Born in Different Places By: Robin Fail

I find the article “Living Next Door to a Waste Dump” published in the Cape Argus Newspaper on August 11, 2007 very disturbing for a number of reasons. Upon first glancing at the article, I found myself most disturbed by my response to the first paragraph, in which the Rooidakkies informal settlement is described. The settlement is described as “under-serviced” and “filthy”, however I did not take time with these words on my first reading, rather, I skimmed right along, hastily searching for the meat of the article, the exciting, important parts. For some reason, that first time, I failed to see the importance in the description of Rooidakkies. I am ashamed to say that to my naïve American brain it seemed… routine. Could two weeks of living in Africa honestly have made my brain process filth as routine? I thought that I was supposed to become more attune, more sensitive to these problems! Without even realizing it I had thought, “Obviously it is filthy, obviously it has unacceptable health standards, it is a township, duh!” But as I read on, the truth of the article sank in; the words took on their dreadful meaning.
The woman in the article, Nosithile Sesimani, lives beside a waste dump and she doesn’t even want to leave. Why? Because she only gets R870 per month to live on, which, according to my rough estimates, totals around 120 U.S. dollars, which is far less than I have spent in my mere two weeks in Cape Town. Where would she go, if she left? What other options does she have? If I were Mama Sesimani, I would have no choice but to visit the neighborhood dump in search of salvation. But I am not Mama Sesimani, so when I run low on funds, I will email my mother, who will (hopefully) help me out. How can I live such a different life from someone, despite so many similarities? We are both humans, we are both women, we both live in Cape Town, we could both say hello to each other if we passed in the street. So why the discrepancy?
I can’t answer the question of ‘why’, but I can look at the facts in search of how this situation came to be. The facts are as follows: “the Department of Environmental Affairs had ruled that it would not require stack emission”, the director of City Development Services believes that “‘Rooidakkies is a very small settlement and in the context of the larger picture, the city cannot enter every informal settlement tomorrow’”, and Cape Town does not have the land and does not “’want to advocate a strategy that gives land to people who occupy land that is unsuitable’”. The isolation of the settlement means that pregnant women are forced to give birth in the settlement, amongst the garbage. Apart from the direct health affects associated with life in areas contaminated with poisons, the indirect health affects of such a lifestyle include alcoholism, illiteracy, high mortality rates, and unemployment. And this (even according to the City Development Services director) is only a small settlement. There are thousands upon thousands more who live in these conditions, and that’s a fact.
I read the article again, after that first read sank in. This time I didn’t dare glance over those words at the beginning. Filthy. Isolated. Unacceptable. I took my time, noticed each one, and let those words sink-in. That is my task here, paying attention. These problems are being faced by people so much like me, we just happened to be born into different places. These issues are no longer text book cases, statistics, or news stories of places far, far away. People here, people who I interact with daily, face these battles and I must recognize them and take the time to think about what their struggles mean. I do not want Nosithile Sesimani to become one more example of one more problem to file away in my head. I am here to make this personal and I must not forget this.