That They Know Who They Are Makes Them Special The people of the Eastern Cape and the People of the Delta have a remarkable spirit that keeps them together By Jon Haywood When the auditorium had filled for a community meeting in Port Elizabeth, the crowd erupted into an amazing session of song and dance, not unlike scenes of celebration in my home, the Mississippi Delta of the United States. I could not understand what they were singing and shouting, but I could feel their commitment to community, and their reference to their past for addressing current challenges. Similarly, the Delta carries a sense of
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Reflections on Freedom 2013
Southern culture and community that is unique. Indeed, James C. Cobb called it “the most Southern place on earth.” Clearly, the Delta is unapologetically Southern, and South Africa is unapologetically African. Both places have their ups, but it is the downs that attract the most attention. Similarly, the differences between the haves and have-nots in the Delta are shocking. For example, the Alluvian Hotel or the Viking Range Cooking School in Mississippi are both upscale. In nearby Baptist Town, vagrancy and litter characterize a neighborhood filled with substandard housing. Although these two neighborhoods are within minutes of each other, they truly are miles apart in standards of living. In the townships outside of neatly manicured neighborhoods of Port Elizabeth, there are dwellings with dirt floors and no running water. The poverty in the townships is raw. In the Delta, the poor also suffer from poverty. They have lost hope. In fact, when I talk of returning to the Delta, I’m almost scolded by people (both black and white) who think it is a waste of time to try to help. Similarly, when I visited the townships, I felt that South Africans have given up on people there. Port Elizabeth has an abundance of resources — suitable living, grocery stores, spacious parks and sidewalks. Moreover, the City of Port Elizabeth works with the Nelson Mandela Bay Development Agency, a private organization that plans
and completes development projects for the metropolitan area (and even for the townships). However, the townships are terribly underserved and underdeveloped. Men wander around with nothing to do, young children head households without parents, and heaps of trash sit in several public areas. It seems inhumane for a nation like South Africa, with a bustling economy, to allow any of this to happen in its post-apartheid society, and South Africa’s government says it wants to change the dreadful conditions. The poverty I saw in the townships is eerily similar to what Robert F. Kennedy saw on his tour of the Mississippi Delta during the 1960s. Kennedy saw crumbling shacks and little children running around with distended stomachs. That is how life in the townships is in 2012. Moreover, the rate of HIV/AIDS is alarming, for the most part, because of traditional beliefs and myths. Some South Africans believe a healthy-looking person could not possibly have HIV/AIDS. In the Delta, the rates are alarming. Some people won’t get tested, because somehow they know they couldn’t possibly be one of “those” people — someone connected to several sexual partners or a homosexual. However, some men have sex with other men secretly, even though they do not hide their relationships with several women. Police officers and security guards seem to be everywhere in the nice tourist and development areas of Port Elizabeth. However, I saw no police officers in the densely populated townships
