As my concluding blog I would like to touch on several things that have happened towards the end of this trip. In class we talk about race and class and I have seen first hand how these things play out in the real world, in a different country. The rich white population in South Africa has grown up completely different from the poor black population. If you imagine your childhood what do you see? Do you picture playing sports in the park? Sitting on the couch watching your favorite movies? Playing video games on the computer or game system, catching a flick at the theatre with your friends? It is eye opening to realize that these memories are not shared by everyone, no matter how basic they seem. Maybe a child here has a memory of crowding around to watch a movie, but instead it is on a tiny television which is plagued with static and instead of sitting in a well lit room on a couch they sit on a blanket on the floor in a room with no lamps, where the wall is peeing and there are no doors to separate the rooms. Their memories of playing sports is playing with a soccer ball made of wet newspaper, plastic bags and other miscellaneous items rolled up as circularly as possible. And instead of playing on a nice grass field they are playing on the brown dirt that kicks up and gets in your eyes wearing old sneakers or most likely no shoes at all. That going to the bathroom means walking outside to an outside toilet stall and getting water requires walking to the water pump. Computer and video games are completely un-available. So all of my memories of playing Mario Brothers or Mario Kart are so distant from their reality that it is hard to picture how a child of my generation has never experienced it. It’s not just that you don’t own a computer and you could just go to your cousins or neighbors, but it’s that no one has a computer. Every road you ever go on in your daily tasks, house after house, shack after shack there is not a single computer. I had 6 learners over the house on Monday and this would explain why, even at age 18, some do not know how to turn on the internet, or how to move the mouse on a laptop, or they must search slowly and carefully on the keyboard to find the letter they are looking for.
During our stay here there has been a huge buzz about elections, since the next president will be changed this year. Today was election day. It was a public holiday and many people did not have to go to work so that they could vote. There were voting stations everywhere, even at Thandokhulu. I experienced what voting was like in Khayelitsha today, a huge black township in Cape Town.
On the streets leading to the numerous voting locations are tables set up where people try to advocate for a particular political party. On the street I was on there was an ANC table, and a few meters down a COPE table. The people there handed out fliers and flashed banners. Unlike the US there are many political parties. The ballot is very long and lists all of the parties with the picture of the face of the president next to each party. I was able to walk through the entire process, all the way up to the booth.
I entered the primary school which was turned into a voting station and waited in line for about 15 minutes with my friend who lived there. Inside there was a room with tables and booths set up. She showed her ID and they stamped it stating that she had voted. They also put ink on her thumb nail to indicate that she had voted. This was done mostly so that a person cannot vote in one location and then call IEC and request to vote in a different location, to have a double vote. Then, she is handed the two ballot papers: one for the national leader, and one for the provincial leader. You can vote a different party for each.
Then she walks to the booth and puts an X next to which party she wants for national and which one she wants for provincial. Then she just drops these two papers in a box in the middle of the room. Outside there is election excitement here and there. I saw at least four cars which were painted with ANC on them and with people hanging out the window screaming “ANC” and waving around banners. One car even had a mega phone to scream out ANC supportive statements. Many people walked around with ANC T-shirts. There were also a few COPE T-shirts, but majority of overt supporters were for the ANC. My friend voted for COPE, a party that recently branched from the ANC. My other friend in the same location voted for ID- the Independent Democrats. There were also small rallies and celebrations for the ANC which is obviously going to win because of the large amount of supporters it has. Many of the learners that I talked to who were old enough to vote said that they were not going to vote, that they were not ready yet and did not know enough about it. Some of the teachers told me they would not vote because they do not see any party that they agree with and see them all as corrupt. Either way, there were many people out today voting, and many were very enthusiastic about it.
