By Gcina Ntsaluba
Cape Town was a bit of a buzz this week with celebrations to mark the 30-day countdown to the kick-off of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Even the mayor, Dan Plato, showed up at the celebrations to share the spotlight with local artists, including JR of “make da circle bigger” fame to the amazement of hundreds of soccer fans who packed into the City Hall on Tuesday.
However, about 40km away from the premature celebrations lies the darker and shameful side of the World Cup that city officials don’t want you to see.
It is a government-built shanty settlement consisting of hundreds of corrugated iron shacks called Blikkiesdorp, or “Tin-can Town” as critics refer to it.
This is where the city’s poor and homeless people have been relocated to ahead of the World Cup in an effort to present a better and rosier image of the city to travellers and football fans from around the world.
As much as it is a good thing for the city to provide shelter for homeless people, it is still a shameful place to put any human being.
There are not enough basic services like water, toilets, electricity and it is damn far from job opportunities in the city.
Some of the residents of Blikkiesdorp that I spoke to when I visited the area claim that they were “dumped” there by the city’s law-enforcement unit after promising them houses.
They say it’s a “concentration camp”.
Others who have spent most of their adult lives on the streets, said they were forced to move to Blikkiesdorp after the city took them to court for occupying public spaces.
You can call them ungrateful but they honestly believe that they were moved to Blikkiesdorp because of the World Cup to hide them away from the eye of visiting tourists — because they are an embarrassment to the nation.
But when you hear a grown woman who has no self pride left say this, it makes you question who exactly this World Cup is meant for.
Is it for South Africans or overseas tourists?
Last week, the city launched its annual Street People Winter Readiness Plan earlier than usual to coincide with the World Cup.
Basically, the plan is to try and keep homeless people “clean and well-groomed” for the duration of the World Cup by providing temporary shelter and related services such as rationed meals, blankets, disposable razors, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Personally, I don’t think this country should be spending billions on World Cup infrastructure when there are much more pressing issues to solve like eradicating mud schools, fixing the public healthcare system and getting rid of toilet bucket systems that are still being used in some of the poorest communities after 16 years of so-called-freedom.
Secondly, hiding homeless people from tourists or keeping them “well-groomed” just because of the World Cup is creating an unrealistic image of South Africa to the rest of the world.
It is purely a PR exercise by our government?
Let them eat Cake!!
disgusting, absoloutely disgusting I say….
we need to overthrow this goverment and their white capitalist tutors…
“we need to overthrow this goverment ”
You mean the DA government.
Tough one. Shameful to put on a face for the world and shunt people around like garbage to a new dump. Yet they lived on the street and now have shelter, provisions and an address. Sure its not the best address in town but it is a place to hang one’s hat. It may prove impossible to stay there and earn a living from begging in the city but perhaps it is a new start.
This is a grey area, much like minimum wage. Is it better to have a job paying below minimum wage or to have no job at all? Arguments both ways. Not easy.
Hear! Hear! Gcina, although I have to add that I don’t think Durban has provided so much as a bunch of blikkies for her poor.
I hate to suppose what this tribe of Zulus will do when they finally realise that this city’s WC has made them visibly poorer.
Suppose that if I wrote to Mike S. and said I was expecting 40 soccer-mad relations to stay, he might actually clean up the verges a bit after the protected monkeys (with blue bums) have upended rubbish bags along the streets each Tuesday, when DSW treads its beat?
Actually, even I know that would be a waste of time. He’ll be far too busy enjoying his view of matching light fittings along the beachfront and UShaka from his up-market, unrated Point home to have time to read my letter, let alone act on it.
And he doesn’t even have the cash left to pay a single street cleaner. For shame!
Yes, the local government that has marginalized blacks in their own country and responsible for turning the Western Cape into the last bastion of apartheid should be ousted. Blacks (Coloureds, Indians and Africans) have been slowly but surely driven out of Cape Town over the last decade and the WC is just being used as an excuse to justify these deplorable actions by the local government.
Hopefully voters in the WC will see how they’ve been manipulated by fear-based politics and overthrow the local DA government in the next elections!
you act like this is unique to south africa; be happy they weren’t killed [which is what has happened in rio before, and will happen again] or shunted even farther away with no means to get back, which is what durban has largely done and i know for a fact that atlanta did 14 years ago [i got to watch the latter happening].
and we won’t even begin to go into what beijing did for the last olympics or what shanghai has done for its expo which started just weeks ago.
pretty much stock human nature, to clean up a bit before company comes through.
are people down here *that* disconnected to think that they’re too special to do such a thing? someone explain it to me.
Those temporary homes in Blikkiesdorp are better-built, more weather-proof and bigger than the shabby huts these uninvited, unwanted squatters were living in before.
Surely, when Cape Town proposed the Athlone stadium for upgrading – which would have cost a fraction of the monstrosity now on Green Point Common – and it was shot down by FIFA because the television backdrop would too much resemble Blikkiesdorp, the writing was clearly on the wall. The City had to buckle before the “national interest”.
And the wholesale slum and misery clearance of Beijing for the Olympics was a perfect template for how to sanitise repressive regimes and those who woo them from the very people they are supposed to represent. So, no more money for houses, but more blikkies.
When the balance sheet is made up after all the hoopla, the writing will still be on the wall:
“weighed but found too light”
I am inclined to agree with Mundundu. “Street People” are a reality all over the world. They are also an embarassment .They have been around since “biblical times” and probably will be around till the “second coming”.
We sometimes forget that there are several reasons why people end up begging in the street. Some of them have more to do with the individuals themselves than with the failure of government, the state, their parents, schools or whatever.
@ “Dave Harris” you say “marginalized blacks in THEIR OWN COUNTRY”…..is that the official ANC position? That South Africa belongs to blacks? Or is that just your position, Mr “Harris?”
“Is it for South Africans or overseas tourists?”. No, it is for FIFA and its billions in profit (and Sepp and family?). Surely, you cannot show poor people on prime time TV? See what happens in Rio when the FIFA circus starts over there.
@Piet Opperman
I can’t understand why you have such a problem with anonymity. Do you even understand why ALL democracies protect anonymity?
Anyway, the statement that “blacks (Africans, Coloureds and Indians) being marginalized in their own country” means precisely that – the concept of a Rainbow Nation is alien to the DA mindset as they continue their policy of gentrifying Cape Town – a city that ironically was more cosmopolitan even during the apartheid era! WHY?
FIFA did not force us to cry, whinge and bully for this event. Is it not funny that we won the bid after real competition had been removed. Our message sent had our need to overcome feelings of inferiority etched on it. At the same time we became to gratified by FIFA’s magnanimity that we feel indebted to them, particularly patronising Sepp.
Having worked hard to generate a budget surplus we then decided to spend it in addition to the arms on soccer. Whether that was wise is yet to be seen.
The mistake that we make in our argument is not being able to distinguish between ability to host at little cost and ability to host at unlimited cost. Our ability to build state of the art stadia is not so much a reflection of our skills, expertise but a reflection of having the money to build the stadium. But what is the opportunity cost of not only the money spend but also the pretence. Imagine we even spending Lotto money on o
Suffice it to say with a little more ingenuity we could have come up with other paths to growth and national and racial self-affirmation. More so after the disastrous first bout of conspicuous consumption (the arms deal), we could have called for a more circumspect analysis of the need for round two. Just maybe we would not have the scenario we have in this article.
@”Dave Harris” On rereading your original post, you make a fair point, although the causality is not as clearcut as that.
Regarding anonymity, I do not have a problem with anonymity (and I do understand the need to protect it in a democracy.) I do have a problem with pretending to be someone who you are not. If you want to post anonymously, then sign your posts “anonymous”
@ “Grant Walliser on May 15th, 2010 at 12:33 pm”,
You really are a Liberal White South African. You are basically saying that they should not complain as they at least have a place to stay.
Sounds to me like the DA’s stance on black South Africans. We should not complain as long as we are free and we are not longer being beaten for no reason, let’s just get on with it. No AA, BEE or anything that will upset investors.
But “Piet Opperman”, why single me out from all the other anonymous posters? Sounds more like Gestapo tactics to me.
@ “Dave Harris” But “Dave”, I am not singling you out at all. It is just that you are the only one that I know for sure is using a false name. Also, I love how easily you take the bait.
Let us trust that the government will really commit itself to worthwhile projects with the same alacricity as with the World soccer cup in building stadiums and with the same amount of money made available.
Oh so sorry, my mistake – if the same amount of money would be made available just imagine how much of it would disappear before being put to use on what it was intended for !!!
@ Tlanch Tau
Did many of your friends die during the Mbeki denial of AIDS, the World Bank tell us that 300 000 people died unnecessarily due to this terrible lack of action. That’s almost 10 times as many, in just 4 years as Apartheid killed in 40 years. Body counts are always disgusting but I use it to make a point. We have failed!
I will never forgive the ANC. They refused to give my friends who died even BASIC palliative medication to reduce the suffering during their long and painful deaths. There is no worse torture. This was FAR WORSE than the beating I got at John Voster Square for my misguided support of the ANC in 1969/70. I now realise that my support for a group who remained silent and assisted in the murder of our people was stupid.
Have you ever used Athletes foot medication, “not for internal use” in a friends mouth, throat and lips to relieve the suffering from thrush because the government hospital refused medication. It is rough. Have you watched friends starve to death because they couldn’t eat.
And you complain about some isolated beatings, GET REAL!
Oh and Dave Harris – Remember that this country belongs to people like me, I am a mixture of white (who got here before the Xhosa and Zulu)and Koi San who have always been here. Got a problem, then please just go back to your own country
The finger-pointing at the DA baffles me a bit, since a few days ago I read about street kids being thrown in a Durban jail in the clean-up session over there? Nice try though.
FIFA’s package of demands included the removal of vagrants and homeless people from the cities. All Must Comply with FIFA, who are currently running the country.
In Gauteng the red ants have been very busy chasing thousands out of the inner city. Ditto in Durban. At least Cape Town had the humanity to provide alternative accommodation WITH amenities like electricity and running water.
Well this South African 30 day advert will prove costly in the long term. Its clear South African national pride is at stake but honestly it has come at the expense of the millions of its people living in abject poverty. Perhaps the timing to host this event is wrong or may be the country needed this sort of PR especially given negative publicity its gets and its apartheid ugly past. But even with these reasons the billions of rands spent on stadiums which critics say will be white elephants does not justify this spending on this exerise