Poverty Tour or Progress Tour

               I have now taken Langa’s cultural center Guga S'Thebe’s neighborhood tour four times. It always leaves a mark. It is always uncomfortable. It always incites guilt, sorrow, and anger.

              We began at the Dompas museum, housed in an old courthouse used to process neighborhood violations. In the nineteenth century, Langa was a place to house migrant labor; but later, after the Group Relocations Act, Langa was designated a township for Blacks only, and people were brought to the courthouse and jailed if they failed to have the Dompas, which you couldn’t get if you weren’t registered with a company in Langa, and you couldn’t be registered with a company in Langa if you were a woman. If you were from another township, you would need a special pass to come into Langa. Otherwise, jail.
              Our guide wanted us to see the continued hardship following the many violences done to Black South Africans after a colonial project which continually dispossessed the native peoples, and then, with a government spread thin, which gave them far too many opportunities to stay and wait in limbo. The guide in the back of our tour had both given us historical context for Langa but also whispered that our forward guide was giving us the poverty tour rather than the progress tour we should have had instead.
              We reflected in Guga S'Thebe, a beautifully built campus for the arts—ceramics, music, painting, and more—with studios for creating and teaching artists learning to make a living turning discarded plastics and wax cartons into saleable art.
              Our student Gabby said going from the childcare centers in one of the blocks and having the best fifteen minutes of her life with the children to then walking out and seeing where those children lived was not something she had words for.
              I told students I know they came out of that neighborhood tour with many feelings, the weight of what they saw, their voyeuristic implication in what might have felt like viewing exhibits in a zoo. But they have reasons for inviting you into their homes and showing you how they live, I said. They want you to witness and speak what you saw. That doesn’t make it easier.
              But I want you to think of all the things that are true—Gabby’s joy and hard witness, the progress tour we might as easily have taken, this place of vitality and art all around us. This is true also.     You need to look with honest eyes, not polite eyes—don’t be so polite you don’t notice the trash everywhere, but ask why. Notice honestly; and deeply ask why. Yes, have all the feelings. But then, open your hearts; observe with honest eyes; ask why; and use it to see to next possible steps; and where and when you can, organize, stand each other up, and act.