An exploration of family, community, slum culture, and belonging in The Kraal Slum in downtown Cape Town, South Africa.
The “townships,” “districts,” and “informal settlements” in South Africa are all more properly referred to as slums—but the euphemisms sounds a whole lot better. Slum communities are mostly inhabited by “black” and “coloured” people. The government relocated non-whites during the apartheid years situating them in ramshackle housing, isolated areas, and out of sight and mind of white South Africans.
Slum communities do not receive government servicing like non-slum neighbourhoods. Slum residents must make their communities work and run on their own.
Slum communities have attracted unenviable reputations, but we know that painting all with the same brush is both inaccurate and unfair.
The folks that I met with in The Kraal were animated, passionate, kind, and warm. Yet, as they became more comfortable, they revealed how heartbroken they were to be forgotten humans in Cape Town. Despite their circumstance, they rise each day, grind, and struggle to make ends meet, and somehow, they smile all the while.
To live in a slum is to truly understand what it is to be a part of community. While South African slums are segregated from middle-class white communities and alienated from the heartbeat of the larger community, slum residents through their own efforts and resilience find love, belonging, and care amongst each other. Bonded together as family, The Kraal residents bring meaning and purpose to each other’s lives.
Yet another African community that exemplifies community, belonging, and the collective good. The contrast between African communities and western ones couldn’t be more stark…
