Sunday, May 14, 2006
Trust in the Government
The rural equivalent of a township seems to be called a "trust." These areas fill the less desirable valleys and mountainsides with houses and compounds ranging from modest to appalling. Few of them have electricity or running water; many are quite far from medical clinics, transportation routes, educational opportunities or means of communication. The farm and factory laborers and the unemployed have their residences in trusts and white people speak of them as dangerous places. In appearance and detail, they have a great deal in common with the rest of black rural Africa, only, in South Africa such areas seem to foster greater resentment on account of the obvious wealth and opportunity that hedges them in and puts them to work. Also, the trusts seem more like overcrowded reservations than the holdings of a community in harmony with its land.
Our hosts in Greytown connected us with a local organization that provides home based care for the most desperate cases in the nearby trusts. After our initial interview of their director, a white pensioner named Joan, we received an invitation to accompany her distributors on the following day's rounds. Early the next morning, Mike and I climbed into the back of a struggling pick up truck and sat on top of blankets, clothing bags and boxes of nutritional supplement. Sean sat in the cab with three black staff members and Joan, who drove around the narrow, deviating, mountainous dirt roads with obvious familiarity.
A number of the compounds that we visited boasted several well constructed concrete huts with thickly thatched roofs, small gardens, passable fencing and a handful of animals. They were not, however, in good repair. Mamsie, a Zulu woman in her late middle age shared our admiration of the huts and their construction but explained that, in many cases, the men of the families had left for Joburg or other large cities, where they find work and girlfriends or start new families. In consequence, many compounds in the trusts are populated exclusively by women, the elderly, the very young or the sick and dying. Mamsie has little respect for Zulu men and describes them all as "cowards." The one young man we saw who was caring for a deathbound "woman of little virtue" prompted Mamsie to comment that, "Zulu men are only capable of showing care or affection when they are unemployed and homeless."
Mamsie knows the AIDS patients and their situations quite well; it is clear from their demeanor that they respect her and appreciate her visits. Since Joan was along on this occasion, Mamsey gave her the case histories and Joan tackled the sticky legal issues. In one case an attractive nineteen year old girl huddled under synthetic blankets, answering questions in Zulu. She had recently returned from Joburg where she had likely been involved in the exploited portion of big city night life. For a fair number of the glamorous young black women in Africa, cowering under donated blankets in the hut of an extended family is the conclusion. This is where they end up. She should be receiving ARVs; but, she doesn't have a national identity card. Without that little booklet, a citizen will not receive government assistance. The trouble is that it can take well over six months to apply for and receive this basic and essential card. One man recently held a government worker hostage at gunpoint out of sheer frustration at the enormous amount of time he was being made to wait. Joan encouraged the young girl to make her way to Greytown-a relatively difficult trip-and promised to accompany her to the relevant ministry to explain and expedite the application process for her national identity card.
On another hill, a grandmother inched carefully down from her crumbling home loudly berating her dogs that were pestering us. She cares for the offspring of her son, who died, along with one of his wives, of HIV/AIDS. This grandmother needed advice on how to coerce one of her son's other widows to part with the man's death certificate (temporarily, just long enough to make a photocopy). Without this, the grandmother cannot receive government food grants for her grandchildren. Again and again, Joan tried to help these rural people through the red tape of social services. Since they need to visit urban centers, stand in long lines, understand legal documents and present a precise assortment of their own papers, many less fortunate people are unable to navigate the process. Politicians, who understand it quite well, have taken to claiming grants for thousands of children who don't exist. Self-serving bastards who understand it well enough have taken to using their child welfare grants to get drunk and spoil themselves. It's a beautiful system.
The rural equivalent of a township seems to be called a "trust." These areas fill the less desirable valleys and mountainsides with houses and compounds ranging from modest to appalling. Few of them have electricity or running water; many are quite far from medical clinics, transportation routes, educational opportunities or means of communication. The farm and factory laborers and the unemployed have their residences in trusts and white people speak of them as dangerous places. In appearance and detail, they have a great deal in common with the rest of black rural Africa, only, in South Africa such areas seem to foster greater resentment on account of the obvious wealth and opportunity that hedges them in and puts them to work. Also, the trusts seem more like overcrowded reservations than the holdings of a community in harmony with its land.
Our hosts in Greytown connected us with a local organization that provides home based care for the most desperate cases in the nearby trusts. After our initial interview of their director, a white pensioner named Joan, we received an invitation to accompany her distributors on the following day's rounds. Early the next morning, Mike and I climbed into the back of a struggling pick up truck and sat on top of blankets, clothing bags and boxes of nutritional supplement. Sean sat in the cab with three black staff members and Joan, who drove around the narrow, deviating, mountainous dirt roads with obvious familiarity.
A number of the compounds that we visited boasted several well constructed concrete huts with thickly thatched roofs, small gardens, passable fencing and a handful of animals. They were not, however, in good repair. Mamsie, a Zulu woman in her late middle age shared our admiration of the huts and their construction but explained that, in many cases, the men of the families had left for Joburg or other large cities, where they find work and girlfriends or start new families. In consequence, many compounds in the trusts are populated exclusively by women, the elderly, the very young or the sick and dying. Mamsie has little respect for Zulu men and describes them all as "cowards." The one young man we saw who was caring for a deathbound "woman of little virtue" prompted Mamsie to comment that, "Zulu men are only capable of showing care or affection when they are unemployed and homeless."
Mamsie knows the AIDS patients and their situations quite well; it is clear from their demeanor that they respect her and appreciate her visits. Since Joan was along on this occasion, Mamsey gave her the case histories and Joan tackled the sticky legal issues. In one case an attractive nineteen year old girl huddled under synthetic blankets, answering questions in Zulu. She had recently returned from Joburg where she had likely been involved in the exploited portion of big city night life. For a fair number of the glamorous young black women in Africa, cowering under donated blankets in the hut of an extended family is the conclusion. This is where they end up. She should be receiving ARVs; but, she doesn't have a national identity card. Without that little booklet, a citizen will not receive government assistance. The trouble is that it can take well over six months to apply for and receive this basic and essential card. One man recently held a government worker hostage at gunpoint out of sheer frustration at the enormous amount of time he was being made to wait. Joan encouraged the young girl to make her way to Greytown-a relatively difficult trip-and promised to accompany her to the relevant ministry to explain and expedite the application process for her national identity card.
On another hill, a grandmother inched carefully down from her crumbling home loudly berating her dogs that were pestering us. She cares for the offspring of her son, who died, along with one of his wives, of HIV/AIDS. This grandmother needed advice on how to coerce one of her son's other widows to part with the man's death certificate (temporarily, just long enough to make a photocopy). Without this, the grandmother cannot receive government food grants for her grandchildren. Again and again, Joan tried to help these rural people through the red tape of social services. Since they need to visit urban centers, stand in long lines, understand legal documents and present a precise assortment of their own papers, many less fortunate people are unable to navigate the process. Politicians, who understand it quite well, have taken to claiming grants for thousands of children who don't exist. Self-serving bastards who understand it well enough have taken to using their child welfare grants to get drunk and spoil themselves. It's a beautiful system.
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