Several weeks later, while driving through the township of Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats in Cape Town, I was reminded of my conversation with the consultant when Xolani, our Uthando tour guide, spoke of the Bantu Education Act. In 1953 this legislation enforced separation of races in education and severely limited the opportunities of the Bantu. The latter term initially referred to the speakers of Bantu languages in Sub-Saharan Africa but in South Africa was used as an ethno-racial designation during apartheid. 

At the time, Hendrick Verwoed, who in 1958 became Prime Minister, explained this act, ‘There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.’

A rigid if not decreed racial segregation on the employment market is still in place today but now equally discriminating against black and white South Africans. Given the country’s history, discrimination against the former is undisputed. Tobi, who works in the Swiss subsidiary of a South African private medical company, confirms that all but one of his South African colleagues in management are white. Positions in government and the administration on the other hand have been widely denied to white South Africans since the first black government took office. Furthermore BEE policy (Black Economic Empowerment) and B-BBEE (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment) strategy were implemented in 2003 that, as their names suggest, grant preferential treatment to black South Africans in the job market. 

For some, this racially selective legislation empowers the previously disadvantaged black population, others consider it revenge to redress wrongdoings of the past with yet more racial discrimination. I find it confusing in any case that a government claiming to abolish racial segregation in fact still groups its people by skin colour.

That a different skin colour however is no prerequisite for racism confirms the upsurge in widespread xenophobia (the hate of foreigners) since 1994 when South Africa’s ruling ANC party took control. The deadly attacks of black South Africans on immigrants from poorer countries such as Lesotho, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Somalia frequently made the news also in Europe. It also clearly demonstrates the implications that fear and competition in the labour market may have when the unemployment rate is 27.6% and a staggering 53.4% in the youth labour force (OECD).

The necessity of measures bringing about equal opportunities though is indisputable and painfully obvious in Cape Town. Of its estimated 4 million inhabitants, more than one in four households lived in poverty in 2016 and the high school drop-out rate was 32.7%. In 2014 13.9% of households had no income (https://www.westerncape.gov.za / capetown.gov.za).

That’s the statistics for the whole of Cape Town. The situation in specific areas at the eastern edge of Cape Town is entirely different and in fact much worse. In the Khayelitsha/Mitchells Plain district, 63% of households in 2016 lived on 4’200Rand (~280€ / 336US$) or less per month, 16.3% had no income at all.

This is where the city’s most underprivileged population lives, and you, as a tourist, won’t go unless you book a township tour. My main reason to visit any place for the first time is curiosity. But in this case I was strangely conflicted about my right to visit and gain a better understanding of these communities. Because what was expecting to see – poverty? Reading through reviews for various township tour operators, I was shocked by the motives of some visitors, who actually seemed frustrated that the townships didn’t look anything as bad as they’d expected. Why, they complained, did ‘these people’ suddenly have proper RDP housing (Reconstruction and Development Programme), nicknamed ‘dog kennels’ by the way? I would certainly not intrude on people in their homes to satisfy my interest and was ready to give up when I came across Uthando.

This not-for-profit responsible tourism organization has a different approach and takes you to three or four of its more than 40 community projects in impoverished areas. Reassured that the locals we’d meet didn’t rely on opening their homes to strangers for income but were supported by the organisation regardless of us visiting, I booked a 3-hour tour. On our third day in Cape Town we set off in a small minivan with six other participants for an hours’ drive southeast into a jumble of shanty-town shacks stretching along either side of highway N2. We drove past rows of concrete toilet blocks and blue port-a-loos and goats roaming the littered wastelands before we arrived at the Isiseko “The Foundation” Educare Centre in the township of Mfuleni.

The young children sitting in a circle on two carpets on the floor in a small room with bright yellow walls were clearly excited to see us, or just glad for the interruption. As their supervisor explained the teaching programme for different age groups that includes learning the ‘emotions’, which was never part of my kindergarden curriculum, the kids were chattering away in Xhosa, a local language with click consonants. At least fifty children and a dozen toddlers were sitting on carpets on the floor in three small rooms. These conditions that would be considered totally cramped in most parts of the world, were a privilege here for the few parents, who could afford a monthly fee of R350.

Looking at the row of brightly coloured backpacks neatly lined up against the wall, I naively hoped every child would break the vicious cycle of poverty that banished their family to one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the country. Their chances were indeed better than for most kids in poverty. But not great. At the time of our visit, 11.000 students in the Western Cape were still not accommodated for the upcoming schooling year due to the severe shortage of schools.

The eKhaya eKasi Art and Education Community Centre in Khayelitsha and organic community garden we visited afterwards were similarly in equal parts inspiring and disillusioning.

So much remains to be done. And us? We returned to our comfortable B&B and booked ahead a 6-course dinner and spa appointment on a wine estate near Stellenbosch just because the exchange rate made this ridiculously cheap for us. The hypocrisy of it was staggering – of us thinking that in three hours we’d gain a better understanding of life in townships, of a government promising equal opportunities for all since 1994 but failing miserably, and of black and white South Africans accusing each other of an entitlement mentality, which from an outsider’s perspective strangely holds true for both.