A local intern, named Chad, at the District Six Museum took us on a tour of the township he lived in last week. The township is called Parkwood, and is a primarily couloured area of Cape Town. While this “tour” was particularly interesting and depressing for multiple reasons, one specific person truly struck me. We were escorted not only by Chad, but also by a police officer. This officer had a very different viewpoint to those I work with at the museum; she seemed to believe those living in the townships slightly deserve to be there.
The officer described her upbringing as slightly more advantaged, but she had also grown up in a “coulored” area of Cape Town. She clearly had a sense of superiority however, as she looked at a richer suburb on the horizon and described the people living there as, “the decent people” of the area. At first I thought maybe she was only comparing them to the gangsters in the Parkwood area, but she soon said, “these people want to live in shacks.”
This cynicism and lack of faith in the township really disturbed me. I found myself almost expecting to hear a white police officer say something like this, but it truly highlighted that prejudice is also so strongly centered on socio-economic issues, as well as race. She may have tried to help the Parkwood community members, as we spent part of the time informing local children about the threats of kidnapping, but she also clearly had a strong sense of superiority based upon the fact that she grew up in a “better off” neighborhood than Parkwood. While the conditions that my friend, Chad, lives in truly saddened me, listening to this police officer talk about the community scared me. When people in power such as the police lose faith in a poor neighborhood like Parkwood, it becomes that much harder for those living there to avoid the pull of gangsters and drugs, which Chad frequently mentioned as some of the biggest threats in the area. The visit truly left me proud and in awe of what Chad has achieved in his life, but it also left me fearful for future children similar to him.
