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Cape Town, 1990: A man and child walk through the Khayelitsha Squatter Camp near Cape Town at dusk. SOUTH AFRICA, 1988: Apartheid is more than police with guns and whips. Apartheid is the systematic deprivation of education, employment, family, community and hope for South Africa's black majority. Apartheid is paternalism, materialism and people of a nation separated by language and God. It is weariness from the weight of righteousness gone wrong. It is a schizophrenia of fearful glances and welcoming embraces. The same heads that bow in submission later secretly raise in spirited song. South Africa is tragic humanity that struggles for transformation. THE TOWNSHIPS: THE QUIET REVOLUTION (1988) It's another world, just miles from the beautiful cities. The hum of voices harmonizes with the sandblasting wind to the beat of the flapping black plastic that pretends to be the walls of thousands of makeshift squatter homes. Where's the revolution? This is the revolution, the quiet revolution. For 15 years the people here refused to accept the Group Areas Act that forbade them to live here. They built their shacks, the government bulldozed them. They rebuilt, and then rebuilt again. This refusal to accept unjust laws speaks in the individual homes of corrugated metal, scrap wood, black plastic and ingenuity. We have seen the poignant struggle for freedom in the explosive riots, but the quiet strength endures in the spirit of daily life. There have been the marches and demonstrations, violent confrontations with police, the forming and banning of political organizations. Then there are the thousands of shacks that say "no" to apartheid. Devoid of political or economic power, the people have put the only tool they have--themselves--on the line. |