by Veronica Mente
The birth of the townships and the Cape Flats was neither a mistake nor did it happen by chance.
There was a deliberate programme by racist authorities to relegate and keep black and coloured people on the outskirts of the Central Business District (CBD).
When racist arrivalists grappled with the bubonic plague in 1901, their response was to segregate, forcefully remove and seclude all the native people of the Cape.
This racist response, which was widely supported by the majority of the white community, led to the establishment of one of the very first townships, called Ndabeni.
Ndabeni, therefore, emerges out of the racist beliefs and sensibilities of white people and their government, that native people were dirty, uncivilised and unhygienic and did not deserve to live among human beings.
In essence, the plague was blamed on the native population of the Cape, hence their segregation. This type of treatment is, of course, not foreign to people of native descent – the black and coloured community.
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were many racist attitudes towards black and coloured people. We witnessed many incidents of racial profiling in schools, malls, parks and complexes, as though Covid-19 was brought to South Africa by black and coloured people.
This onslaught on native people was further exposed as the DA government of the Western Cape, in cahoots with the ANC state, deployed a disproportionate number of soldiers and law enforcement officers to terrorise black and coloured communities, while white people in the suburbs walked their dogs and even had morning runs without intimidation or interruption.
Cape Town, as the original site of racism and colonial violence, has become a symbolic and material embodiment of racial inequality and segregation, even years after the 1994 settlement.
Neither the ANC nor the DA have done anything to address the land question of the Cape, particularly as it relates to spatial planning.
When the DA celebrates its so-called victories as the governing party of the Western Cape, it only has the suburbs in mind.
It speaks about clean governance, dignified housing, safe parks and neighbourhoods, clean streets, good schools and extramural activities for the youth.
But where are the clean parks and extramural activities when the youth of the Cape Flats and township are engulfed in drug and alcohol abuse? Where are the safe neighbourhoods when we wake up every day to hear the horror stories of gang violence? Where are the dignified houses, when our people live in constant fear of gentrification, forced removals, demolitions and evictions?
The Western Cape, and Cape Town in particular, has under the government of the DA lived up to the expectations of the first colonial administrator, Jan van Riebeeck.
The spatial planning of the Western Cape has also further entrenched the economic exclusion of black and coloured people.
Our people wake up before sunrise to catch inefficient trains and buses, and stand in long lines to catch taxis to get to work, returning only after sunset, leaving them with no time to spend with their children and families.
Even when black and coloured professionals try to advance their careers, the exorbitant rent prices make it impossible for anyone who is not white to afford the standard of living of Cape Town suburbia and communities located close to economic activity.
The oppressed and dehumanised people of the Cape Flats must use this coming local government election to fight against the unequal allocation of municipal budgets.
The people of Manenberg, Gugulethu, Delft, Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain must use this election to defy all those who seek to divide race-based communities so that they may be able to further the structural and economic divide between white and native communities.
We have an opportunity to right the wrongs and injustices of the past by removing the administrators of neo-colonialism.
* Mente is EFF national chairperson and the party’s chief whip in Parliament.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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