Posted on 06/04/2005 9:52:24 PM PDT by blam
Riots engulf South Africa's townships
By Benjamin Joffe-Walt in Cape Town
(Filed: 05/06/2005)
Happy Valley does not remotely live up to its name. A shabby collection of makeshift homes that is half township, half rubbish dump, its crime-ridden alleys erupted into violence this week as part of a nationwide wave of rioting that threatens to engulf South Africa.
Across Cape Town, township residents have been fighting with riot police armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades in scenes that echo the anti-apartheid riots of the 1980s. This time, though, the focus of anger is the ruling African National Congress and its failure to push through improvements long promised since the end of white rule.
Happy Valley is a drenched wasteland. In pouring rain, roofs fashioned from planks and plastic sheeting leak like old taps. There is no refuse removal or medical care and there are no lavatories. Residents must relieve themselves in the nearby bush, but not at night: last Thursday night a man was stabbed to death and earlier last week a woman was raped.
"When Nelson Mandela was released 15 years ago, I thought we'd be living with more dignity by now," says Noluthando Valela, who lives with six people in a one-room shack and took to the streets with tens of thousands of fellow protesters last week. "How can they name a place Happy Valley under such conditions? It's absolutely appalling."
President Thabo Mbeki, who won a second term last year after he pledged improvements in the townships, admitted that the riots would destabilise the country. "The riots seek to exploit the class and nationality fault lines we inherited from our past," Mr Mbeki told parliament. "If ever they took root, gaining genuine popular support, they would pose a threat to the stability of democratic South Africa."
Sandwiched between a range of mountains and the Indian and Atlantic oceans, Cape Town has until now been among the most peaceful and prosperous parts of post-apartheid South Africa. The city, with its nearby vineyards and lush -forests and its fine old Dutch houses, has become home to a growing number of expatriate Britons, attracted by the lack of crime that blights other cities such as Johannesburg.
But with unemployment in South Africa running at more than 40 per cent, many of the city's 2.5 million people know little of the good life. Township residents are disenchanted and bitter about the indignity of their lives, believing that after 11 years in power the government has lost all desire to help the country's poor.
No one living in Mrs Valela's shack has an income. She burns wood in a large can to cook for the family, storing drinking water in a similarly blackened tin. Her little boys sleep in a small outhouse on a bed made of old cloths, soaking wet from the constantly leaking plastic roof.
"We want to show the authorities that they must pay attention to us," she said. "We burned tyres and threw our s**t all over the street. They can deal with it for once."
In the nearby Khayelitsha township, Nqabisa Ntete, a protest leader, invites visitors to sniff the air. The streets double as open sewage channels and residents are forced to tip-toe through puddles of green excrement to get to their shacks. Children play freely in the channels, kicking footballs covered in sewage.
Clothes lines are often kept indoors because of the smell and, with the rainy season beginning, most homes are flooded. As part of the protests, residents dumped buckets of excrement in the house of a local councillor, whom they referred to as "Mr Idiot" in their chants.
"We are not criminals," Mr Ntete said. "But we have no houses, no toilets, no water, and no other way to attract the attention of government."
Although Cape Town has been the centre of the protests, sporadic riots have also broken out in six of South Africa's nine other provinces in the past month. One protester was killed by police in the Free State province.
Mr Mbeki's government has sought to portray the problems as a legacy of apartheid, stressing that decades of township neglect cannot be overcome quickly.
In the decade of democracy since the first all-inclusive elections in 1994, the government has built 1.6 million houses and given nine million people access to clean water.
Overall, however, housing improvements have come much slower than hoped and the shortage of homes is particularly severe in Cape Town. Across the country there is a backlog of people waiting for 260,000 homes to be built. The residents of the townships are not impressed by the government's record.
They also resent the fact that it called in the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to investigate whether a "secret force" was orchestrating the riots and brought charges of sedition against protesters in Free State.
"We gave them time but they've done nothing," said Ashraf Cassiem, another protest organiser. "Today we have more unemployment, more crime and more homelessness because of evictions. The people are sick of it."
Evictions are a particularly sore point. Most of the townships were created to house people forcibly removed from areas that were desirable to whites under apartheid segregation laws.
"These people were forced into the townships," says Mr Cassiem. "They never paid rates but now they are being asked to pay and being evicted because they can't afford the taxes, rates or the bond on the shack they never even chose to live in. We're not dogs here. We're human beings."
These are difficult times for the ANC. In a separate scandal last week Jacob Zuma, the deputy president and Mr Mbeki's heir apparent, suffered the embarrassment of seeing a close friend and financial adviser, Shabir Shaik, convicted of corruption. A court found "overwhelming evidence" that the relationship between the men was corrupt.
The verdict prompted renewed calls for Mr Zuma's resignation and deepened the sense that South Africa's political masters are little better than its previous ones.
As one Happy Valley resident said during a confrontation with police: "We have no jobs, we're living without houses in complete filth, our local officials are corrupt, even our next president is corrupt. What else would you suggest we do?"
But... but...
They are FREE!
The idiot liberals worldwide see freedom as the end, not a means, and the fatal error only kills more Africans. Pity. They meant well. A popular almanac calls the transition to "majority rule "one of the most stunning successes of the 20th century".
Some success! But then, it's only been 11 years, so we must be patient. The only thing that's different is that now more Africans die than under the hated "apartheit". But they're "free.
Do a search for "Zimbabwe". This is not an accident or a coincidence.
Isn't Marxism great?
Mugabe's Regime Lays Waste To Buildings In New Terror Tactic
Mbeki was in Washington this past week asking Bush for more aid.
Can't anyone build a log cabin and dig an outhouse? I could do better in a week with an axe and a shovel.
As sordid as this episode is, I have to admit I can think of a few politicians I wouldn't mind seeing this done to.
"Can't anyone build a log cabin and dig an outhouse?"
Right, I don't get it. Same as the Palis in the "refugee camps". I mean, if that was your family, are you just going to sit around in some caged hovel, or are you going to get up off your butt and do something about it.
NOBODY in her house has an income? Why?
The roof leaks ALL THE TIME? Why?
I really don't get these people at all. Are they just sitting around waiting for the government to provide them with a decent home? And then what are they going to do, with no job, etc?
Ahhh The wonders of the new Marxist Black Apartheid. Soooo much better now that the eeeevil Whites are out.
Where's the MSM now?
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There are NO jobs. What are people going to do? And if they do this action who is going to back them? You'd be surprised what goes on. American media is so blissfully pursuing how Britney feels about sex during pregnancy and not the people Mbeki has murdered behind closed doors. I think it's a recipe for disaster what Mbeki is doing.
<< African National Congress's .... failure to push through improvements long promised since the end of [Democratic Government]. >>
Dunno what's their problem.
The felon, Mandela's improvements and those of his fellow-Marxist ANC henchmen are marked, no doubt as the consequence of the approaching Fifteen Billion US Dollars they've looted from Suid-Afrika's Treasury since "white rule" was ended.
The bloody idiots haven't figured it yet but they'd all be better off and have better prospects for the future -- or even any at all -- was the Herstigte Nasionale Party running things rather than the Marxist Mandela's hapless, lying, looting, thieving gang!
BUMPping
<< .... these fools are bought and sold on Marxism. >>
Thay are also not American Negros.
The word "savage" did not sneak into the English Language by accident and these township Africans, whose numbers include millions of illegal immigrants, are among the scores of millions of post-Colonial; post-UDI and and post-Suid-Afrikaaner/South African National Government Africans who are in the process of both learning and demonstrating how it arrived!
<< Sth.Africa and most of the [States] in Africa need good management and people on the ground actually being productive. The place is potentially very rich. >>
"Potentially?"
Rubbish.
The whole continent is arse-deep in riches and was incredibly productive during its colonial years.
And "white" {"Apartheidt"] South Africa used to be the whole continent's Banker.
Right up until the time it and the rest of Africa "got lucky" and the biggest theft in the history of the world was pulled off in broad daylight.
By the lying, looting, thieving Nelson Marxist Mandela Gang!
A century hence, just like the the black and Latino professional victims in America, there will be South African professional victims claiming this pathetic excuse for their personal failure in life. And liberals will be dumb enough to open their wallets to temporarily shut them up.
It is starkly telling that they are rioting because the government is not socialist enough. Even if tomorrow they were given their old lands back, and given "reparations", they would still be out rioting for more gimmes from government within a couple of years. If I had any friends in South Africa, I'd counsel them to get the hell out of a rapidly developing sh!thole...they're only 10 years behind Zimbabwe (nee Rhodesia), but the results will end up the same.
And I agree with everyone else here that has mentioned the criminal incompetence of the liberals who demanded an end to apartheid but now take no responsibility for the results because it has turned into yet another horrific failure in their long line of failed cause d'celebres. They should be all shipped into these townships to help the very people they share such a close kinship to in ideology.
Their solution, more money, more money, unfortunately you have to do something positive with the money and from past experience it appears they don't have a clue. The same thing is happening with the School system in the United States.
I agree. Get your kids out of the public schools. They're learning the gimme and victim mentality.
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