Informal Settlements - September 3, 2007

(1) Songs is our guide. A large African man with a great laugh… Reams of knowledge and the wisdom that seems years beyond his age. Without him, this trip would be meaningless. Thank you, Songs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(2) Informal settlements…squatters’ land. Lean-to’s, shacks, shanties, made of scrap metals and salvaged woods. Tarred paper roofs held down with old tires. One door and no windows. A communal water well and a common area for washing clothes. Rows of porta-potties that are blocks long. Stray dogs everywhere. Dust, dirt, litter. No electricity. Large campfires for cooking. A dozen cattle being herded down the dirt road on which we are driving. Where do they graze? Even Songs doesn’t know the answer to that. Tables, set up on corners, that sell “smilies”… sheep heads that are roasted and considered a delicacy. I suggest we get one, but SAJ wisely talks me out of it. People sitting and staring. Children moving dirt with their toes as if it is a game. Clothes and bedding hanging on fences that separate these settlements from more affluent townships. A dirt road that separates one settlement from a township area nicknamed “Beverly Hills.” Beverly Hills is a neighborhood in Langa consisting of one – to two-room bungalows. And believe me…compared to the settlement, the name is fitting. Row upon row of these shanties connected by a common wall, because that means one less wall to build. Most times, connected in the back, too, because that means two less walls to build. These settlements are found throughout Cape Town. They have no names. Children are born here.





(3) And yet people smile and wave.

(4) We re-visit the black township of Langa and home to Songs. He takes us to meet Nkululeko, a musician friend of his. Nkululeko is a percussionist and marimba player and this morning he is terribly hungover. Man, artists are the same everywhere.



(5) Nkululeko’s favorite bar is right next door to his house. Cool.

(6) There is a tour bus on Nkululeko’s street. Tourists having lunch at a restaurant there.

(7) Nkululeko plays some of his latest music for us. It is a DVD recorded in Japan. He shows me a picture of his Japanese girlfriend. I show him a picture of my Japanese wife.

(8) Lots of laughs and jokes at each other’s expense. It’s like hanging with Judd and Rene.

(9) Back on the road. The mass transportation system here seems to be all privately owned. Vans and buses pick up people at collection spots in townships and drive them to Cape Town proper or its suburbs.

(10) All public school students wear uniforms. As a child of the 60’s, surprisingly, I like that they do.

(11) I just saw a dog scratching his back on the front bumper of a Volks Wagon.

(12) Langa has a population of little over 170,000. It is the smallest and oldest of all black townships in Cape Town. Songs seems to know every one of those 170,000 people. Waves, yells, honking horns. We are in the capable hands of a rock star.

(13) Lunch at Tiger’s…A long connected 3-room heaven! You buy your meat (lamb, beef, pork, chickens, sausages, and variety types) in the first room, a butcher shop. You then season it with assorted spices. Songs did this for us. You then give this platter of meat to the cook in the second room. And while he is grilling, you proceed to the 3rd room and come to the lounge and an outdoor patio. The patio is a concrete slab facing the street with cars parked about 6 ft away. Order a few beers and wait for the food. Watch Songs greet everyone and introduce us to them. Everyone knows everyone. All are kind and welcoming. A school bell goes off across the street. Then the food comes on a large tin tray with one knife. It is placed on a chair between us, and it’s every man for himself. Grabbing, pulling, tearing the meat apart and tasting the best food I think we had in Cape Town.



(14) And not one vegetable in sight. Not even a lamb-flavored potato chip.

(15) Recording and filming everyone and everything we can. I hope these machines work.

(16) More black townships. Alive with people and activities. Interactive…not just people rushing home to work, to home. Laughter. The joy of a common struggle?

(17) Back at the hotel, and the woman at the front desk seems genuinely shocked that we spent a day in Langa. Crime, gangs, drugs, etc. She is “coloured.”

(18) Terrible television in South Africa. 5 stations and 3 of them show soccer. The other two, old reruns of American soap operas.

(19) Consciously observing is exhausting. Night, night.

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Visual tour of the township:

The Townships, Colored and Black

The Townships -- where do I start? They are unimaginable, unforgettable, seething, intense, hopeful, forlorn, needy, independent, Black and Colored, and bursting with possibility, depending on which one you visit.

We have spent the last two days, with a little help from my friend Songs Ngcongolo, visiting Black and Colored townships. Their names are: Langa, Guguletu, Khayeliysha, Athlone, Heidiveld, Manenberg, Philipi, and Belville South. Some are poor, some are middle class, some are a mix of both. They are creations of the Apartheid era, they are also places where people live and work and raise families and dream of the future, or can't see a future and just try to get to the next day.

In Langa, Songs takes us around and shows us various areas in the township. Langa is the oldest township in South Africa. The housing ranges from one room shacks, like the one described in our play, to two story brick homes in an area called "Beverly Hills." Incidentally Beverly Hills is literally across the road from an area filled with shacks where people have no plumbing. There are schools, small shops, churches, small eateries, and bars. Everywhere you see people going about their daily lives, going to work, kids in uniforms going to school, driving, walking, talking, laughing, seemingly unfazed by the circumstances that surround them. Unfazed but not unaware, everyone we met spoke of their desire for change. Either in their own lives, or more generally of change for South Africa and all her people. Be it social, political, economic, or educational, it was something that was on every one's mind. This ability to live and get to the next day in spite of what one faces in life is a big part of our play.



Songs introduced us to his friend Nkululeko, his name means freedom. He is a man in his forties who lives in the house he grew up in. It started as two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, and the family added to it. Nkululeko is a master drummer, he plays in a band named Amampondo that is hugely successful in South Africa. He has played with Hugh Masakela, Airto, Flora Purim, and other musicians of note yet he lives in the most humble of abodes next to a shebeen called Fanie's (under Apartheid a shebeen was an illegal bar). He and Songs introduced us to everyday life in the township of Langa.

Nkululeko and Songs:



We ate at a place called Tigers, a butcher/restaurant/bar. That's right, all those things under one roof. You go in the butchers and pick out your cuts of meat and some seasoning, you go into the next room to season your meat and it is cooked on a hardwood charcol fire, you go to the terrace to order what you want to drink, your meat is brought to you, and you eat. It was the best food we ate in South Africa.



Incredible poverty and deprivation across the road from Beverly Hills and the undeniable pulse of a vibrant everyday life, this was Langa.

The other Black townships we saw were Guguletu and the largest township in South Africa, Khayelitsha, a place that is home to 1.4 million people.

The Guguletu Seven -- A memorial to seven young black men who were killed at a crossroads in the township.



The next day we went to Colored townships. Their names are Athlone, Belville South, and Heideveld, and all three are working middle class communities. However, being classified Colored didn't insulate you from poverty and one room shacks, remember the circumstances of our characters in Blood Knot. We also saw Mannenberg and Phillipi, both Colored and both achingly poor. That was where we saw how Zach and Morrie (the brothers in our play) lived. Their lives under Apartheid are still being lived today after that horrible system has fallen.



In Belville South we met another of Songs' friends, Rodney Adonis. He was enormously helpful to us. He gave us insight into the life of a Colored man in the 1960s, the time of our play. We talked about the state of mind and psyche under Apartheid. How as second class citizens with a few more privileges, a mindset of fear could be created, whereas for a Black person who had no rights, not even citizenship and nothing to loose, there was often no fear. We discussed the different ways that horrid system impacted the lives of the people it oppressed, both Black and Colored. We saw so much, felt so much, learned so much.



It is very hard to put it all into words, so I'll stop trying. I'll try to put it all into my work on stage. It's a daunting task, but that makes it all the more exciting. Wednesday we went to Robben Island and we heard the most incredible story about that place from a former political prisoner. I will not try to speak for him, we recorded his words and we will put them in the blog, either as audio or transcribed text. I'm just going to call that post "Tell the truth and shame the devil."

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More pictures from the townships:

The Church

(1) I haven’t been to church for years unless for weddings or funerals.

(2) We drive to the black township of Langa. It’s still scary, but SAJ thinks he’s getting better at driving here. When he tries to use the turn signal the wind shield wiper comes on.

(3) My first time in a township. Overwhelming. I am so, so, so pale. I have to admit, it’s weird. And weirdness runs very deep. What is color? Keep asking that. What is race? What is tribe? What is family? What is blood? Really, what is blood?

(4) They have a coal-water cooling plant here that looks like a nuclear reactor.

(5) We are early for church, so we drive around. I feel foreign, out of place, a tourist to a struggle.

(6) The church is right across from the police station.

(7) We are standing waiting to meet our host, Gege. He doesn’t recognize SAJ because of the lack of the ponytail.

(8) Remarkable smile – Gege.

(9) Music everywhere. Even before we go into the church.

(10) We sit at the back of the church.

(11) Children everywhere. Youth choir, teenagers that sit on the risers facing the congregation, late-teens or early 20’s in blue blazers and caps doing the confirmation of faith.

(12) Children make you see your sins and your hopeful redemption.

(13) Unbelievable music and everyone knows the songs and can perform them in six part harmony.

(14) I am fighting back the tears. The beauty of the children.

(15) The pews in this church are even smaller the ones at St. Teresa’s Catholic Church in Hutchinson, KS.

(16) Well, it’s official. At a holy ceremony of the First United Langa Methodist Church of South Africa, I was introduced as one of two “fellow Africans from America.” SAJ and I are really brothers.

(17) Long service. Almost 4 hours!

(18) AIDS Awareness everywhere. It’s good to see a church addressing the issue.

(19) Gege’s mother is beautiful and has a remarkable voice. And he is a dynamic force that makes you optimistic for the future.

(20) Meeting with Gege, lots of stuff on tape for Deb.

(21) I miss my wife.

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Video of the children's choir singing in the church in Langa:

More help from my friends.......

S'bangizwe Yekiso is a friend of mine. He is an infinitely interesting young man, filled with energy and enthusiasm and a genuine love of people and life. He works for a wine company called Thokozani. He took us to the Langa Methodist Church yesterday as his guest. Now lets get two things clear right now. One, nobody who reads this can pronounce his name, and two, between me and Jack we figure Jesus was alive the last time we both were in church. I can help you with number one, everyone calls my friend Gege (pronounced Geygey, like heyhey). With number two, you'll have to go directly to Jesus for help.



The service at the Langa Methodist church was an amazing experience. We drive to Langa, a mostly Xhosa black township, and we find the church by following Gege's directions. We drive around a bit looking at Langa. We'll spend Monday and Tuesday there, so we go back to the church and park. Jack and I are obviously not from Langa, but people are warm and friendly, saying hello as they pass. There are a lot of young men and women gathering, the men have on blue blazers and the women have on blue skirts and berets. They are apparently the choir, because they gather and begin to warm up, singing the beginning of various songs. Gege arrives and greets us. At first he doesn't recognize me, the last time we were together I had a ponytail, but we connect and I introduce Jack and he takes us inside and gets us seated in the back and tells us he will see us at the end of the service. From the moment we sat down, there was the most amazing singing happening. The church was a long room with a raised pulpit at the front and row after row of simple wooden pews. They slowly filled up while the young people at the front continued to sing so beautifully in Xhosa. By 10:20 or so the church was packed. The youngest members were seated up on the dais just behind the minister and to his right, looking out at all of us and filling the entire room with their pulsing highly rhythmic and physical energy and their rich soprano voices.

Then the minister began to announce the scripture to be read in a mix of Xhosa and English, as Langa is mostly Xhosa, and solo singers would begin to sing after the readings. This is when we were just blown away. The entire congregation, hundreds of people, young and old would come in right on cue singing in harmonies and full voices, filling the air with the most incredible sound I have ever heard. It brought back memories of church services I attended as a child in Georgia with my relatives (back during the time of Christ), but the singing there did not top this. It transported you on waves of melody and took you out of yourself to another place here in Langa with people you didn't know, but with whom you suddenly felt part of. We were introduced as the Africans from America, and felt the warmth of the congregation's welcoming greeting. Jack leaned over to me and said, "now I'm African."

With that achieved, we sat through the rest of the service with all its great singing and the lighting of the AIDS candle and the stirring sermon: "don't run with the chickens and ducks, you are not one of them, you are an eagle, learn to fly, realize your potential, soar like an eagle!" We sat through all three hours and forty some minutes of it.

Then, back to the hotel and we meet Gege at the cigar bar across the street, there wasn't much open, and he helps us with all this language and pronunciation stuff (invaluable), then he's off to the rest of his day, leaving us to the rest of ours. A little help from my friend.......