Marist College's Africa Experience: Cape Malay Quarters, District 6, and the Politics of Policy

This morning we started our day with a tour of the Cape Malay District. This area contained the Indian population during the Apartheid era. We saw one of the oldest houses in Cape Town, which is now owned by a man who converted it into 6 apartments. He converted the once vibrant one-family home into an apartment building so that his children could live with him because of Indian culture that place great value on the importance of family.

After we walked through the Cape Malay Quarters and drove through the downtown area of Cape Town, we arrived at the District 6 Museum where blacks, coloureds, and Indians lived in harmony in a one room home (flat) with their families. The home consisted of a small kitchen, 2 beds, a small table, and a bed pan. District 6 was once a vibrant community that contained what Richard Florida has identified as the “creative class”. The area was home to many artist, musicians, poets, writers, teachers, and others professionals; however under the apartheid regime the area was bulldozed in order to break up the socially vibrant community that was formed in district 6. Families' entire houses were destroyed and they were forced to move to different neighborhoods according to their state classified “race”. The museum was created as a memoriam for the pain and suffering of the families who once occupied the area. In the actual museum, there were murals, pictures of the people who lived in the district, items that were left behind such as barber shop materials, things from wash houses, silver-wear, and furniture that were preserved and displayed for the public. Another famous memoir left by the natives of this area was a large piece of cloth, which is equivalent in size to the length of a curtain; it contained messages of hope, faith, and remembrance followed by their signatures.

As we left the museum and continued our tour, we witnessed a peaceful demonstration conducted by refugees from Burundi a block down the street. Their protest was in reaction to the xenophobia and other correlating social issues in the recent South African news. As they burned their native flag from Burundi, the refugees cheered and clapped. The protest, while very peaceful and contained allowed us to further ponder the role of government intervention and the policy response to immigration and social issues that affect families in the townships (which are informal settlements—mostly consisting of shacks without sufficient necessities to live a descent life and are places where unemployment, drug use, and alcoholism is ever present).

At the South Africa parliament, we toured the three main meeting rooms were business and politics were conducted: the committee room, assembly room, and the national council of provinces. The assembly room is infamous for passing legislation during the Apartheid Regime. While visiting a committee room we witnessed a committee hearing on suicide within police stations and temporary holding cells in South Africa. The committee asked several questions of an administrator from the Ministry of Corrections about why the rate has dramatically increased since prisoners should not have access to items that would allow them to commit suicide, however, the administrator failed to adequately respond to the questions of the committee. On another note we learned that each year Parliament holds voting in four locations close to the townships, so all citizens are involved in the country’s politics. This is a vital in allowing the underprivileged to participate in the democratic process.

Last, we toured the beautiful campus of the University of Cape Town, where we were able to pick up souvenirs and visit with some of the students. We also had a very interactive discussion led by Emma Harvey, pertaining to issues such as xenophobia, globalization, economics, public policy, violence, cultural diversity, media and communications, and the psychological impacts of all of these on South Africa. This question and answer session was very informative and it was also interesting to hear an Afrikaner woman’s perspective on social issues. The discussion made us question the role of the international community in developing countries, the role of government intervention, and brought us back to a place where we were when we first started class in January of examining the role and disjuncture between neo-liberal and socialist policies and the idea of restorative justice, which is the bedrock of South African life.

Picture in front of Parliament building in Cape Town, South Africa