Out of Africa: The Mayor's First Person Account of His Trip to Africa

Mayor Michael Feinstein and Council member Pam O'Connor recently attended the United Nations-sponsored World Summitt on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, as two of approximately 45,000 accredited attendees from around the globe. This is the first of a three-part first-hand account by Mayor Feinstein.

By Michael Feinstein

My road to the World Summit began in Cape Town (Kaapstadt), a 350 year-old city that dates back to the arrival of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Ooste-Indische Compagnie) in 1652.

Along with the rest of South Africa, Cape Town is living through the country's transition from the end of Apartheid in 1994 to a new society. At the same time, people there are learning to change amidst the ongoing challenges of development in Africa, including those posed by an increasingly globalized north/south economy.

This was my first taste of sub-Saharan Africa.

After a 22-hour trip from Los Angeles International Airport, I landed in Cape Town at 6 a.m. on August 22 to find a relatively small, First-World-looking airport, accompanied by a Third World reminder -- the restrooms had people working for tips, handing towels after you washed your hands. This needed employment gave me an opportunity to make my first contribution to the African economy. I handed my helpful attendant 5 Rand -- South Africa's currency -- equal to approximately U.S. 50¢.

(It should be noted that in some swanky, up-scale hotels and restaurants in the U.S., attendants also hand out towels for tips. But at the same time, this practice doesn't often occur in middle and lower economic establishments. Why? Perhaps because in the U.S., its not acceptable to acknowledge poverty, as it's not supposed to happen in our allegedly successful economic system.)

Those of us who have traveled through Third World countries with a strong currency in our pockets, the U.S. Dollar included, sometimes experience a quick transformation. When one's purchasing power increases overnight, sometimes exponentially, backpackers from First-World nations suddenly can become big tippers, making all the difference in a worker's day with the kind of tip that might be an afterthought back home.

Walking outside into the early morning light, I boarded a small shuttle mini-van with one other passenger -- a Mr. Graham (not his real name), a white American and an oilman who had lived and worked all over Africa for close to a decade. Our driver, a young black African man, was named Gerald.

As we drove, Gerald pointed with pride at the hospital where Dr. Christian Barnard performed the world's first heart transplant back in the 1970s. I observed that it seems Barnard, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and pro golfer Gary Player were the most well-known South Africans in the U.S.

Stuck in morning rush hour crawl, we passed a handful of black townships on the outskirts of the city, swelled with people from the countryside seeking work. On one side of the highway, we saw an older such township, dotted with small wooden outhouses that served several shanty-style shacks.

On the other side was a new development of small concrete dwellings, with running water and electricity. This was Gerald's neighborhood. He commented with pride that this was progress: the locals no longer had to cart around water for the basic necessities.

Mr. Graham commented that the government had built these dwellings with the agreement that the residents would pay the utility bills. But people were not paying for their utilities. In fact no one was paying taxes and how was government supposed to work? That was Mr. Graham's question and, by the way he asked it, it was clear that he was not pleased.

According to Pravin Gordhan, South Africa's national Commissioner of Revenue, about 6 million people -- about half of the country's working population -- do not pay taxes, making it very difficult for the post-Apartheid government to deliver on its ambitious agenda.

As quoted recently in the New York Times, Gordhan says this non-payment or "tax gap" flows from an Apartheid-era legacy of "black defiance, white deception and government indifference." Black workers often refused to pay taxes during Apartheid, he said, because they were imposed by what these workers felt was a racist and oppressive government. Equally entrenched, according to Gorham, was "a culture of deceit among many whites," born of years of international isolation together with the 'sanctions-busting' mentality that developed in response.

With little money -- and even less inclination to spend it on non-whites -- Apartheid governments focused their funds on the schools, roads and public safety of white communities. Mr. Graham lived in one of those communities -- green, lush Constantia -- Cape Town's wealthiest neighborhood and oldest wine-growing region.

Despite the government's tax-collection problems, Mr. Graham felt that South Africa was by far the best country on the continent to do business. But he still felt the government was making it too hard for foreign investors like him, who wanted to come to the country and create local jobs.

Gerald took a different angle on the country's economic challenges. Acknowledging South Africa's high crime rate has made it difficult for business, and linking crime to widespread poverty, he criticized the government's plan to spend vast sums on new military hardware. He wondered out loud "who was the enemy they needed to defend against?" and "why more money wasn't being put into basic services like affordable housing and basic electricity and sanitation?"

As we continued on our short trip, I noticed that the bus-only lane (like our "diamond or HOV lanes") was filled with cars with single passengers. As I asked, "why isn't this enforced?" I looked to my left and saw the highway patrol pulling off the road to go in another direction.

I commented how in California we have a $271 fine for driving in the HOV lane with only one person in the car, and there were clear warning signs about it along the freeway. "That is how we get compliance," I said.

My driving companions replied, "What good is a fine if no one has the money to pay?" "At home," I responded, "the fines go on your record and you can't register your car the next year unless you pay." In South Africa, you only register your car once -- once in your life -- per car.

So that was that. No one enforces the bus-only lane.

Eco-politics presents different challenges in the Third World. This was not only part of my lesson in Cape Town, but hopefully would be part of the world's lesson at the World Summitt the ensuing week in Johannesburg (or "Jo'burg" as everyone calls it in South Africa).

***

As I had requested, Gerald took me to one of the backpacker hostels on tourist-oriented Long Street. Located in Cape Town's commercial district called "City Bowl," Long Street is a mix of hostels, restaurants, bars, clubs, Internet cafes, travel agencies and small shops. Why did I stay there?

After 23 years of backpacking in 34 countries, I still prefer hostels to hotels in most cases, even when the local foreign currency exchange rate would otherwise allow me to afford lodging I wouldn't consider at home.

I feel more at home in hostels -- closer to 'the road' and further from the 'sameness' I travel to get away from. Staying in hostels also helps keep me connected to a favorite time in my life, when I first started travelling the world on $10/day, exploring the "Gringo Trail" in Latin American many years ago.

In most hostels, the bathroom and shower are down the hall. As long as there is a little hot water, I don't mind. But I have made one concession to my 23 years on the road -- I now get a single-occupancy room whenever possible, so that I can sleep when I want to (hey, I'm on vacation!). This is especially important when attempting to recover from jet lag -- and that was what I was doing that Cape Town morning -- quickly descending into a deep sleep, not to awaken until 2 p.m.

When I awoke, I brought out my trusty Lonely Planet travel guide and rechecked the destinations I had read about on the plane ride over. Lonely Planet is a globally-renown grassroots backpackers' guidebook, written by people who travel and "know the path." Not only is Lonely Planet valuable for its lodging and logistics advice, but its historical/political analysis brings a subtle and helpful Howard Zinn-like perspective.

Since this was to be my own "path," I took note of the recommended destinations, but eschewed the suggested sensible walking tour that would take me there. Instead I did what I do at home -- I walked west, towards the water. This made sense, because Cape Town is located on the ocean and the ocean is on the west, on the Atlantic coast.

I started off towards the horizon, but eventually found it was further to the water than I had anticipated. Instead, the urban landscape became more appealing to my north. Ten minutes later I found myself inside the lobby of the Cape Town train station. I love central train and bus stations and spend a lot of time in them when I travel, as they are the center of so much life.

This time the station seemed to have sought out me. Above the hustle and bustle, I glanced upward and was struck by the appearance of two giant billboards, one on each end of the station.

Seemingly unique to me at the time, they were the first of many such billboards I'd see across South Africa. They're sponsored by loveLife, a non-profit conducting a national campaign to influence adolescent sexual behavior among young South Africans, with the aim of reducing teenage pregnancy, the spread of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

According to loveLife's website (www.lovelife.org.za), more than five million South Africans (12 percent of the population) are already HIV positive. loveLife claims that in excess of 10 million South Africans could be infected with HIV in the next five to 10 years, even by conservative estimates. At the current rate of infection, they warn, half of all South Africans 15 years or younger could die of HIV/AIDS.

loveLife combines traditional marketing techniques with principles of public health education to create "a lifestyle with which young people will associate healthy positive living." To create this level of association among their 12 to 17 year target group, loveLife positions itself as part of popular youth culture. The key to their approach, they believe, is to get young South Africans to "talk about it."

On the left side of the billboard, in white letters over a Day-Glo purple background, it said: "I can score with any chick I want… am I the man?"

On the right side, in Day-Glo yellow letters over dark blue, it said: "Thabu was my man, 'til I found out that he 's just a playa"

And underneath it all: "Talk about it. loveLife"

I turned and walked across the station to the other side. This one read:

Suzette 17: "Sex is sex, show me the money"

Isaiah 17: "Suzette was da bomb…shame man…her sugar daddy also gave her HIV"

***

I left Cape Town Train Station to find myself in Trafalgar Square -- another vibrant civic space -- under a light rain. I continued walking and passed the architecturally magnificent Old Town Hall and then the stone-walled Castle of Good Hope, built 350 years ago to "defend" the area.

Despite the rain -- and without knowing where I was going -- I soon found myself in a place I had been unknowingly drawn to, and I didn't know it at the time and wouldn't realize it until the next day. This was not an area tourists would necessarily visit. Rather than a 'destination,' it was just an average, low-scale commercial area. Most tourists would say, "Okay, it's time we go back, there is nothing to see here."

I walked on.

Behind the shops was a large, run-down area of small grassy mounds. Garbage was strewn about, and handfuls of people were scattered between the footpaths, living under cardboard makeshift "roofs" on the unprotected ground.

This scene is tragically repeated across the globe on the outskirts of many of the world's cities and towns. But I had a hard time understanding how such an area could exist here, just a few minutes walking from the center of Cape Town, in an area of prime set against the backdrop of picturesque, 1000-meter high Devils Peak mountain.

It wouldn't be until the next day that I understood why.

***

I turned back towards the city center, walking along the other side of the Castle of Good Hope. Without knowing, I ended up again at a major transportation hub, but this time the Golden Acre Bus Station, the city's central bus terminal. The lovely chaos again lifted my spirit.

Even though this was the 'bus' station, the station was filled with what locals call "cumbis" or "mini-van taxis," what we call twelve-seater "mini-vans." These cumbis play a major role in public transportation in South Africa, taking responsibility for many short to medium size routes, with the flexibility to drop off and pick up people all along the way. There were twenty rows of people waiting, each standing under a sign of the cumbi's destination.

I hadn't been planning on riding a cumbi (I hadn't really planned anything). But I had planned to watch the sunset on different of Cape Town's fabulous beaches on each of my two nights there.

Looking up I saw a sign for Camps Bay, a beautiful beach I had read about, that was located at the foot of the spectacular Twelve Apostles of Table Mountain in a beautiful suburb twenty minutes south of town on the road to the Cape of Good Hope. I hopped on.

Thirteen of us crammed into the cumbi's dozen seats. An English woman in her fifties quoted the Bible, then told the black people in the van (everyone but her and me) that "Africans were born with such beautiful voices and therefore could they sing for me?"

I found this a little patronizing, both because she stereotyped all black Africans, and because she felt these passengers should provide her entertainment upon demand. But I was in a different country, with a different history and culture. What did I know?

So I sat back, watched and listened. One of the riders named Lydia appeared to know the English woman (this was a group that seemed as if it rode the same cumbi each day) and started to sing. Others joined in, singing a familiar tune in a local language. Upon a second request, they sang another, but then said that was enough, when the English woman asked for yet one more.

Later I asked a white South African woman who now lives now lives in the U.S. about this. She told me that one of the effects of Apartheid was to create submissiveness among the black population, and that this was still evident in older blacks today. When I told her the women in the cumbi were in their forties and fifties, she concluded that "at that age, they would have likely already internalized this dynamic. The younger South Africans of today however, would have a different attitude."

***

The next day I viewed the past that created that submission through a lens of the present -- the District Six museum (www.districtsix.co.za).

District Six was named for the sixth municipal district of Cape Town in 1867. Originally established as a community for freed slaves, merchants, artisans, laborers and immigrants, many in the white power structure felt it was a "rat-hole" and in 1901, Black Africans were forcibly displaced from District and "resettled elsewhere, a harbinger of worse things to come.

Over the ensuing decades, the more prosperous began moving to the suburbs and District Six became the neglected ward of Cape Town. At the same time, it also evolved into a vibrant, culturally-rich, racially-diverse community. According to Museum Education Officer (and former District Six resident) Noor Ebrahim, "The streets were alive with people from children to traders, from priests to petty criminals. It was an extraordinary place that inspired artists and authors and was home to many musicians, with Jazz its lifeblood."

District Six would also become a symbol of resistance against the Group Areas Act of 1950, which segregated communities through forced removals, and relegated the black population to a minor percentage of the nation's land.

In 1966, the right-wing, pro-Apartheid National Party, threatened by District Six's cosmopolitan ambiance and political resistance, decided that the District should be white. By 1982, all 60,000 of its residents were forcibly removed and their houses razed to the ground by bulldozers. Only the mosques and churches remained.

Despite being relocated to a then barren outlying area known as the Cape Flats, the District Six community continued to return to worship in their mosques and churches, refusing to sell or deconsecrate their grounds. And their last protest was to 'salt' the earth, to prevent any one from building until there was a democratic political process. Fierce and bitter political battles followed as the state and wealthy business concerns tried to occupy and develop the land.

But the area was never built upon. While one mosque and one church continued to stand, in 2000, South African President Thabo Mbeki (the successor to Nelson Mandela) signed a document giving former residents the right to move back into District Six.

The District Six museum is a testament to both the cruelty of tearing down the neighborhood, and to the cruelty of Apartheid itself. The museum had actual "Europeans Only/Slegs Blankes." signs that were used during Apartheid on public benches, rest rooms and elsewhere to separate white from black. Ebrahim explained that blacks were not even permitted to go to Cape Town's famous beaches. Instead, one beach was reserved instead for them far north of the city.

It was strange for me to be a white person in South Africa. For someone from the U.S., I was trying to contemplate racial realities in South Africa, where the power relations between white and black are roughly similar to the U.S., but the population ratio of white to black is roughly opposite

Then I looked up at the street map and realized that I had been here before. The day before during the rain, it had been District Six that I had walked to without even knowing it! Those small mounds with footpaths running between the garbage and homeless people were where the vibrant District Six community had been!

What had drawn me there, to a vacant landscape, on a rainy day?

Just weeks before back in Santa Monica, I had attended the opening night of a play called Slavery, a wonderfully powerful and evocative presentation at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica. Slavery brought one's mind into the 1840s and 1850s in the US, and what it was really like to be taken from one's home and put into slavery in a distant, foreign land.

Now I had been drawn to an example of being taken from one's home in one's own land. Globalization wasn't something that just began with the post-World War Two Bretton Woods economic institutions like the GATT (Global Agreements on Tariffs and Trade) and its offspring the WTO (World Trade Organization). Slavery and racism were globalized a long time ago.

***

The night before, I was on the beach in Camps Bay, catching an awesome Atlantic sunset. Pondering my first taste of post-Apartheid South Africa, I sensed that people were truly working together, united by a solidarity of purpose -- trying to lift up their standard of living, while building a multi-racial society of equality of respect and opportunity.

I sensed a patience in them borne from struggle. It was just a short time since 1994, when Apartheid had been officially declared over. People were tolerant of a great deal -- both because they understood they had a long road ahead of them and because they knew their opportunity came because of the long road they had already traveled.

Thinking about this, I became hopeful for the World Summitt in Jo'burg, despite the corporate globalization forces we'd face there. Along with the end of Apartheid, we'd seen the fall of the Wall and the populist uprisings that changed governments across Eastern Europe. We'd also seen the relative peace in Northern Ireland after centuries of struggle there.

Taking an extended view of history as I took in the sunset's changing colors, I began to get excited about the progress our species was making. Then my musings were broken suddenly by a young boy seeking to steal my tennis shoes and fanny pack, which I had placed no more than a foot away on the giant rock I was perched upon.

As the young boy approached me, I told him that "he was not getting my pack and shoes" and he should "give up thinking about it" right now. But he didn't move away until my pack and shoes were firmly in my hands.

This served to remind that we still have a long ways to go. The chants of 'no justice, no peace' ring as true in South Africa as they do in South Central Los Angeles or East LA.

The World Summitt on Sustainable Development was to be all about justice, of bringing sustainable development not just to the eco-hopeful north -- but also to the poverty-stricken south. My next ten days in Jo'burg would be to see if this would really happen.