They call it ”the border”: the broad, snaking railway track cutting through a grimy section of the Cape Flats townships. On one side live blacks, on the other mixed-race coloureds.
Dumped here by the apartheid government under segregation, little has changed to integrate communities on the sandblown plains 40km from Cape Town where grinding poverty is the only common denominator.
In Gugulethu, the black side of the track, Nomvuso Sidumo stands outside her shack made of a mishmash of materials, frowning at the suggestion of greater integration.
”No, that side is for the coloureds only. I didn’t see the blacks staying there,” she said. ”We are still separated because you can’t see white people staying in shacks.”
Racial disparities inherited from apartheid are still visible, even as South Africa heads into its fourth democratic elections on Wednesday.
On the Manenberg side, a bleak and deadly place ruled by gangs and drugs, overcrowded blocks of shoddy flats are interspersed by suburban-style homes — showing the preference given to the lighter-skinned people under segregation.
People of mixed-race were classified as ”coloured” under apartheid laws, and are the largest population in Cape Town.
Winston Baadjies (32) says little has changed 15 years after the world hailed a newly democratic South Africa as the Rainbow Nation.
”Basically it’s still the same. Nobody is coming together they are still living separately, blacks on that side, coloureds on this side and whites more in the upper class area.”
David McDonald, a professor at Canada’s Queens University who spent 15 years studying segregation in Cape Town, said the problem is nationwide, but that inequality in the city was ”among the worst in the world”.
He attributes this to the ”economic and spatial character of segregation” and its very visual nature with the wealthy, white and cosmopolitan city of Cape Town in stark contrast to shacks that surround it.
”Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Jakarta all have extreme poverty and wealth, but what makes Cape Town and South African cities in general so unequal is the extent of the physical segregation,” he said.
”This is partly a legacy of apartheid with the highly spatialised character of apartheid planning … which has very much been perpetuated by post-apartheid planning.”
While walking through the bustling city centre of Cape Town reveals a mixed and colourful crowd, the racial profile of poverty means most still return home to either a white, black or coloured area.
”There has been so little change it is depressing,” McDonald said.
The physical separation also affects access to decent schools, healthcare and other services.
”When you look at the quality of infrastructure [in black and coloured areas] it’s pathetic. Roads aren’t maintained properly and garbage collection isn’t done nearly as frequently,” said McDonald.
”Huge state resources are going into upgrading already wealthy areas … poor areas are receiving a cup in the bucket. People just don’t realise the incredible disparity.”
Others argue gains are being made, however slowly, through policies of affirmative action, and new housing developments which tend to be more mixed.
”Today desegregation has gone fastest in the millionaire and middle class suburbs where the new black section of the middle class is moving in,” said Keith Gottschalk, a political scientist at the University of the Western Cape.
In the coastal suburb of Camps Bay, hip, wealthy and mostly white people gather at sunset to sip on cocktails, served mostly by waiters of colour.
This is a world away for 27-year-old Siyabonga Vokwana back in Gugulethu where barefoot children in threadbare clothes play with tyres and marbles amid rubble and mud.
”Yes, we are still separate. There are the white people on the other side you see. Those guys they don’t want black people to stay there and then us we are afraid to go there to leave our black people here.” — Sapa-AFP