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ownship (toun'ship') n. A section of a city occupied by a minority group who live there esp. because of social, economic, or legal purposes. And that's where I stayed one weekend while I was in Cape Town, the township of Langa with Fuyany, the tour guide of Langa showing us around. Holly, the other exchange student in the program, and I took the liberty of staying in Langa to experience another aspect of South Africa, which was poverty. It was no doubt staying in Langa was absolutely a powerful learning experience for both of us. As like other townships, spotting situations of informal housing was common. In Langa some people's houses were just homemade looking like little shacks with only communed bathrooms with the lack of proper facilities. Matter of fact the average American may find these kind of standards in townships to be somewhat disturbing due to the foul living conditions that most of the residences cope with everyday because it was no doubt that I was. |
However, despite the negative of Langa, formal housing existed also. Fuyanay said that Langa has been bettering for some time now and with the abolishment of apartheid and the elect of formal president Nelson Mandela the township has been improving it's living conditions every since. Therefore my main thesis of this page is to show the fortunate ones of the world Langa's story through my photographs that I've taken because while walking around on our guided tour, I've managed to take a few photos of people just doing what they normally do any other winter Saturday afternoon. Whether if it was having a good time, working, or just socializing, I tried to capture the candid and uncandid moment of each case. And to some of you, Langa may not look too different from neighborhoods here in the US simply because it may resemble some of the ghettos. And just like ghettos, blacks in South Africa were forced to live in these townships just as some of the so called "Coloreds" were to also due to the apartheid government. After viewing my photographs, I only wish that you leave this page gaining a much more understanding of life of people living in townships. So please, feel free to view the photos. |