Tutu's dreams fade in new whitewash

For his 80th birthday, a spiritual homecoming. Desmond Tutu was back at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town, the 19th-century church of colonial origins that he personally transformed into a fortress of resistance to apartheid.

"Back then, at a time when there was barbed wire outside and police were not at his side, he stood at this pulpit and dared speak truth to power, truth to evil," mused Bono, the Irish singer, in one of two birthday events held for the archbishop emeritus at the cathedral.

Bono went on the describe Tutu and Nelson Mandela as "one of the great one-two punches in the universe". Others praised the archbishop as the de-facto leader of the struggle when Mandela and comrades were in exile or jailed on Robben Island.

But as Tutu defied his years to dance with the Soweto Gospel Choir, half an hour's drive away, another churchman had just completed a month-long hunger strike. Xola Skosana is pastor of the Way of Life church in Khayelitsha, Cape Town's biggest township. He went without food throughout September to protest at the treatment of the poor.

"It's interesting to me that a woman would make up a bed in a five-star hotel then come home to sleep on the floor," Skosana said from his rudimentary office.

"Or cook the best meal for someone else and come back and live off a slice of bread.

"Black people feel this is the old South Africa. If you come to Cape Town, you've come to the last post of the colonial history of this country. Politically and economically, white people are in power. In other parts of South Africa, black people don't have to wake up and say, 'Yes baas', and feel psychologically oppressed. In Cape Town, they still have to deal with that attitude."

Nobom Nobele, 29, washing clothes by hand, says her shack has no electricity or running water, forcing the family to use candles and a paraffin stove and walk 10 minutes to a friend's home every time they need to use a toilet. Her children, 12 and 4, have rashes from unclean water.

"The Government makes promises at the time they want your vote, but after that they forget," she said.

"There's been no change since 1994. We're still hungry, we're still living in a dirty place."

Nearby, some teenagers were playing football in a yard. Sipho Ndindi, 16, who wants to be a doctor one day, says he sometimes travels to the upmarket suburb of Claremont. "It's like I'm on the other side of the world. But I wouldn't say it's unfair because some of them worked for it.

"There is still racism in this country under the carpet. When you walk down the street here, do you see any white man or white girl? Only black people are in this shit."

There are efforts to rescue Khayelitsha, with government-built houses and public services striving to keep up with its expanding population. But many still live in shacks where life expectancy is low and HIV infections and drug addiction are rampant.

Police figures show there were 125 murders and 252 sex crimes last year in Khayelitsha, where under-reporting is often an issue. In Claremont, there were six murders and 18 sex crimes. In Cape Town, more than one in four people live in shanty towns and more than one in five is unemployed.

For Skosana, these people are the city's lifeblood but see none of its rewards.

"Cape Town is largely for the benefit and entertainment of tourists. Khayelitsha has a million people who must travel long distances to go to the city every day to work, come back at sunset and live in squalor."

He blames a failure of political will. "There is a numbing effect, a state of hypnosis. There is always something that postpones the agenda of the poor and takes their place as the most central issue.

"I think the Bishop Tutu of 1994 would echo my sentiments."

Western Cape is the only one of South Africa's nine provinces not controlled by the party of Mandela, the ANC, which labels the ruling Democratic Alliance (DA) a front for the wealthy white elite. Earlier this year, Zuma described Cape Town as a "racist" place with an "extremely apartheid system".

But the DA contends that Cape Town is the best-run city in the country, with uncorrupted financial management, infrastructure spending and public service delivery that is the envy of its counterparts.

The city has a long history of immigration, including white Afrikaners, white descendants of British colonialists, "coloured" people and a significant Muslim population.

Uniquely among South Africa's major cities, black Africans are in the minority.

Cape Town is finding economic liberation harder than the political kind. Centuries of colonial oppression and decades of pernicious segregation are a burden likely to last for generations.

Andrew Boraine, chief executive of the Cape Town Partnership, an intermediary body between government and business, said: "Of course it's changed and of course there are huge things that have stayed the same.

"The issue is, how are we going to change it? How do we learn from other cities in Brazil and India with problems of inequality?

"As Desmond Tutu always said, winning freedom is one thing - using it is twice as hard."

Observer