We left the Port Elizabeth to visit the former Siskei (or Ciskei), just northeast of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. The Siskei was a homeland - one of the rural areas allocated to Blacks during apartheid. We read about life in the homelands in the book And They Didn't Die by Lauretta Ncgobo during our Societies of Sub-Saharan Africa course, so traveling to a homeland was bringing the novel to life in some ways. While the resistance in the cities has been glamorized, until we read about And They Didn’t Die, we didn’t realize the level to which the people in the homelands were part of the movement against apartheid. During apartheid, Blacks were forced to live in the countryside unless they obtained a special permit to work in the cities as domestic servants, gardeners, or laborers. The townships formed to house the labor that supported the city, while the interior was reserved for whites. Coloured people were caught in between, with little power other than the power given to them over Blacks to maintain the system of racial economic stratification.
Today, the spatial and economic system has not changed drastically. Most Blacks in the townships have family in the countryside that they support. Children in the rural areas all expressed to us their desire to move to the cities and work in an office. But our driver Mphutumi, who brought us to his houses in the rural village of Peddie and in Khayelitsha Township, expressed his desire to earn enough to retire back to the village, where life is more peaceful and pleasant. We could definitely see this tranquility - and space! as we left the bustling city and drove down the dusty side road to the village of Masele.
An illustration in my journal of the plants seen in the Eastern Cape.
An illustration in my journal of the plants seen in the Eastern Cape.