expanded their homes, and the City
Council has enabled the planting of more trees while improving parks in the
area.

So, What’s Wrong?

Many
things in South Africa are turning right, but for black South Africans, there is still a huge way to go. Soweto, however, was
a revelation. It is poor, but has the look of a poor but proud area that is on
the way up, far from the very poor slums we have seen in India and elsewhere.
Here is an example: The Maponya Mall:

The Mall was built by Richard Maponya, a black South African
entrepreneur affiliated with the ANC who became the real estate agent appointed
by ANC Government to sell land in Soweto to blacks under their land reform
program. He made a fortune in commissions and went on to build the Maponya
Mall. The Mall opened in 2007.

We visited the Mall around noon on the Sunday of a holiday weekend. The Mall was quite crowded but the huge
parking lot was only 1/3 full, reflecting the lack of privately owned
cars in Soweto. Most take busses or walk to and from the Mall. It is a huge
mall with lots of activity and no empty store fronts.

We felt very safe
walking around mall, having lunch in a fast food place and walking in the parking
lot.

There were new cars for sale inside
the Mall, including Japanese and Indian imports. There were new construction
homes in Soweto also for sale. The new homes were priced from ZR 350,000, or $42,500.
This gets you between 45 and 65 sq. meters of living space (500 sq. ft. to 700
sq. ft.). That includes the cost of the land. The developer offers zero
interest financing at the list price.

We moved on to Vilakazi
Street, the best
known street in Soweto. It is the only
street in the world where two Nobel Peace

Prize winners have lived: 
Desmond Tutu
& Nelson Mandela.
Mandela lived at #8115 and Tutu about 50 yards down the street. Tutu’s family
still lives there and operates a popular restaurant next door.  Mandela’s home
is now a museum.

We also visited the Apartheid Museum and the Constitution Court, similar to our Supreme
Court, except that it handles only constitutional law questions. They have a Supreme
Court that is the final place to adjudicate all non-constitutional questions.  

The
Wrongologist was struck by a quote in the Apartheid Museum. It was anonymous,
obviously written by a black South African.  

It
is the best definition of Colonialism at its worst:

“When
the British came here, we owned the land and they were carrying bibles.

Now,
they own the land and we carry bibles.”

Next
post, we will talk about the colonialist
impact of China’s investment policies in Africa.