Views of Inequality
By Emily Millen

“Leave any bags or wallets you have at the office, get out if they catch your American accent, and try not to get yourself killed,” weren’t instructions I’d ever been given in any journalism class at Emory before, and certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to hear on the first day of a summer journalism internship at a daily newspaper in Cape Town, South Africa. Said with a wry smile that revealed she was only half-kidding, the news editor of the Cape Times sent one of our intern colleagues to cover an anti-drug rally and gave us our first informal introduction to covering the news in Cape Town. Although I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, this wasn’t at all how I pictured our introduction to the newsroom. Like most Americans who have never visited Africa before, my perceptions had been shaped mostly from PBS documentaries, some summer
reading novels, and the Angelina Jolie adoption trail. However, this was about to change.

This summer kicked off a pilot collaboration of the nine-year-old Interdisciplinary Internship in South Africa program and Global Health initiative. Twenty students, the largest in the program’s history, participated in the trip from June 16 to July 22.

The Emory Journalism Program has been taking students to Cape Town for month-long internships since 1998. The interdisciplinary internship program allows students to choose between interning in the news media or working for non-governmental organizations, schools, or community centers. Global health students attended a course on South African health issues, taught by Peter Brown, a medical anthropologist, and tutored students at Cape Town community centers.

As journalism interns, we had the opportunity to cover local news in Cape Town – from video game releases to tuberculosis outbreaks. Our identities quickly betrayed by our American accents, we were handed off to public relations people eager to get us off the phone. Albeit humbling, the experience revealed how news priorities are handled in a foreign newsroom and offered a glimpse into the infrastructure of South African politics. With a circulation targeted towards the white South African population, the Cape Times newsroom was composed nearly entirely of white reporters and editors. While here, we were given almost complete freedom with what we wanted to write if we had a convincing pitch – an enticing opportunity for most journalism interns.

Although the internship consumed much of our time, we were given ample opportunities to explore on our own and discover the beauty of Cape Town. After a few days, I found that the sharp contrast here between the city’s overwhelming physical beauty and its disparate social situation made the experience even more poignant. As we found out, stories of triumph over adversity in Africa are about as ubiquitous as postcards of Table Mountain. The most striking moment for me was with a black cab driver named Henry. After fleeing the violence in Rwanda nearly 12 years ago, Henry came to Cape Town looking to start over in the newly desegregated South Africa. However, as a result of the increasing crime rates and de facto segregation that has gripped many parts of the city in the post-apartheid era, Henry wanted to move again. “If you ask anyone in the townships, they will tell you that they still wish there was apartheid,” he argued. “When there was apartheid it was safe. Most people want to trade freedom for safety.” In a country only 13 years removed from apartheid, it was a sobering reminder of the many challenges that the nation still faces.

On one planned weekend excursion, our group spent a night at a home-stay in Khayelitsha – a township in the Cape Flats. As the pre-apartheid Group Areas Act restricted most black and colored citizens from living inside the city of Cape Town, Khayelitsha was established in 1985 to house an expanding population. After apartheid ended in 1994, the townships began offering township tours – mainly to white, affluent European tourists in a program format that felt a bit like “poverty in a fishbowl” for citizens of the first world. We were a little apprehensive about staying overnight in a township that so closely resembled the scenes of poverty and crime we had seen on the PBS documentaries. After spending the morning living out the postcard scenes from Cape Town on a hike up Table Mountain, our group filed off the commuter van, decked out in North Face fleeces with L.L. Bean duffel bags. Fortunately, our apprehensions were quickly alleviated with a serenade of “molos” and “welcomes” from our host families.

My host was a single mother with an 18-month-old son and a 7-year-old nephew that she took care of in her two-bedroom flat. She spoke about what it was like working as a teacher in the township, how her neighbors were as good as family, and how one of the American students she hosted liked to spend late nights drinking at the shebeens in the neighborhood. Her nephew filled in for man-of-the-house. He cooked, cleaned, and babysat for hours while his aunt was at work. As I watched in amazement as the child performed household tasks that some of my friends back at Emory struggle with, I recalled the child I babysat last summer who wasn’t allowed to be at the playground unsupervised or had to be pleaded with to adhere to a bedtime. While we plodded through conversations that were sometimes hindered by language and cultural barriers, my host continued to smile as we spoke, reassuring me that I belonged.

When I got back to the United States, I started thinking about what it means to be an American and an Emory student. We’re lucky – lucky to visit places as beautiful as Cape Town, lucky to grow up in a country with such a high standard of living, and lucky to have glimpsed the reality of life in Africa. For myself, and the other students that were on the program, Africa is more than just a celebrity charity case or the Gap’s PRODUCT (RED). It’s a scarred country that’s still finding its identity, and a country that we were lucky to experience.

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Emily Millen is a junior from West Virginia majoring in journalism and political science.