Kayamandi Township

Yesterday, Tuesday May 22, 2012, I had one of the most bizarre and fascinating days of my life. Because I have quite a lot of free time in between finals, I decided to spend the day wandering around Cape Town. As I was about to hop in a minibus, my good friend Flaxman calls me and asks me if I want to do a township tour. At first I put down his offer because I already had the township experience early on and with SHAWCO, and didn’t want to pay a guy who would just drive around and provide the normal tour guide bs. He said it was free of charge, so I said what the hell, I’m in. Little did I know I would be getting a tour from undoubtedly the most reputable tour guide in Cape Town, with an amazing lunch included, for about 10 hours. Our guide, Selwyn Davidowitz, had given similar tours to Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, Barbara and Walter Cronkite, and actually turned down Chris Rock in his career.

      Selwyn was one of the most personal, genuine, and intriguing people I have ever met (for reasons I’ll later explain), but gave us a free tour because he had a stake in the future of Kayamandi township, and all other townships for that matter. He has been involved with Kayamandi for close to twenty years, implementing community development initiatives and becoming an important figure in the community. The kids all affectionately yell “Laduma”, or “GOAL”, as we drive and walk by. After the World Cup, Selwyn was given this nickname, and it stuck. Selwyn had three purposes for the tour: 1) To dispel myths about township life, 2) To have us intimately engage with people of the township, and 3) to reveal current conditions and expectations of the future (which are quite alarming, according to his understanding). Before witnessing the inhumanities that characterize life in these environs, Selwyn would take us to the place of his college years, a place well known for its wine, rugby, and high culture. I’m referring to Stellenbosch, the former bastion of Afrikaner Nationalist sentiment, where the political party that came to power to design and implement apartheid emerged. To give some perspective, Selwyn recalled a common epithet of the late rugby coach, who used to say, “A black will never wear the Green and Gold”, meaning the rugby uniform of the national rugby team. His statue still stands next to the rugby fields, a testament to the past and enduring symbol of rugby as a white-only sport. This exercise in witnessing unimaginable disparity – between that of Stellenbosch and Kayamandi Township – profoundly amplified the tour experience in a way that is possible in very few places around the world.

      We arrived in Stellenbosch, where Selwyn had planned a lunch at a small, intimate bakery. The Panini, desert, and microbrew were individually the best foods I have eaten my entire stay in Cape Town – and Laduma paid for it all. During lunch, he gave us the entire, condensed history of South Africa, explaining what forced the Afrikaner government to impose such drastic racial measures upon coming to power in the 1940s. He also explained customs, etiquette, and social expectations that we should adhere to in Kayamandi, but most importantly, he described the cultural philosophy of Ubuntu. One of the most unique features of township life, Ubuntu loosely means that your existence is dependent on the relationship you have with others. In other words, my hardship is our hardship. Ubuntu is a spiritual ethos as much a social force for efficient communal organization; this, in my opinion, is what separates traditional African lifestyles from Western conceptions of the world. Selwyn highlighted the presence of Ubuntu as a community unifier, an arbiter for conflict, and place township residents can find solace amidst the destitution that surrounds them. Selwyn encouraged us to walk into people’s houses without knocking, because to knock would be like saying to the homeowner, “Are you be proud of your house?” when in fact they always take pride in their homes and have nothing to hide. Ubuntu is revealed in the hours after residents return from work, when the streets are filled with people talking, church services taking place, and groups of children free to roam and play. The absence of electricity in many homes, and thus lack of TV, means that the only source of entertainment is each other. Ubuntu is an overwhelming feeling that you can only fully comprehend by visiting and immersing yourself in the daily life. We were lucky enough to have a glimpse of this, and even participate.

Following the lunch, we drove around Stellenbosch University, whose beauty is comparable only to that of Stanford, according to Selwyn’s opinion anyway. En route to Kayamandi, we stop to pick up Lily, a township resident, whom we would later discover is featured on the South Africa segment of CBS’s 1,000 places to see before you die.

Lily’s segment starts at 3:46 in this video:

Lily is an incredibly strong-willed woman, whose past is not atypical in township life. The determination and perseverance she showed when pushed to the brink of poverty, rising to international fame (attracting people like Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, others), is nothing short of pure inspiration. I will try to summarize her story, which she told in about 45 minutes – she had much more to say, but was cut off by Selwyn. Lily was born in Kayamandi, but was forced to leave early in her youth with her family to Johannesburg in the Eastern Cape. She recalled being constantly alienated as an “outsider” from the Western Cape and persistently terrified by the animosity she received from others. Her teacher molested her, and any pleas for help were responded with disbelief and further discrimination. She was in a foreign place, surrounded by hostile people, and helpless. After nearly four years, her father had passed away and her family somehow saved enough money to return to Kayamandi (Lily’s thick accent made the details a little difficult to follow at times). Soon afterward, an arranged marriage presented a ray of hope for Lily – a chance to have a home of her own and a man with a stable income. Within a few weeks, she realized the marriage was a grave mistake, as she was confronted with domestic abuse and the realities of a male-dominated society. She reflected that this period was a living hell, again leaving her always afraid. She managed to get a job as a debt collector, despite the fact that she was not on the interviewee list, had never interviewed before and had no grasp on etiquette, and lacked the presentable clothing like those who had gone before her. (The details get a little fuzzy here, I apologize). 

             At some point she lost her job and took a financial risk on a small stove top (that is shown briefly in the video). Again, against the wall of abject poverty, she did anything she could to make money in an honest fashion – pride is immensely important in township communities. She was divorced, unemployed, had two children to provide for, and just enough money to purchase ingredients for scones, the saving grace that catapulted her life. Because her scones became so popular in Kayamandi, she continued to make more on that small stovetop, expanding her homestay restaurant, which she named “Once Upon a Stove”. Gradually becoming a master of traditional cuisine, and getting in touch with Selwyn, she traveled to Toronto for an international food expo. Eventually, CBS recognized her story and her “Once Upon a Stove” homestay restaurant, and that is where she is today – a person recognizable as a member of the “1,000 places to see before you die”. Again, this extraordinary opportunity came completely out of the blue for me. Truly something ethereal.

            Lily continued to tell stories as we left her house, slowly making our way into the van and then heading to a community center established by Selwyn. He runs a dance program, which is based off a model in Harlem, that pays for children to go to better schools if they can commit a full year to learning dance (the movie Take the Lead is based on this program). The program has multiple aims: to get kids away from drugs and off the street, to instill virtues of discipline and commitment, and also to encourage the boys to have more respect for their female partners. The kids are chosen by their ability to commit, to prove they could adapt this commitment to education, not by aptitude, tests scores, etc. The five of us on the tour provided a unique opportunity for the kids to showcase their talent to someone from outside the community. After they put on a few dance numbers, they asked us to join, and taught us a few moves. As I would find out here and the rest of my visit, participation is far more fulfilling than being a spectator at Kayamandi.

            What did I mean when I said Lily’s past was not atypical for the Kayamandi community? Well, to put it simply, Lily’s case is the slimmest-of-the-slim minority. Although Ubuntu brings joy to a desperate place, the existence of horror is unavoidable for some. Male chauvinism and the abuse of women are borne out of the tribal tradition of the circumcision ritual that occurs when boys turn 18. Nowadays, the friends of boys undergoing this ritual get them intoxicated beyond belief so that no pain is felt in the circumcision by knife. Following this archaic medical procedure (which has a 2% death rate due to the use of a communal knife, possibly infected with HIV), boys become men by surviving “in the bush”, without medical treatment and by their own devices. This time period is also an indoctrination session, hereafter they are “taught to see any woman as a bitch”, according to Selwyn. The cycle of male dominance in the home is perpetuated, allowing rape and domestic abuse to go on unabated. Later in the night, Selwyn explained how Friday nights could be a terrifying experience for women, even young girls. Upon receiving the week’s pay on Friday, men will head to the bar to get loaded on beer, and rape is widespread in this context. These are broad generalizations, and the supposition that all men in Kayamandi have a penchant for sexual violence is an injustice, however. One of the girls who danced for us earlier in the evening, maybe 15-16 years old, was the victim of gang rape. In a related tangent, another boy in the dance program, also very young, had dropped out and fell into a drug habit for a few months before returning to the program. It is amazing how useful and attractive a simple dance program can be in the lives of such disillusioned youth. 

            As we piled back into the van and headed for the next destination, a boy flagged down the van to talk to Laduma. The kid had been an original teacher at the dance center, who had been a student at the University of Western Cape, but dropped out because he failed an audition. Selwyn, like a concerned high school counselor, tried to give the boy some direction because he hated to see stagnation in people with such talent. As we drove off, Selwyn explained his deep concern for the kid who we learned was gay, for homosexuality is almost universally condemned. The reality in Kayamandi, as well as other townships, is that tremendously talented individuals can become enslaved to their own communities and there is an absolutely giant obstacle to real opportunity.