Township ideals? Nuance is important
Township ideals? Nuance is important
Last week the Department of Housing convened a “pre-plenary” session regarding its social contract for rapid housing delivery. In the course of the proceedings, there was an interesting moment which I think sheds far more light than its authors would like on just what we’re building through our housing focus in
The moment arose when the National Home Builders Registration Council presented a short video of 3-D computer-generated graphics of what an integrated settlement developed in line with the new Department of Housing policy (Breaking New Ground) would look like. The video showed the inside and outside views of 2-bedroom, 3-bedroom and 5-storey walk-up units and how these three models would together be laid out in a newly established township. As the viewer follows the camera through the various units, seeing stereotypical black families eating, playing, and working in units with high quality finishes, traditional ‘kwela’ music plays in the background.
It’s all very motherhood-and-apple-pie in a South African sort of way, but with one problem. The song that is playing in the background is Meadowlands, a song written in 1956 by Strike Vilakazi as a comment on the forced removal of Sophiatown’s residents to the newly created
The question in my mind was this – after 12 years of democracy and two major housing policy developments are we now aspiring to the apartheid settlements of the past? Meadowlands was reviled as an entirely non-integrated community (it was created explicitly to destroy the integration of Sophiatown), with substandard, “matchbox” houses that had limited access to services and amenities. I wonder if the makers of the video even noticed their slip – after all, the actual song has quite an upbeat tune. It scares me that they didn’t.
(For an interesting background to the song and the story of forced removals, visit http://www.writingstudio.co.za/page744.html, which includes a background to the play “Sophiatown” which featured the song).
Another website reports: “The destruction of Sophiatown and the removal of its people to Meadowlands and other new parts of Soweto provided (sub)texts for a number of such songs, the most famous of which was ‘Meadowlands’, composed in 1955 by Troubadour ‘talent scout’ Strike Vilakazi and sung unforgettably by songbird Nancy Jacobs. Relying on a direct, unannotated translation, the government believed the song supported their removals programme. Black record buyers, however, thought the opposite, and ‘Meadowlands’ became a protest anthem against the Sophiatown removals.” Perhaps our government is not as transformed as we’d thought? The NHBRC is a government-owned agency…
