Living on the Hill: My Homestay in Enkanini

By: Sarah Patrick

May 2, 2014

I rode a wave of emotions the week leading up to my homestay in Enkanini, an illegal informal settlement next to Kayamandi, a legal informal settlement. Both communities sit less than a ten-minute drive from the University of Stellenbosch, on a hill overlooking the university. While I engage with a small portion of the community in Kayamandi once a week by teaching pre-school age children at Ikhaya Primary School, I have limited exposure to the children’s families, lifestyles, or housing situations. Similarly, my only exposure to Enkanini arose from an afternoon lecture and visit during my first week in South Africa.

My host, Vuyokazi, a 29-year-old single mother originally from the Eastern Cape, resembled a host sister more than a host mom. After our initial meeting, we walked up a small hill and through the extensive network of shacks to her home. Covered with metal sheeting and outfitted with a single door and window, Vuyokazi’s shack consisted of a single room with a full-sized bed, pink curtains on the window, a short counter, a metal shelving system, a small wardrobe, and single light bulb. A large yellow bucket sat next to a fridge and held the day’s supply of drinking water. A smaller pail sat in the corner so the residents could relieve themselves in the night when it became too dark to use the toilets outside. My host’s 11-year old daughter shared the space as well.

Looking to Enkanini as a case study of inequality and poverty in Stellenbosch reveals how social inequalities in environmental spaces exacerbate inequalities within a single community and thus inhibit social cohesion. Enkanini’s poor waste management system negatively affects the natural environment. However, the fastidious tidiness that characterizes my host’s daily practices suggests that the negative environmental impact arises mainly from the system. Throughout my stay in Enkanini, Vuyokazi repeatedly said that she wanted to make me happy. While unsettling, the comment triggered a dialogue about what makes us happy. Vuyokazi said, without hesitation, that having her own shack largely contributed to her happiness, and as she spoke, her eyes lit up and a smile crept onto her lips. Vuyokazi’s actions exemplified her statement: cleaning the dishes, sweeping, dusting, mopping, and making the full-sized bed, took up the majority of every morning. She tackled each task with care and patience. Additionally, while Stellenbosch Municipality’s waste collection system ignores Enkanini, the residents who lived within my host’s section of shacks took the time to dispose of hard waste in a single location. I even witnessed three young boys wheeling a precarious trashcan down a steep, rocky hill to the informally demarcated garbage collection site. Although the practice still resulted in a heaping pile of exposed trash, the desire to maintain an organized system became apparent.

An outsider, unfamiliar with Enkanini’s inner workings or community networks, easily could tour the settlement and come away with the perception that the residents are messy, inconsiderate of the environment, and contributing to environmental degradation. However, such a conclusion ignores the situation’s deeper, structural origins. The waste management set-up does not reflect the Enkanini residents’ characters, but rather emphasizes how social inequalities lead to physical and circumstantial distinctions that inhibit individuals from breaking out of a downward cycle. What would Enkanini look like if the municipality collected the trash the residents so carefully accumulate in a single location? While poverty forces the residents to live in the settlement, social inequalities—the perception of settlement dwellers as different and other—seemingly justifies the municipality’s lack of effort to provide services to Enkanini.

Decreasing the settlement’s negative impact on the environment demands a partnership between all members of Stellenbosch. It is necessary to alter the perception of members of Enkanini as human waste, illegal, and other. While my host’s worldviews, a product of her circumstances and experiences, differ from mine, they are just as valuable and important. Life in Enkanini drastically differs from the daily occurrences in the neighborhoods surrounding the university. For example, using the toilet requires walking a distance to a communal area during the day and using a bucket in a shack at night. Hand washing occurs at a set of communal taps surrounding the toilets or within a bucket of water collected from the taps in the morning and stored in the shack. However, these differences do not rationalize the imposition of extra costs on the residents of Enkanini because of their impoverishment and differing perspectives and lifestyles. Combatting the environmental degradation requires not only recognizing the residents’ tidy habits and pride in their community but also acknowledging that failure to implement waste collection and management services in the settlement affects both the affluent and impoverished residents of Stellenbosch negatively.

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