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| NGO projects in Cape
Town's townships |
Driving along the N2 motorway coming out of Cape
Town and heading for the so-called Cape Flats to the east of the city,
something catches the eye as we're approaching the airport: Miles
upon miles of corrugated iron roofs glistening in the hazy South African
morning sun. Above this twisted mess of steel, cardboard and plywood
a Lufthansa Jumbo jet is thundering into the dusty sky.
Yet another one of these dramatic contrasts that seem so typical of
South Africa - only 2 minutes earlier we were driving past the pristine,
detached suburban houses that could make you think you were in Southern
Europe and not in one of the largest countries on the African continent.
South Africa certainly still seems like the most divided country -
Divided between rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, the looked
after and the neglected and still, 8 years after the end of Apartheid,
divided between black and white.
The bitter legacy left behind by the Apartheid system is still so
all-encompassing, still penetrating every aspect of life in South
Africa, that it is incredibly moving to see some of the relatively
gigantic efforts made mainly by ordinary people in the black townships
to overcome this wide gap.
As we are pulling into the compound of the Peace and Development Project
(PDP), located just by the airport in the former township of Nyanga,
we are about to meet some of these people.
Started in 1997 and partly funded by the German Government, the PDP
specialises in conflict management, grassroots-democracy building
and youth training. To put it bluntly, these young women and men are
trying their death defying hardest to make their place safer, give
the people a voice and the tools to build up their communities. These
artificially created communities are even lacking the most basic sanitation
and infrastructure, a discriminating and de-humanising way of existence
that was enforced on the black community by the Apartheid regime -
in other words, these grass-roots peace workers are helping people
to create something out of nothing.
They are patrolling the streets of the shanty town unarmed, (in a
place with one of the highest violent crime rates in the world!) trying
to defuse conflict situations and bringing members of the area together
rather then leave them to fight each other.
The creation of peace and relative stability within the community,
along with the empowerment of people through grass-roots initiatives,
is seen as a corner stone to development in these deprived areas.
This idea also applies to the second NGO we are visiting in Crossroads,
a few miles down the road from Nyanga. There, at the Philani Flagship
Printing Project, unemployed mothers with pre-school children are
offered skills-training and printing facilities. While the women produce
their own stunning designs for a range of carpets, clothes and print
products, their children are educated and provided for by the in-house
nursery.
By way of selling their products in a shop situated on the same premises,
they can sustain themselves and their children.
We spend the afternoon talking to the women and playing with the children,
taking hope and inspiration from their positive energy and spirit.
Before we leave, Peace Boat makes its modest but welcome contribution
to the project, by handing out some stationary, toy keyboards and
knitted handbags to the children.
Finally, driving back into the shiny modern business centre of Cape
Town and having seen the other, economically-deprived side of this
place, one question remains: Where did all the money go that was made
by these large corporations in their glass towers during the Apartheid
era? This money was made with the blood, sweat and tears of the people
we visited today and these women, children and men, who welcomed us
with such warmth, urgently need to receive what is really theirs. |
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| Mombasa-Cape Town
/ Peace Boat's 36th Voyage |
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PEACE BOAT is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. |
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