Heart of poverty
outside her home tending a cooking pot above a wood fire. Nearby was another shack structure containing the Hewitts, two other tenants and their landlord, who rises at 4am each day and walks more than 3km to catch a train to work. Beyond them was Matlala’s single-room shack, then one taken over by drug dealers.
The Hewitts’ spartan home was made of a corrugated roof with metal sheets on the sides. Among the contents were mattresses on the floor, a plastic basket of clothes, children’s shoes, a roll of toilet paper, a kettle on a paraffin stove and an iPhone devoid of battery life.
Outside was a small lawn fenced from a dirt track by barbed wire held up by posts fashioned from branches. Children played merrily with Julia and Jessica, then helped Julian hoist a piece of wire on which he hung up washing to dry.
The family moved in during the South African winter and came down with flu after a week. Julian and Ena effectively went on a vegan diet and each lost 5kg. They had to get used to a “smelly” long-drop toilet, the attention of rats and the absence of mod cons. “I really miss a shower,” she said. “Bucket baths just don’t do it for me: one kettle of water and having to wash your head upside down in a bucket is not much fun, then use the same bucket for your dishes and laundry. It takes about an hour and a half to heat it with paraffin.”
But the Hewitts, who do not own a TV anyway, enjoyed extra family time, catching up on sleep and sitting around a fire each evening talking to their neighbours. Family and close friends had warned that they were being “reckless and irresponsible” by exposing their daughters to a township but the community proved caring and protective.
Ena continued: “We go for a walk every afternoon and can’t go 50 metres without getting stopped, greeted, chatted to. They can’t believe it when we say we’re living here but they’re very friendly.
“I have to wonder if it was the other way around, and in an exclusively white suburb a bunch of black people walked in, whether people would be as welcoming.”
Julian, a social entrepreneur who commuted from Mamelodi to his office in Johannesburg once a week, reflected: “There is a very interesting undercurrent that we’ve been exposed to. There are your young, black professionals who still feel angry about the fact that the status quo hasn’t really changed. There is the sense that we’re mocking poverty and all these things and that’s OK, because they don’t know us.
“But what’s very interesting with those people we’ve found is that they’re a lot more comfortable with the notion of a British tourist coming and living here for a month, because in that case it’s an ‘adventure’ and this person’s just trying to get to understand African culture better. But as white South Africans, we basically are part of the problem and it opens up a whole lot of questions that might have been covered up otherwise and brings out a lot of tensions that would not be there if we are foreign tourists.”
The couple were not trying to build schools or set up an NGO, he added, but simply being here was the point. “What’s great is that people get what we’re trying to do. The fact that we’re able to interact with them as people, rather than as white people, breaks down massive boundaries reinforced in people’s minds for three and a half centuries here.
“We popped into a shebeen the other day on one of our afternoon walks. A big football match was on TV and there was almost dead silence when they turned and saw two blonde girls and us and a friend. Two guys came up to us and one said, ‘Wow, you make me believe God is alive today.’ The other guy started quoting Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia trial speech where he said: ‘This is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’ He said that ideal that Mandela is prepared to die for is bringing you into a place like this.”
Residents of Mamelodi appeared intrigued and impressed by the guests. They praised the family for helping their children with homework and making an effort to learn their languages.
Many also expressed hope that the media coverage would move politicians to action. Nkambule’s niece, Velly, 27, said: “I was very glad they came to see how we are suffering here and how much we spend on taxis and paraffin. The community is very happy and we wish they could stay forever.” – Guardian News & Media