Cultural diversity is no easy game

When people think of Africa as a continent, they often envisage poverty, hardship & people living in what they would deem as relative ‘squalor’. This of course is not the case for everyone but as we know only too well, it is increasingly prevalent and recent statistics suggest it is the sad reality for more than half of the population in Africa. South Africa holds 50% of its people haunted below the poverty line and in most towns and indeed larger cities, there will be at least one substantial if not numerous townships scattered outside the buzzing metropolis.

Townships (otherwise known as slums, shantytowns, squatter camps, or, if like me you prefer the less derogatory term, rural communities) as you can see above can vary from dirty and impoverished to quite cheerful looking yet basic settlements. They were first constructed during the Apartheid era, where it is was critical for government to separate the blacks and whites and keep them in designated areas. It was the infrastructure and western technology brought over from overseas whites that created the cities while the ‘informal settlements’ were created for the black populations outside of the city centres where it was still possible for it’s inhabitants to find work. As you can imagine, the settlements grew with accelerating momentum and before long had soon exploded and become firmly recognized homes for hundreds of thousands of people.

The townships across South Africa today are still as distinctive as they once were, despite Apartheid now firmly revoked. They are predominantly, if not entirely occupied by black citizens and the way these people live their lives is not dissimilar to how it would have been 40, 50 years ago. The only crucial difference now is that freedom has entitled a population to no longer feel shackled by oppression.

But was Apartheid unreservedly a bad policy? Of course that is a rather controversial question to pose, but I can’t help but weigh up the pros and cons of that time. I find, and will continue to find Apartheid a morally abhorrent period in history but it doesn’t mean that we can’t analyze it. The way Apartheid was handled was sickening and the treatment of millions was unforgivable. On the other hand, and forgive me for sounding dispassionate, what prevailed as a result was a far more controlled country than is true today.

The government were on such high guard that they were ruthlessly strict, crime was controlled in a similarly rigorous fashion and the municipalities were run far better. Yes -the blacks got their freedom and damn right too but the ramifications for South Africa today is corruption and wrongdoing. South Africa as a country appears to be one of organized chaos and it is a shame to reflect and comprehend that in reality, during Apartheid the country was in fact just organized. People will argue that this so called ‘organization’ was organized brutality and inhumane segregation, and for the most part I agree; but in scrutinizing the situation however, I now find myself failing to see the situation in such absolute terms.