A Different World

Not even 10 minutes from our home!

I always knew DuNoon was a shitty place, as I saw it growing from 3 or 4 corrugated iron huts to a sprawling township with taxi ranks and bus terminals, school, sports grounds and more and more people every day. Now they even have their own suburb on the other side of the road. This one I saw sprouting like a mushroom, in even shorter time.

In this documentary I take you inside a South African township. It’s estimated that over 12 million South African’s live in a township and over the next 24 hours we are going to explore the ins and outs of daily life in these areas. From street food and local farm lands to scam artists and traditional healers. We will also be looking into some of the biggest challenges people in these areas face on a daily basis.

Most of the people living there are Xhosa from the Eastern Cape (ex Transkei), one of, if not the, poorest province. They stream into the Cape, lured by stories and rumours about endless job opportunities and money for free. Too bad there are no jobs – not for them! All the good jobs are already snatched up by Zimbabweans, which are much smarter and work harder and better. And speak better English as well. That renders our South African blacks unemployable for the most part.

The municipality provides them with primitive building materials but can’t do much more. And we normal white folks are watching the increasing slumification of this formerly beautiful area. Hubby and me are seriously considering moving somewhere else, maybe even away from SA. Namibia is interesting …