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 * Business Day, Johannesburg, 13 December 2005**

= **High water rising in the Cape** =


 * Bryan Rostron**

OUR finance minister recently claimed that if the inequalities between rich and poor in Cape Town weren’t rapidly addressed, this seemingly laid-back city could see the kind of social upheaval that Paris has been experiencing from marginalised minorities. The difference between these two cities, though, is crucial: here the marginalised are in a massive majority.

It was a timely warning, and Trevor Manuel — as a former street-smart United Democratic Front leader from the Cape Flats — should know. The irony, however, is that he is no longer the lean activist, but a sharp suited cabinet minister whose rigorous market-oriented policies are as responsible as anything else for the slow pace of change — and the rising anger among the dispossessed.

It was Manuel who dismissed reparations for the victims of apartheid from corporations that had assisted the former racist regime with the unpleasant jibe: “We didn’t go into the struggle to make money.” When it was suggested those who suffered at the hands of apartheid agents should receive compensation, it was Manuel who came up with the contemptible put-down: “Some of our people could win Oscars for acting.”

Yet at public meetings when the minister is on the podium, he still manages a defiant fist in the air and cries, “Amandla!” This despite being a firm favourite of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (hence the speculation that he may even be headed to one of these institutions next). It is exactly such bizarre contradictions that explain much about postapartheid SA.

The last time I saw Manuel do his fiery punching-the-air reprise, for which he received a rapturous ovation, was at the District Six “homecoming” ceremony in February last year, when former president Nelson Mandela handed over keys to the new homes for the first two elderly returning residents, brutally evicted 30 years ago.

In fact, the houses were mere facades as they had not been completed, and since then little progress has been made in building more homes on that heart-rending District Six site. Unsurprisingly, squatters recently invaded the still derelict wasteland and had to be evicted.

So when Manuel says Cape Town risks violent social unrest unless there is sustained intervention to defuse the poverty “time bomb”, one is not exactly sure where he is headed. As finance minister he’s not changing the very policies — his famous business-friendly budgets — which have failed to bring the expected benefits to the poor. As a result, apartheid-era images of townships enveloped in tear gas with rioters facing ranks of helmeted police and armoured vehicles may well come back to haunt us.

At a meeting I attended last month with a Western Cape government department, a senior official quoted Manuel’s remarks about social unrest, adding: “And the area most likely to go up in flames first is yours!” That may well be true. But it seems to me that if this is the case it will represent, as much as anything, the failure of the policies of the present African National Congress (ANC) administration, nationally and locally.

The Hout Bay valley outside Cape Town is one of the few places in SA where — due to the continuing effects of past racial segregation — three communities actually live within sight of each other: a well-off white suburb, a poor “coloured” village and a hugely overcrowded black shantytown with 70% unemployment.

The schools are also still overwhelmingly segregated. Nevertheless, in the face of established financial power (read white privilege) the education department seems to have buckled and accepted the status quo. If anything, it is this inaction that will create social unrest.

It’s rather like the government’s housing policy. There is a desperate need to house the poor, yet the ANC programme is to build matchstick houses in already-existing black townships. In other words, they are simply adding onto apartheid spatial planning — leaving workers with massive transport problems, still desperately far from employment opportunities, plus entrenching many of the chaotic social ills of enduring poverty.

So, too, with education. Take this valley: there is a deprived, massively overcrowded black primary school, an equally overcrowded “coloured” school and a largely white school with decent class sizes, excellent facilities, delightful playing fields, tennis courts and an enormous swimming pool. All are government-funded.

But as school fees are set by parent-dominated governing bodies, at the former Model C school they are impossibly beyond the dreams of the majority. The result is that almost all black pupils there are those fortunate enough to find a sponsor. How on earth is this tolerated?

At a meeting the three schools were asked to state their most pressing need. The school which only black pupils attend said: classes of less than 50 pupils. Overcrowding and poor facilities was echoed by the school that mostly “coloured” children attend, with one teacher remarking: “Rather than teach, we have to practice crowd control.” And the former white school? Their most pressing need: a hockey pitch.

When I pointed out to the (white) representatives that their school was also government-aided, and that their facilities — classrooms, fields, tennis courts, swimming pool — had been provided by the state (the previous regime, of course), there was great indignation. “We raised the money for the swimming pool,” they replied huffily, entirely missing the point.

This is the grotesque reality. But when the education department suggested this privileged school take some of the overflow from nearby underprivileged schools, the (white) parents speedily raised money for a court action. The department appears to have backed down and have now shoved more rickety temporary containers onto the already congested black school, making it more of a slum than it was under apartheid.

It makes you want to take to the barricades.

‖Rostron is a freelance writer and author.

From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A127009