THE DOMPAS IS DEAD... LANGA LIVES
The township, which celebrates its centenary this year, developed a rich heritage as it battled oppression, writes Claire Keeton
‘Can you wait while I find my dompas ? asks Nopinkie Ngxangane, jumping up to fetch the pass book she needed under apartheid just to live in her home in KwaLanga, Cape Town — one of South Africa’s oldest townships. Moments later she is back, a worn blue dompas in hand.
“You had to have a dompas or you would go to prison,” says 73-year-old Ngxangane, who took her first breath in a two-room house in KwaLanga. Yet she was denied the right to live in the township or move around Cape Town without a pass, and the “Citizenship” block in her dompas is blank.
Every three months, she waited in long queues, worse than today’s home affairs ones, to get her dompas renewed. “But I survived that dompas,” she says in an interview on Wednesday, sitting upright in a coral dress and headscarf that match the walls of her front room. Her front door overlooks a street where residents are cleaning up after the week’s drenching rain. Women are doing laundry in tin washtubs across the road from the public pool. The sun gleams on a brick house where Proteas captain Temba Bavuma grew up. The queen of African pop, Brenda Nokuzola Fassie, was also born in KwaLanga.
Groups of foreigners are following tour guides that morning in KwaLanga, the closest township to Table Mountain, and Cape Town’s most historic. Langa (which means sun) is named after King Mthethwa Langalibalele, who led a rebellion against British rule and was put on trial in 1873 before being banished to Robben Island.
Landmarks such as the Langa Heritage/Dompas Museum, which used to be a dreaded Bantu Affairs administration block, and the Guga S’thebe Arts, Cultural & Heritage Centre, brightened by murals, are among the attractions in the township, which turns 100 this year.
“But what are we celebrating?” asks Zolile Kasana, who is on a centennial committee of 10 elected at a meeting in KwaLanga’s civic hall to co-ordinate the activities of disparate township groups. “KwaLanga was established as a labour reserve away from whites. People were uprooted and put here to live in squalor.”
Despite its fluid migrant populations, KwaLanga became a tight-knit community where people looked out for each other, says the retired teacher.
“I would see migrant workers, who came from the Eastern Cape by train, walking down the streets in their blankets after they had been sprayed with disinfectant,” says Kasana. “Every week, I would see workers with no dompas being pushed into big vans or being led to the Bantu Affairs administration block like sheep to be locked up.”
The squat Bantu Affairs building, built in the 1920s, had a pass office, a courtroom and a cell into which people would be crammed, the museum exhibition notes. Fifty years ago it was one of only a few buildings around the open field where Kasana played soccer as a boy.
Looking around, he recalls: “Once we were lying in the sun on the grass and a tall policeman came over and said: ‘Boys, follow me!’ He made us follow a trail of blood on the tarmac to the police station. The blood was not fresh, but that was how the police would instil fear. White police [officers] would go into shops and open the fridge, take a drink and not pay. They acted like bullies.”
KwaLanga’s history is a reminder of the modern laws that repressed black South Africans, but such legislation goes far further back to early colonial days, when the Cape Colony restricted the movement of black people and expelled them from their places of birth. The Locations Act of 1902 formally segregated black and white people in the colony.
In 1923, KwaLanga was built as a black township with a single entrance to house male migrant workers. It was established under the Native Urban Areas Act and was officially recognised in 1927. That year, the Native Administration Act rubber-stamped the forced removal of black residents from South Africa’s cities.
With every decade, the state tightened controls on black South Africans, strangling any opportunity for them to work, learn or live in decent conditions. In 1952, the Orwellian Natives Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act was passed, requiring men to carry “reference books” containing fingerprints and employment information.
“My generation wanted to work for a living, but because of the pass laws we were not given that opportunity,” says Ngxangane, who became a domestic worker.
When passes were extended to women, mass protests exploded across the country, most notably a women’s march to the Union Buildings on August 9 1956.
Sixty-nine peaceful anti-pass protesters were gunned down in the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21 1960, and on March 30 that year PAC leader Philip Kgosana led 30,000 marchers from KwaLanga to Cape Town to protest against the pass laws.
When she turned 16, Ngxangane was one of the first generation of women forced to carry the dompas. She says that if KwaLanga residents were unlucky to end up facing a bad-tempered “Mostert or Potgieter” when they got to the front of the queue, they could be deported to the former Transkei or Ciskei, more than 1,000km away. “If you got that stamp, that ‘phuma uphele’ [‘go and vanish’] ”— she makes the thwacking noise of a stamp slamming down — “they would come to visit your house with a big van, and you had to go.”
One day the guillotine fell on her, “nearly, nearly” cutting her off from the only home she had ever had. She remembers: “That man said to me: ‘Look at you. You can’t be in Cape Town. You must go back to the Transkei!’ But to where? To whom?”
Her father, a construction worker living with a wife and four children in the family “quarters”, managed to get the decision reversed. “He was a fighter. When they gave me a ‘phuma uphele’, my father went and said: ‘You don’t do that to my child!’”
But over the years Ngxangane watched as friends and family were forced to leave, with no warning. “When you [got] that stamp, people would come out from there crying,” she says.
“Once I was at the day hospital and there were ladies from the Transkei who did not have permits. When their husbands left for work, the police raided the hostel and they had to run away and hide. One was carrying a baby on her back, and the other lady had a baby on her back with two little kids. The police came in and carried the women with their babies into the van and forced the little ones in with them.”
Hostels for single men were at the heart of KwaLanga’s development as a labour reserve, which marginalised women and children. The first hostels were built in 1927, with the township’s superintendent overlooking the entry point, and a headman in charge of each one. The hostels multiplied in the 1950s, and 20 years later nearly 90% of KwaLanga’s residents were men, the museum notes. “Barracks accommodation was a rudimentary, cramped and a hostile living environment.”
The main barracks were restricted to single male migrant workers, who were deported to rural areas when their contracts ended. The men with longer contracts inhabited two-roomed terraced houses known as the “quarters”, and the two groups would meet in communal kitchens and ablution blocks.
KwaLanga was established as a labour reserve away from whites. People were uprooted and put here to live in squalor
— Zolile Kasana, retired teacher
Despite the restrictions, KwaLanga was intended to be a “model” township with a mix of workers and professionals, such as laboratory assistant Hamilton Naki, who assisted Dr Chris Barnard with the world’s first heart transplant and has a square named after him in the township.
Kasana said his family lived in a hostel and used ablution blocks until they moved into a two-room house in Harlem, which they shared with another family. Now his mother and her grandchildren live in a similar house. His mother, 84-year-old Muriel, says: “We used to know everyone living here, but [these days] there are many strangers and backyarders. Before I could leave my door open all day and walk at night, [but] not anymore.”
However, the KwaLanga safety patrol, visible in their neon yellow vests, are improving safety on the streets, says Kasana. A priest in the New Apostolic Church, he does volunteer work at an aftercare facility, teaching maths to matric pupils.
The hall where the aftercare takes place was once a municipal beer hall. It was illegal for women to brew traditional beer, and Ngxangane says: “The policemen would come and kick over the umqombothi. We were not allowed to do anything ... to go on the streets to sell something to feed [our families].” Now food gardens grow in front of the hall, and in the kitchen cooks prepare meals from these vegetables and donations to feed residents in need.
Arts, culture and sport have a proud role in the fabric of KwaLanga. Its stadium drew crowds to rugby, cricket and soccer matches, and the township turned out sporting heroes. A photo shows that the Mother City Rugby Football Club (1966-67) produced four Springbok players. Tennis was also popular in the township, and the Langa Tennis Club is a member of the Cape Town Tennis League.
“We want community and civic involvement, and service delivery,” says Mthembukazi Bavuma, 24, a youth leader in KwaLanga who was co-opted to the centennial committee. “I’m a foot soldier. We are building structures at street level. We are working for social development and need investment in areas like telecommunications and abandoned old-age homes.
“We want to honour King Langalibalele and his fight for his people. The centenary is not just one celebration — it is about upscaling KwaLanga,” she says. “We want to look back in five or 10 years and have built this legacy for the next generation.”