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.