by Reggie Yates
But despite the growth of a black middle class, the majority of wealth still remained in the hands of the old white masters. Our drive continued and Sizwe pointed out the armed guards and gates protecting mansions and car collections. These were the homes of the white elite hidden behind high walls and barbed wire.
With a huge gap between the haves and have nots, the ANC introduced the affirmative action policy (AA for short) in an attempt to rebalance wealth and opportunity. Quickly transforming the South African courtroom, AA ushered in a shake-up, ensuring over 60 per cent of the most senior judges in the country were now black. According to Sizwe, in this climate you’re better off if you’re black.
Sizwe believed, as a non-white South African, ‘The odds are stacked in your favour.’ He was adamant that he’d get chosen over his white equivalent when applying for a job. I was shocked. As far as I was concerned, discrimination is disgusting regardless of the victim’s race. South Africa has seen a dramatic change of power and the white minority are now the marginalised.
But was this reverse racism or a long overdue rebalance of a corrupt system? In the current climate, the black population is seeing opportunities in a way they never had done before. Progress is always a positive thing, but I struggle to agree with any progress that is to the detriment of others. I’ve always believed equality is about treating everyone the same, but things were different here.
Known as ‘Boer’ people, this Afrikaans word meaning ‘farmer’ is used to describe the descendants of Dutch settlers. Until the nineties, the ruling Boer treated the black majority as little better than animals. Removing families from their homes by force, the ruling whites created huge ring-fenced compounds with basic buildings to rehouse the black majority. These compounds inevitably grew into what we now know as townships.
The white regime ruthlessly enforced their laws, leaving a stain on the country’s history still felt today. The legacy of those settlements is still visible in the never-ending townships; it touches and arguably impacts on the lives of millions of black people to this day.
I met twenty-eight-year-old Colin, an expert on the history of race relations in South Africa. He schooled me on life in the Alexandra Township, which houses many black people living in poverty. He described growing up in an environment where residents were under constant threat from what they called the ‘Mellow Yellow vans’. These were government-funded vehicles that appeared and scooped people up who were usually never seen again. Colin explained that when they arrived, men, women and children would run for their lives.
Having been under constant threat of violence from authority, these communities’ relations with the powers that be are still incredibly strained. In my mind, segregation was always a word I’d associated with the United States and the fight for equality in the sixties. Colin was educating me on much more recent history. Frightening anecdotes like that of the Mellow Yellow vans were tied to my lifetime as Apartheid didn’t end until the 1990s.
Blacks who broke segregation laws were sent to prison. Colin took me to the Old Fort, one such location that has now become a museum. Even with open cells and unlocked gates, the building remained intimidating and contained an unsettling atmosphere that hung in the air. While awaiting trial, Nelson Mandela was incarcerated at the Old Fort.
Colin broke down what went on during the prison’s functioning years, and I couldn’t help but feel sick. We sat in the central courtyard which was open air and visible from all sides of the prison. This was the area guards used for acts of humiliation. One such degradation was the ‘strip search dance’. Inmates were stripped naked, made to spread their legs and arms then jump. They then had to clap their hands above their head, leaping in the air and making a clicking sound. If no objects were seen to fall from the body, officers would insert a finger or torch inside an inmate’s rectum to ensure nothing was hidden. This humiliation was assigned to those suspected of smuggling and included both men and women.
The brave people fighting to change the system dreaded being caught by the police, as they would invariably receive brutal and inhumane treatment. Freedom fighters were kept in solitary confinement cells no wider than a single mattress. Walking in and lying down on the concrete floor where inmates would have had to sleep, I couldn’t help but feel like I was in a coffin. The tall, thin cells had no furniture and tiny windows.
In one generation, the country had gone from government-sanctioned brutality towards blacks to affirmative action. But being sat in that cell began to weigh on me. The degree of injustice experienced here spoke to the level of anger understandably still fresh in the air. Swimming in the atmosphere of the prison I felt an anger of my own beginning to bubble in me too.
It’s a black government, it’s a black country, they don’t want white people here
Today, black and white South Africans are afforded the same freedoms. Regardless, at the time we were making the film, sixteen million black South Africans were still living in poverty. With that being the case, the leg-up on a systemic level is understandable, but where does that leave the white people living in poverty like those in Coronation Park?
Once part of the privileged minority, Irene, her son Gerry and the rest of the white South Africans living in the camp saw their living conditions as a result of the new system. Nonetheless, Irene believed on some level it was just. Seeing her situation as a direct result of her forefathers’ sins, Irene was resolute: ‘It’s time now for us to pay for what our fathers did.’
When I first met Gerry, I’d got the impression that he was frustrated and felt powerless in the situation he didn’t create but was born into. What I didn’t realise straightaway was just how deep those frustrations went. Seconds into Gerry joining my conversation with Irene, he slipped into a rant that started calmly but quickly escalated.
‘What happened twenty years ago was nothing to do with me,’ he barked, as his mother’s take on the situation annoyed him. Gerry believed his generation had done nothing to deserve their reality. He was frustrated that black workers doing the same job as him could go on to be promoted or gain better jobs in a way that was apparently denied to him. As he became more emotional, Gerry began to raise his voice, harking back nostalgically to the days of Apartheid, saying he felt segregation had made South Africa a better place. Believing there was a better economy and lifestyle for all under segregation, his total disregard for what Apartheid meant to the country’s black population was unfortunately not as surprising to me as I’d have liked it to be.
Wherever I find myself in the world, I try to take people as I find them and focus on the similarities we share rather than the differences. I’ve always harped on in interviews about the idea that people are the key to any issue at the core of my work. What that really means is that if I can’t connect with who I meet, I can’t truly know why they hold the views they do.
My desire in meeting Gerry was to paint a picture of who he was and what mattered to him before getting into his feelings on the state of the country. I had suspected his views might differ from his mother’s or at the very least be one sided due to the extreme nature of his reality.
As his voice got louder still, I felt disappointed that those niggling suspicions sat at the back of my mind on that very first meeting were all being proven. This was a man who held offensive and racist views, but Gerry was also a man so boxed in by his situation he seemed to need someone to blame.
‘But the black people had jobs,’ he snapped, and I had to remind him that some may have been given employment, but none had basic human rights. ‘I can’t say because I wasn’t there’ was Gerry’s way of deflecting the fact that the injustices dealt out during segregation didn’t remotely compare to his situation.
‘It’s a black government, it’s a black country, they don’t want white people here.’ Gerry walked back to his shack cradling his son in his arms. The entire time we went back and forth, he held his child close. Gerry clearly loved his family and the life he held in his arms seemed to
be a present and constant reminder of who he was working so hard for. Given his job, his earning power and his prospects, Gerry seemed to have decided that the life he wanted for his children may not happen.
As Gerry stamped off back to his shack, a watching neighbour bumped fists with him in a show of support. It occurred to me in that moment that Gerry might not have been speaking just for himself. Maybe his outlook was more common than I’d realised.
As I stood alone in the aftermath of this conversation, Gerry’s hard and unrelenting views felt increasingly like less of a defence and more of a comfort blanket for his position. Gerry wanted better but might have quietly recognised this was his lot.
To say the people of Coronation Park were stuck there sounds like a cop-out, but this was the inescapable reality. The laws in place might have played a part in why progressing was so difficult, namely affirmative action. With fewer opportunities in the workplace given to white applicants, the chances of Coronation Park growing were high. Putting myself in the shoes of a working-class white man like Gerry, I can see how race resentment could fester and grow. Unfortunately, Gerry was one of many in the same position.
In desperate need of some objectivity and a less heated conversation, I pulled up a tree stump and shared a fire with JD and his family. As ever, their corner of the camp was warm, light-hearted and full of considered thought. I shared my conversation with Gerry and my belief in what fuelled his frustrations. JD cracked a wry smile and in his slow and now familiar delivery he hummed, ‘I ended up here for a reason, nobody comes in here because the country is screwed up, they come in here because they screwed up.’
JD had a point. Everyone in Coronation Park had a story, everyone had a life before the camp. Something must have gone wrong with their lives to have brought them there, but I hadn’t heard anyone speak about their journey. ‘You can’t blame everything on the system,’ JD said, and he was right. This was the first time I’d heard any ownership. Up until this point, nobody I had spoken to had seemed willing to accept the part they’d played in ending up homeless.
The more he spoke the more I needed to know who JD was before he’d arrived at Coronation Park with his family. ‘Even a rich guy can find himself here in two weeks.’ At one point, that’s exactly who JD was. He was in a band he refused to tell me the name of but he was doing well enough to look after his entire family. ‘I was a rock star, I used to sign boobs.’
JD told me that he had everything but was selfish and lost it all in a matter of days. When his music career ended, he struggled to find his feet and began to move from place to place. With a baby on the way and the responsibility of his entire family on his back, JD was living with immense pressure but somehow retained a sense of calm and dignity. I was in awe of the man. I’d never met anyone with such balance and objectivity, especially considering what he was dealing with. If I had to start again literally from nothing, I’m not sure if I could muscle up anywhere near as much resolve. This was the first time I’d seen this kind of strength in the camp, but with so many Afrikaners living in similar conditions, was JD a one-off?
Coronation Park wasn’t the only place where whites living on the breadline had created small camps or communities; it was beginning to happen across the country. I hopped in our comically small hire car and hit the road. The ugly car was tiny and slow and made it look like I was taking my driving test and Sam was my instructor. I crunched through the awful five-speed gearbox while Sam’s long legs got more and more numb the longer we were in the thing. To this day I have no idea why anyone thought a hatchback would be a good idea.
An hour’s crappy driving later, we were out of Johannesburg and had arrived in Pretoria. Once the spiritual heartland of Afrikaner population, the city is now predominantly black. We pulled into an estate made up of several small residential blocks, the biggest of which was no more than three stories tall. The condition of the estate suggested the blocks had been abandoned and recently kicked in and repurposed. They were all in a state of disrepair, but every flat seemed to have signs of life bursting from its windows. Washing lines filled balconies and people sat on short walls talking and smoking, not because they were after a tan, but because they had nowhere to go. Kids played barefoot in the dirt, but unlike Coronation Park, the kids here were black and white.
The illegal settlement was clearly home to both white Afrikaners and black immigrants from all over the continent. So many languages and dialects could be heard the minute we unfolded our bodies from the tiny car.
Young or old and regardless of colour, the residents all shared the same look. It was a strange mix of aggressive, defensive and helpless. A young white man sat biting his nails flanked by a rolled-up tent and duffel bags. Staring me down as I took it all in, a tone was set. Even the children playing in the flowerbeds watched me closely as I walked by. I was a new face and if tent man was anything to go by, new people seemed to be a regular fixture here. The problem was, in an environment like this where clearly trust was in short supply, new faces were greeted with scrutiny, not warmth.
Anyone who made a home here would be living side by side with his or her neighbours in desperation, whether black or white. The place really did feel like the end of the line.
I walked into the block through a set of double doors both defaced and bending out of the doorway. The smashed windows caused me to watch my step, and in paying attention to where I placed each foot, I couldn’t help but notice just how filthy the place was.
Standing at the entrance to a long dark hallway with door after door bolted shut with padlocks and chains, I rapped the wall to the first open flat. A smiling man quickly appeared and introduced himself as Hardis. Gangly and all limbs, the twenty-five-year-old greeted me with a massive boy-like smile and quickly introduced me to his tiny wife Vivian.
I walked into their single-room home and tried to focus on Hardis as my eyes were uncontrollably darting from corner to corner trying to take it all in. The room was rammed with stuff as this was an entire family operating out of a tiny space; the couple shared the space with their two children. The youngest looked no older than one and was flapping about on its back on the bed, the other was a cute little terror who was running about the place. The room showed all the obvious signs of a family who’d outgrown their space. Clothes were overflowing from every corner, while toys, food and all sorts of other stuff took over every surface.
Home for the last four years, the room was safe and all they could afford. What I hadn’t considered was their choice of building, as their room wasn’t picked randomly. Hardis explained that this was a whites-only building. The other blocks were either mixed or all black.
This self-imposed segregation even in poverty was baffling. With a shared sense of struggle being a constant for every resident, I would have expected people to be drawn closer regardless of race. Hardis claimed, ‘They keep to themselves. You leave them alone, they leave you alone.’ The only other place I’d heard people speak in that way about living alongside a different racial group was in prison.
Hardis took me on a walk around the block and I wasn’t ready for what I was about to see. The shared shower and toilet facilities were filthy. The toilet cubicle doors were all broken with no working lights. Showers were full of mould and only pumped out cold water. His toddler ran ahead of us bare foot and Hardis pulled her close, lifting the child from the ground. He pointed out used needles and broken glass; this was no place for children.
We wondered over to a neighbouring block that was much quieter as it had been abandoned. Hardis explained that two months back, a resident lit a fire in their room to keep warm. Falling asleep with no one to keep watch, the fire eventually set the entire building alight. As we walked through the burnt shell, I looked into most rooms, stopping at one when I noticed a sleeping bag.
On the top floor, several of the rooms still riddled with ash and smoke stains had already been reclaimed by new residents moving in. These rooms had no windows and, in some cases, no roof, bu
t some were willing to call the death trap home.
Desperate to find a way out of the estate, Hardis and Vivian were surviving without employment. The only incoming money they saw was coming from the unlicensed shop they ran out of their room’s window selling single cigarettes and sweets. Desperate to find work, Hardis claimed to have handed out over sixty CVs. He believed every job he’d apply for would end up going to his black equivalent due to AA laws.
Feeding the family with whatever was earned via the illegal shop, the family was living hand to mouth. What they fed their children and themselves came down to what they earned, which on the day of my visit, was nothing. Making do with what they had, a tiny single gas burner served as their cooker. Boiling macaroni in a pan, Vivian poured soup into the pasta from a pint glass.
Dinner was macaroni and soup. I watched Vivian dish the meal into plastic bowls for her husband and kids. Taking in the room, the, children … I couldn’t help but think this wasn’t a life. Like anyone, I struggle to witness poverty, but there and then it was so palpable and I hated it.
Poverty clearly wasn’t just a white issue, as at the time of making the film 45 per cent of black South Africans also lived below the breadline. People from both black and white communities were struggling. With the problem being so unavoidable in all corners of the country, why was it not higher on everyone’s agenda? I decided to head back to Coronation Park as one question continued to trouble me. How much did race play a part?
You won’t get white people here
Not long after arriving, I was given a rude awakening as to how different the South African worlds of the haves and have nots actually are. What I was about to witness would challenge my own prejudices and inadequacies, but this moment of clarity started with a conversation outside JD’s tent.
JD and I were chatting as ever and loud music playing from beyond the trees and into the park was unavoidable. Unsure as to who was responsible, he described the music makers as ‘the rich people’.
