Mitchell's Plain

After looking over my blog posts from the past two months I realize that I haven't talked at all about my internship in Cape Town at the South Africa Human Rights Commission. In fact, it struck me that anybody reading my posts would probably assume that all I have been doing so far is traveling around Southern Africa and having as much fun as humanly possible. Not that that is entirely inaccurate, but I have been spending a large part of my time in Cape Town with my internship and I would be remiss not to write about my experience at the Commission so far. Unfortunately this will be kind of tricky because in recent years the Commission has had some some loose-tongued interns who apparently got a little too comfortable talking with local reporters. These comments blew up in the local media and the Commission got in some serious hot water causing them to tighten their strings around their interns. I highly doubt that any serious South African watchdog or media outlet has been monitoring my blog, but in the slim possibility that someone stumbles across this post, I am going to have to censor some of my comments and observations of the work I have done and the work that the Commission engages in. So without further ado:

I have been working for the SAHRC for just about two months now and so far my experience has been far from what I was expecting. In fact, to put it bluntly, it has been extremely disappointing. I work in the legal branch of the office (the other side of the office is Parliament which deals more with political issues such as drafting legislation and writing reports on various human rights issues) and we are responsible for handling all of the human rights claims in the Western Cape, the province that encompasses Cape Town. With around 4.5 million people living in the Western Cape, you can imagine just how many cases we receive on a daily basis (last I checked our back log was somewhere around 500 but could easily be double than that). Further compounding the problem of a extremely large case load is that our office only has one actual lawyer to go along with three legal interns including myself who has never had any sort of legal training. We are completely under staffed and, along with the inefficient bureaucratic process we have to go through to manage a case, getting concrete, actual help to complainants is close to impossible. This has been an especially hard pill to swallow considering the multitude of human rights violations people are reporting, ranging from elderly family members dying due to horrible health care conditions to abuse in the prison system to babies losing fingers and toes because of insufficient primary health care services.

I have also been struggling to deal with a laid back working environment that seems apparent in not only our office but in companies and organizations throughout Cape Town (this gathered from stories I've heard from other interns). Very little seems to get done on a daily basis, an infuriating reality considering the dire need of help many complainants are seeking. Also, in my first month of working, there seemed to be about a holiday every week. I didn't have a full week of work because of holidays until a little after a month of interning. I can't say that I didn't enjoy my time off or take advantage of the various long weekends, but constantly having days off didn't seem like the solution to the problems that face South Africa as a country. Don't get me wrong, I am all for holidays and taking time away from work, but the number of vacation days here seems entirely too high and too often. And apparently April is not even the most laid back month, that distinction going to the middle of December to the middle of January. I can only imagine what happens (or doesn't happen) in South Africa during that country long respite!

I think this is where my self-censorship will have to kick in otherwise I could go on for pages upon pages about my internship. I hope this gives you all somewhat of a sense of what working has been like for the past few months, but if not I promise to divulge more over a beer or phone call in the future. I also hope that people don't think my time at the SAHRC has been all bad because there have been some bright spots. I am getting to learn first hand about the South African Constitution, easily one of the more progressive and democratic constitutions in the world (on paper at least, its application is a whole other story), I have been a part of the very unique South African legal process, witnessed local court procedures, listened and counseled tons of walk-in-complainants all of which have their own heart breaking story or problem, and visited a local township for an educational lesson about what are South African's guaranteed constitutional rights. This last incident has continued to surface itself in my thoughts since happening last week, giving me a vivid insight to how hard life is for people living in townships, especially women still grappling with a history living in subservience.

I, along with a few other interns, would be tagging along with the SAHRC's educational director Raynold to Mitchell's Plain, one of the largest townships in all of South Africa about twenty kilometers outside of Cape Town and home to almost two million people. Raynold had been contacted a few weeks earlier by the director of a shelter for abandoned and battered women and children to host a question and answer session about their human rights. Raynold had also coordinated another question and answer session with a community center in Mitchell's Plain that specialized in helping people and their families deal with mistreatment by the local police. Myself and the other interns were responsible for assisting Raynold in any way that he needed us but for the most part we were there to observe.

It took us a while to get to the first stop, but eventually we found the center for abandoned and battered women and children. We arrived to a host of gazing, smiling little children, clothed in little more than tattered rags. Most of them were playing on the remains of what appeared to be a jungle gym with a few toys, including an appendage-less baby doll, strewn across the grounds. They all desperately wanted to shake our hands, each exchange bringing a few more inches of smile across their already beaming faces. I couldn't help but wonder that if a handshake could bring this much happiness to these kids lives, what else could I give them to bring them joy? A dollar? A new toy? An hour playing soccer together?

After navigating through the throng of children, the director of the center introduced herself to all of us and led us into the main building to where Raynold would be speaking. We entered a worn down concrete building that, without actually seeing people living and cooking in some of the rooms, could have easily been mistaken for a property abandoned many years before. Trash littered all corners of every room, chunks of concrete lay crumbled throughout the walkways and ragged curtains replaced doors whose only evidence of ever being there were hinges loosely hanging on by rusty screws. We came during the day so I could not tell how much electricity surged through the building but the throng of loose wires dotting the crumbling walls and empty light sockets made be think that this place becomes pretty dark at night. We finally were led into a large banquet hall where Raynold would be speaking. It was easily the room in the nicest condition and seemed to double as a church. Soon after entering and settling into our seats, about twenty women from the shelter came and sat down, ready to hear what Raynold had to say.

Raynold did a remarkable job of explaining the basic human rights guaranteed to all South African citizens in the constitution. Probably the most beneficial part for the women was his advice on the different organizations available free of charge to help them with human rights violations as well as the procedures they could take when searching for help. I couldn't tell how much knowledge these women took away from the session because most sat their with blank faces, but the director could not stop thanking us after Raynold's talk was over. Raynold said that his was probably the first time these women had ever heard information like this but the hardest part would be for them to exercise these rights. Lots of women in South Africa, he said, were still living under the culture of male subservience that they had experienced during apartheid. That was why, Raynold remarked, that none of the women had asked any questions and remained completely silent throughout the presentation. They were still afraid to speak their mind and voice their opinion, a silent wound still plaguing many South African women.

We left the center with a goodbye just as cheerful as our entrance. As I left wishing I could do more to help these people, I realized just how many times I have felt that way since being in South Africa. There is almost a constant sense of wanting to help people out here coupled with an overwhelming awareness of not knowing where to start and which issues to address first.

Our second stop provided a much more enraged audience and it was easy to understand why after hearing the crowd's various stories of police mistreatment and abuse. At first people were hesitant to ask Raynold questions after his speech on what South African's human rights were, but the crown soon opened up and spewed forth some of their shocking, unimaginable encounters with the police. Some of the more startling moments of the meeting were when people would say that they had no idea they were guaranteed these certain rights and that the police were by law not allowed to act like they had been. Most of these people had never been taught their constitutional rights an as a consequence had been being abused by the police force meant to protect them.

Every person's stories were in their own sense awful and unsettling, but one woman's story particularly stood out. About halfway through the question and answer portion of the meeting, a coloured women stood up to speak her mind. From her hesitant standing up to her soft, mildly trembling voice you could tell how hard it was to speak in front of the crowd but you could also sense her determination to tell her story. She started by telling the room that for the past 18 years of her life she had been physically and mentally abused by her husband, a police man in Mitchell's Plain. At first she had been hesitant to take any action against him, but soon she couldn't take the pain anymore and tried to get help help through the legal system. As she was telling us all of this she started choking up and then, almost instantly, she broke down. She cried and cried for almost a minute, everyone in the room not moving a muscle as she vented. It felt like this this was the first time she had publicly talked about her abuse of the last twenty years and her emotions seemed to come gushing out in every tear. After a minute or two of crying, however, a sense of determination swelled across her body. She stopped sobbing and slowly began telling the rest of her story, with each sentence growing more confident and empowered. She confessed to how she continued to receive no help from the proper authorities because her husband was in the police force and had many times almost given up life. As she concluded her story, it was clear she did not have a question to ask but that she just had wanted to use her time to vent and make people aware of her situation. She had been able to throw off a history of submissiveness that continued to plague so many South African women. I wish we as the Commission could do more to directly help her situation but I feel that allowing her a podium to speak her mind might have helped her in more ways than we could have imagined.

We concluded the day by agreeing to set up a educational session much like the one we had just given to the Mitchell's Plain police force. Community members would be in attendance at these meetings and the hope would be that in the future, residents could combat police abuse more effectively by knowing more about their rights and police limits. Unfortunately, knowing the way the Commission works, this might not take place for a couple of months and for sure not during the rest of my internship. I was again left with the feeling of wishing I could do more and then realized that this feeling isn't going to go away any time soon.

Surviving Mozambique - Part III

Before I get to my next, as promised, here are some pictures from Tofo:



These first two pictures are of the beach we were staying on, the second pic being the view from the balcony of our backpacker's bar. As you can tell, we were roughing it.

This next pic looks at the tall grass fields that lay just behind the beach. The fields were endless and looked magical when a gust of wind swept through them, especially during a sunset. The boy in the picture saw me taking photos and insisted he be in one of the photos. Got to love his stance.

This is a picture of me being immature in my dive suit before my first deep dive, the one where half of the ocean decided to make an appearance.

Lastly, this picture comes from the really nice dinner me and a few friends had on our last night in Tofo, the one following the full moon stroll on the beach while avoiding the army of crabs. From left to right, there is Elsa, Jules, myself, Simon, Emily and Chris. Now on to Part III.

Waking up at four in the morning has never been a pleasurable experience. Waking up at four in the morning following about 45 minutes of sleep after a night celebrating the end of our vacation in Tofo to a scene of dark, blurry mayhem didn't change my opinion. Our bus back to Tofo was leaving in a half hour and from what it appeared, very few people were packed or awake. And we all still had to walk twenty or so minutes with all our bags to meet the bus. Terrible start to a journey back to Cape Town that had many more surprises and trouble left in store.

Although I lacked judgment in staying out late and doing what young people do at beach bars in foreign countries, I did manage to make a good decision by packing my bag the night before. Myself and about half of the rest of our group was out of the hut door by a little after four, stumbling as fast as possible along the sandy path towards Fatima's and the soon to be departing bus. My group managed to meet the bus with a few minutes to spare but once on board we were immediately presented with a slew of major problems:

a) we had reserved 17 seats on the bus and there were only eight or nine seats left i.e. Fatima's had overbooked
b) the rest of our group was nowhere in site and as far as I knew probably attempting to figure out whether they were dreaming or actually having to wake up to get on the bus back to Maputo
c) our driver was stubborn and unsympathetic to my attempt to raise points a) and b) with him
d) barring throwing myself under the wheels of the bus in the hope the driver wouldn't roll over me (which I am not so sure would have even worked), the bus was leaving with or without the rest of the group)

And leave without them we did. I felt terrible that we couldn't do more to stop the bus from leaving but even worse that now they would have to make the long, bumpy hot ride back to Maputo crammed into the back of Sean's truck (they ended up fitting nine people, two in the front, four in the cab and five in the covered truck bed. And the truck's size had more in common with a Hot Wheel than a F-150). I even managed to secure a seat upfront where I could stretch my legs out and it was next to a vacant seat. The situation was far from ideal but much better than I thought considering how the morning had gone so far. Oh how fortunes can change in the blink of an eye.

Within five minutes of thinking the ride back to Maputo would be manageable, our bus driver pulled over for an unexpected stop. I turned by head around to see a mother and her five infant children clamoring on board, trying to find any open seat available. My empty seat was an easy target but after a further look, no other seats were available. The only open space was the standing room only entrance into the bus equipped with a fold down iron bar that I assumed could be used for a seat if you don't mind metal pole jabbing at your bottom for an eight hour bus ride. The lack of seating did not seem to deter this woman at all and within a minute of uncomfortable re-arranging, the bus had started up again and we were back along our way.

The mom took the empty seat next to mine and took three of her children with her - one in her lap, one on her leg/lap, and one on my leg/her lap. The other children found some luggage to sit on behind us, a seating arrangement that didn't seem too bad especially considering what their brothers and sister had found. Cramped wouldn't even being to describe the situation because not only was I more uncomfortable than Yao Ming flying coach surrounded by contestants from The Biggest Loser, but the family of six smelled absolutely terrible. Think hot garbage mixed with a humid port-a-potty at a summer concert mixed with morning breath following a night out at the bars. And I'm not trying to be insensitive American because I'm guessing their living arrangements are beyond anything I could possibly imagine, I'm just trying to convey what I had to smell for eight hours on a bumpy, rugged Mozambique road. Compounding all of this was the arrival of the sun and its ability to turn the bus into a traveling sauna.

The eight hours back to Maputo felt more like eight days. Time didn't just pass by, it slowly oozed by as we made our way through Mozambique jungle. The humidity on the bus made the sweat on my body feel more like molasses, gradually dripping from my pores. The kid that used my leg as a seat eventually used my whole lap as his resting ground. I didn't mind giving his mom a respite from trying to take care of all her children, and I could never be mad at a little cute, especially one as cute as this one, but body heat and weight of another human did not make the bus ride any more enjoyable. When it didn't seem like we would ever get to Maputo, the city's outskirts started to pass us by and I knew we were within an hour of escaping the bus ride from hell. Unfortunately, one more surprise was still left in store for me, courtesy of the cute kid bouncing along on my lap.

We must have been only half an hour out of Fatima's when I noticed a slight warm, liquid sensation on my foot. I looked down to find the mother sitting next to me holding up her child and wiping a wet streak on his leg and crotch with a cloth of some sort. Befuddled at first, the realization of what just happened struck me rather calmly: the kid had just wet himself and consequently my foot. As if this bus ride couldn't get any worse, I had just been peed on by a kid I had let use my lap as a seat for eight hours. What's next, our bus breaking down and having to walk the rest of the way in a freak torrential rain storm? Here are pictures of the mom, her children and me in our cramped quarters on the bus (the expression on the mother's face tells it all).



Thankfully that peeing episode proved to be the last incident on our way to Maputo, finally arriving at Fatima's a little after 1pm. We met up with the rest of our group, the ones crammed into Sean's truck, and we all shared horror stories from the past eight hours. The rest of the day we spent getting ourselves together and having bizzare Easter Sunday dinner at a Portuguese restaurant that only spoke Portuguese (side note - Easter has always proved to be one of the more interesting holidays for me which is unusual since I am not very religious. Easter highlights, in no particular order: (1) my dad telling me the Easter bunny did not exist and that he was just an evil concoction of the corporate world that caused people to lose sight of the true meaning of the Easter holiday (2) getting lost on Mt. Rainier and having to spend the night in the snowy woods with no tent and very little food (3) holding hands with John Wooden during grace at my friend Imp's family dinner freshmen year (4) the bus ride from hell). After returning from dinner where we were convinced at least half of us were going to get food poisoning, most people turned in early because we had another early morning wake up call to catch our Grey Hound to Johannesburg. Sadly, no amount of sleep could have prepared us for the problems we encountered on the way to Jo-Burg.

Monday morning started unusually efficient. Everyone was packed and ready to go at seven thirty, the Greyhound was waiting for us when we left Fatimas, and we only departed fifteen minutes after our scheduled time. The only red flag of the morning was a slight overcast looming over Maputo, very different from the past nine days of blue skies and sunshine. It was if God or who ever lives upstairs was trying to warn us of the upcoming disaster but we were all to content in our air conditioned carriage to notice. And then we hit the border.

We had all been told that the border crossing while entering Mozambique would be much harder than trying to leave the country so most of us were optimistic when we approached the border. All of us had to leave the bus and our Greyhound stewardess led us into a line to wait for a passports to be stamped. The line didn't look too bad but the sheer number of people waiting around this grass field seemingly in the middle of nowhere with only a few tents to service people seemed a little odd. We eventually changed lines and were supposed to be close to getting our visa's stamped when the madness began.

Out of nowhere, the people in line behind us broke rank and surged to the front creating a triangle wedge trying to squeeze into the front of the line. We all stood around looking for some sort of authority to take charge of the situation but that soon proved to be futile. No longer in a group, a few of us, including myself, managed to make our way to the front of the line but still behind twenty or thirty pushy, agitated Africans. Everyone was shoulder to shoulder and before I knew it a gentle push from behind turned into a pulsing shoving match throughout the crowd. We were standing in the non-Mozambique citizen line but the citizen que a couple dozen feet away didn't have as much patience as ours. A few tried running past guards and under rope, only to be met by guards brandishing large bull whips which they were not afraid to use. Police started swinging at anybody within striking distant, women and children not excluded. One person even claimed to see a woman holding her baby up in the air to try and prevent a strike only for a police man to still swing his whip at the mother and child. Our line was still pushing and shoving but it paled in comparison to the violence taking place within a stone's throw.

The physicality of the crowd caused or group to be completely separated but me and my friend Shaun managed to keep our ground upfront. After another hour of waiting, pushing our total time at the border to two hours, we were finally able to get our passports stamped. Relief swept through my body only to be quickly exorcised by the realization that we would have to wait for the other 10 plus people in our group, some of whom had been forced to the back of the line. It then hit me than any hope of making our evening flights back to Cape Town were out the window and all of us had to reschedule. Fortunately I had plenty of time to figure out what to do because we sat at the border for at least another four hours before our fortunes started to change. This picture was taken from the Greyhound, looking out on the mass of people that seemed to be growing by the minute at the border (and this picture isn't even a close to accurate representation of the total number of people).


Our Greyhound stewardess came to the group's rescue again, this time providing us a police escort to take all of us to the South African side of the border crossing. Apparently she thought we were all going to miss our international flights back to America and had called Greyhound to arrange or special transport (she later shared a grimacing chuckle when discovering we were all only headed back to Cape Town). At the South African border station, the rest of our group received their visas within an hour, only one person having to bribe a custom agents for a visa extension. After five grueling, scary hours at the border we were back on the road to finish the rest of our eight hour ride back to Johannesburg which we still had six hours left. This was going to be a long day.

Not much can be said about the rest of the ride except that it felt like it took much longer than six hours (which it did because of three accidents, one of which was a three car pile up engulfed in flames). I ended up catching a cab and staying at Paul and Marion's house for the night along with my friend Lauren while the rest of the group made a mad dash to try and make their flights out of Jo-Burg. My flight took off at one the next day and although Paul, Marion and the kids were still on Easter holiday, I thoroughly enjoyed the comforts of a clean bed and hot shower. Miraculously flying back to Cape Town went off with out a hitch and by four in the afternoon on Tuesday I had made it back to my house in Observatory. I immediately crashed on my bed once getting home, trying to recollect the last 60 hours of traveling. Thankfully I only got to leaving Tofo before falling asleep, sparing myself the nightmare of piecing together what just happened. Hell of a way to end an otherwise great vacation,