April Matlala, who lost most of his home to a fire three years ago, got a big surprise when he saw who was moving into the shack next door. The new residents of Mamelodi, an impoverished township near Pretoria in South Africa, were young, middle class and white.
“They wanted to experience a different culture from where they’re living,” reasoned Matlala, 44, pressing the neck of a beer bottle to his lips. “In South Africa we have about 11 cultures. If you don’t experience all of them, you’re not a real South African.”
Julian and Ena Hewitt, both 34, and their daughters Julia, 4, and Jessica, 2, left their four-bedroom house, livestock and swimming pool in a gated community to move just seven miles down the road into a 10-foot by 10-foot shack with no electricity, a communal water tap and a pit toilet. They stayed there a month, living on about $292.00 (£189), the average income of a black family, and blogged the experience.
Their August sojourn in a “new country,’ as they put it, has been lauded as a brave attempt to cross racial divides and draw attention to the savage juxtaposition of rich and poor in South Africa.
But it has also led to accusations of self-serving “poverty tourism” that could offer only superficial insights into black township life.
The Hewitts, who are well-travelled and used to roughing it, got the idea from India where two young professionals spent a month living in poverty on the premise that “empathy is crucial to democracy.”
Ena, an estate agent, said: “If you can’t have empathy and understanding of how your fellow man lives, then it’s impossible for this country to move forward. We want our girls to grow up here, not in the U.K., so we want them to know and understand the realities of this country.”
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