Joona

As I sit here I find it hard to say anything,

What can I say about the rich and the poor?

What can I say about the hunger?

What can I say about all that is wrong?

The leaders, bosses, people that work,

people that don’t

When I arrived the sun was shining, everything was clean. A taxi was waiting for us and everything went smoothly. Soon however as we speeded through the roads of Cape Town I saw a glimpse under the mask. Countless shacks made out of what seemed like scrap metal and wood. There they were standing in middle of a modern city, something was out of place.

Next few days were spent studying the situation in South-Africa. The gap between the rich and the poor that is the greatest in the world, the labour movement, the organisations, how the government is messed up. The rich earn senseless amounts of money and the poor can’t even afford food every day. To me, the situation feels sickening.

How can the government let this happen?

South-Africa is a rich country, with mines and land to support its people but no, money flows in the bank vaults of the richest of the rich. The whole system supports inequality. Public schools in the poor areas are being demolished while the public schools in the rich areas get support. It feels like the government itself is planning to destroy the people, planning to destroy the country.

Then weekend came.

We spent the weekend doing tourist things, we went on a guided tour, shark diving, restaurants. As I knew the truth about the situation in this country all of these things felt like they were a mask hiding the discontent the government causes, as if they were ashamed of their people.

Monday we started out internship in WWMP (Workers World Media Productions) with Lunga guiding us.

That day, we drove around Khayelitsha we could see how things really work there. Even though it wasn’t a busy hour there were people everywhere trying to make a living in middle of the shacks. The amount of poor people there is hard to understand, they have the same amount of people living there in that township as there’s people living in whole of Finland.

We ate outside in Khayelitsha meat that was cooked before us over an open fire and then we went to WWMP’s office to make fliers for a film screening that was coming tomorrow. In the office we joined a study circle and it became clearer that people are very discontent about the state of this country.

Tuesday came and we started by taking another circle though Khayelitsha and going to a local museum of Labour.

The museum had stories of people who came to Cape Town after work, they told about poverty, longing for distant home and lack of personal space. After looking through the museum we went to an old worker’s hostel where people lived packed in small, dark rooms as they were designed for only one person, but with no place to put family in the workers had to fit their families in these hostels, causing lack of personal space and privacy.

We used local minibus as we went to eat. We ate chicken that was not a normal factory produced overgrown chicken that is more common today it was a “real” chicken. The place we ate was made out of a container, and it was full of people, laughter, singing and speaking. It shows me not everything is so dark and bad in Khayelitsha while it suffers from poverty the people are in general happier than people in Finland. People in Khayelitsha sing and laugh while they work and try to employ themselves, you don’t hear that in Finland.

We took a minibus back to Lungas car and we dished out fliers in a rush. We just stopped the car by the people, gave a flier and rushed on.

Back at the office we started setting chairs and equipment down for film screening that was about to come, however it turned out that only a couple of people showed up and it turned to be a study circle. When we talked people had hard time trying to believe that things can be so different, that government could actually work for the people.

After a long exchange of thoughts we went to a local radio station to be interviewed. However they gave us only very short air time.

After the radio interview we went to a pub nearby Lunga’s house. The music was loud and there were a lot of people. At first, every eye turned towards us as we were in black area but it didn’t take very long to be welcomed there. The mood was relaxed and everyone was talking to everyone, very different to pubs in Finland.

Wednesday we were picked up by Lunga from the WWMP office and we drove to the centre of the wine production and had a long walk to farm workers union office. The wine farm workers condition is so bad, that they are basically slaves to the owner of the wine farm. They get paid so little they can’t move away from the farm, and those who are seasonal workers will have very long walk each day to work as they can’t afford transportation.

After that we drove to an informal farm made out of scrap metal and wood. Then we drove to centre of Cape Town and met women from Call centre. They had found their own union.

After speaking with them for a good while about the problems they face we drove to Community house, drank down cups of coffee very fast and picked up some audio tools for a seminar we were in hurry to.

The seminar was about closing down of a school in township. While I was sitting there in the front row I could feel the strong feelings rushing out behind me, people were furious and rightly so. The seminar stretched and stretched until we got out half past nine in the evening.

We had a very busy three days, a lot things happened and many things were seen.  Most of the people in Cape Town live in poverty, the rich hoard the riches and poor will get poorer unless something is done. However I think there’s something we should learn from these people. They have close relationship to their families and people around them, that is how they survive the oppression.