And the crowd grows restless

I don’t know how much news coverage this is getting stateside, but this week municipal workers all across South Africa have been holding demonstrations and organizing strikes. Things in Cape Town are much less intense than other cities, and it hasn’t been very disruptive yet (in terms of our daily routines, we’ve only faced general precautions about staying out of the city center at certain hours of the day). I think things are more tense in a some of the township areas. Yesterday it was sort of interesting to hear people shouting and marching on the street outside our office and see police crowded on every street corner, and leaving work there was a big crowd of workers on the street hanging about with signs and sticks (the signless sticks were a bit disconcerting, but people weren’t paying the least bit of attention to us and it didn’t feel threatning in any way). Unfortunately in some scenarios the strikers aren’t acting very intelligently - dumping over trash cans and throwing garbage on people, destroying property, etc. is not the best way to get the public on your side.

I actually think it’s very good that people are starting to try and hold Zuma and the ANC accountable for change, as opposed to placidly standing by as elected officials make all these promises and then in the end just buy themselves new cars. Of course politics here are complicated by the fact that it is basically a one party system with everyone feeling they have to vote for the ANC for various reasons, not least of which revolves around them having been the liberating party. I read some depressing statistics in the Cape Times yesterday: 25% of Cape Town residents live in informal settlements, 22% are unemployed, and 15% are HIV positive. The weird thing is that you can still live in this city without ever knowing that – if you have money, isolating yourself in a comfortable bubble is more than feasible.

The most frustrating thing about all of this is that it is unbearably hard to find good news coverage on these issues – South African newspapers are consistently about a day behind, stories are never in depth, and our TV news mostly comes out of Joburg so you never know what applies to Cape Town. So if anyone in the U.S. knows more than I do, let me know...