Berkley Center

The graffitied metal screeched along the rails. Alongside the ocean and manicured landscapes, this hunk of faded and chipping yellow paint seemed out of place with multi-million rand homes glistening above. “And that train there—where’s that one going?”

“That one, that goes to Nolungile, near Khayelitsha,” answered my friend. Khayelitsha—the sprawling black township on the outskirts of Cape Town—was meant to supply cheap, black migrant labor to white homes and businesses in central Cape Town under apartheid social engineering: the culmination of an insidious, clinical, and systematic attempt to oppress 90 percent of the population to serve the interests of the white 10 percent. “When were the train tracks laid?” I asked, suspecting the answer. The train blew its ugly horn. “The Apartheid Era.”

The racialized nature of urban planning under South Africa’s system of apartheid meant that even the most mundane aspects of life were dictated by one’s racial categorization. The Group Areas Act of 1950 divided South African society into four distinct racial groups: “Black,” “Coloured,” “Indian,” and “White.” Practically overnight, neighbors were pitted against each other, families were split, and the fabric of South African society was torn apart. Formerly integrated areas such as District Six in Cape Town were razed to make way for new construction in the now “All White Area.” To uphold such spacial apartheid and the racialized economy, the apartheid government constructed rail lines in Cape Town to connect the mass black labor supply to white areas. In these areas, black laborers worked as domestic servants, cleaners, gardeners, and in other service industry jobs at the beck and call of the white populace. Almost all infrastructure, from railways to roads, were meant to uphold this racialized system. Today, the rail lines still run and serve the exact same purpose; political freedom has not brought about economic freedom. The graveyards of apartheid are still very much alive.

I had expected the legacies of such brutal domination to be evident when I arrived in South Africa. However, the extent to which many of the apartheid-era structures are unchanged was the most unnerving. The stark material poverty hearkens even the most callous to pay attention. On a hill high above Stellenbosch University sits Kayamandi, a black township that was the apartheid-designated black area of Stellenbosch. This area was meant to house the workers who cleaned the university and worked in the homes of the town’s white residents. A South African friend told me he believes that those in Kayamandi have the best view. They look down and see a beautiful town below. We look up, and we are reminded of our own ignorance.

Ghosts from the past haunt everywhere. Yet one has to wonder if such things can be considered specters as that implies that the previous system had truly died. During a visit to Gugulethu Township, I saw the Gugulethu Seven Memorial which commemorates seven young men killed by apartheid police in 1986. Upon viewing this memorial, I was awed by the similarities between 1986 and 2018. Poverty still pervades the township and the life chances of its citizens. Their government is now black, but their pockets are still empty. Of course, this is not to underestimate the power of the democratic transition in 1994, but rather to highlight South Africa's continued failure to adequately address the economic concerns of its most vulnerable populations. The black “underclass” of South Africa was promised liberation from apartheid. Yet to this day, the urban engineering, social relations, and life prospects remain much the same. Indeed, the sites that were supposed to be graveyards of the apartheid era are now the sites of its most harrowing ghosts.