Hout Bay Township Tour
Thursday, June 27th, 2002Just outside Cape Town we visited a squatter’s camp where poor people including immigrants from Zimbabwe and Algeria, who were not allowed to live in Cape Town prior to apartheid, live on “no man’s land” and try to find fishing jobs on nearby Hout Bay.
The hillside facing the bay is covered with little tin and cardboard shacks that remind me of the worst of the migrant housing at home. We took a stroll up and down the narrow dirt lanes while Bob entertained the children with his digital camera-taking their pictures and then letting them see themselves on the video screen.
In one small shack some women were sewing some skirts and “aprons” (worn if you were married) so I bought an outfit and put it on. Idle people (unemployment is about 90%) gaped at the white woman with her cloddy athletic shoes and long black pants underneath their local African costume and laughed and shook their heads as I paraded past them. One woman in a “shabeen” (home where beer is made and sold) dipped some homemade beer out of an old keg into an empty gallon can from which we took turns drinking…
Zoe