10. Day 6 (Aug. 22) -- Soweto: Overview and Chris Hani Bardgwanath Hospital

(Note: Believe it or not, I was caught in the March weather mess in the East and South and this resulted in very slow internet availability and thus the delay in this post.)

The first true day of the trip was the only day we were in Johannesburg on the tour although we had several days on our own at the end of the trip.  And that really meant Soweto.  Soweto is an abbreviation for SOuthWEst TOwnship and it is a huge area of over 1.2 million people, primarily black Africans.  It was once a separate municipality under apartheid as a place for blacks to live and be able to work in the mines and other forms of menial labor.  

One of the big problems in South Africa is the lack of adequate housing for the black population and, to a lesser extent, the population formerly known as coloureds.  Townships grew up, under apartheid, when blacks came from the countryside to seek jobs in the mines and other places.  This housing was often shanty-towns and squatters.  And the legacy of that remains to this day.

The current government, since 1994, has been committed to provided millions of new houses — basic but decent housing — to the population in the townships and this promise has been partially delivered.  Yet there is still a great need for more housing.  (This is related to the discussion in the previous post about safety.)  

Since I am a lawyer (albeit a technically inactive one), I hope I will be excused a short journey into the legal landscape involving housing in South Africa.  This should only take the next 3 paragraphs and if you really don’t want to read about it, just skip to the paragraph starting with “Driving to Soweto ….”

The Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled in Port Elizabeth Municipality v. Various Occupiers [2004] ZACC 7 that some 68 people occupying 29 shacks they erected on privately owned land in Port Elizabeth could not be evicted.  Part of the decision was based on the fact that the Port Elizabeth housing program would not be able to provide housing for these people and this both deprived them of property within the meaning of section 25 of the South African Constitution and violated general principles of Ubuntu as applicable under South African Law.

Ubuntu was a term that was heard during our trip.  At one time it was described as giving to someone today who is in need and receiving tomorrow when you might be in need.  The translates (somewhat imprecisely I’m told) as humanness or as described the universal bond of sharing that connects all people.  What’s particularly special is not the existence of this philosophical concept within South Africa – many places in the world at least pay lip service to it.  But in South Africa the term is used both in the general population and given legal recognition.

As Justice Albie Sachs (with whom we will spend part of an afternoon later in this trip) wrote for the court in the Port Elizabeth case, “The Constitution and [statutuory law] require that in addition to considering the lawfulness of the occupation [of the land] the court must have regard to the interests and circumstances of the occupier and pay due regard to broad considerations of fairness and other constitutional values, so as to produce a just and equitable result.”  (This case is discussed in chapter 3 of Justice Sachs’ The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law especially at pages 105-109.)

Driving to Soweto you definitely feel as though you are in a vibrant, thriving albeit poor, and amazing area.  The urban art is wonderful and colorful.   

Painted Tower

And the juxtaposition of dismal and decent is all over.  In this photo just behind these shacks are more substantial albeit modest houses which, unlike the shacks, have electricity.

Houses with and without Electricity

And in this photo you can see in the foreground structures that are essentially ruins while in the background are what appear to be (and we were told were) decent houses.

Ruins and Housing in Background

We stopped for a short time in the area around Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, a well-known spot in Soweto.

Around the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital

The hospital was originally built in 1941 by the British as a military hospital (and named after the owner of the site, John Albert Baragwanath).  After the Second World War the hospital was used for the black population of Soweto.  In 1997 Chris Hani’s name was added to the name of the hospital.  Hani was a dearly beloved person involved in ending Apartheid and the leader of the South African Communist Party who was assassinated in 1993 by a right-wing extremist shortly before Apartheid was officially ended.  The hospital, supposedly the third largest in the world, is in the forefront of the treatment of AIDS.

Nearby is the Maponya Mall,

Maponya Mall Soweto

complete with elephant statue, 

Elephant Statue, Maponya Mall, Soweto

and with guards to watch your car in the parking lot.

Guards in Parking Lot

The mall is quite luxurious and is supposed to be the largest black-owned business in South Africa.  Most of the wealth in South Africa is still in white hands.  This is in large part a legacy of the past when the apartheid laws favored whites, granting them economic power.  For example, blacks could not legally own more than one business, while there were no such restrictions on whites.

Next stop is Freedom Square in Soweto.