Coronavirus exposes 'brutal inequality' of S.Africa townships

By Kim Harrisberg

JOHANNESBURG, June 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The coronavirus is hitting South Africa's mainly black townships harder than areas that were once the exclusive preserve of white people, according to new data that highlights the lasting impact of apartheid-era housing policies.

More than two decades after the end of white minority rule, South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the World Bank, with urban areas starkly divided along racial lines.

Townships in the Western Cape province, South Africa's main coronavirus hotspot, are suffering particularly high rates of infection, government tracking shows.

Nearly 12% of all infections in the Western Cape are in Khayelitsha, the largest township in Cape Town, even though it has just 6% of the province's population.

By contrast Stellenbosch, known for its winelands and a university town, has just 1% of Western Cape's cases and makes up about 4% of its population.

Other hotspots include Mitchells Plain township, which has 9% of infections.

"We are seeing townships become virus hotspots because we haven't dismantled the apartheid city," said Edward Molopi, a researcher with housing and human rights charity the Socio-Economic Research Institute in Johannesburg.

South Africans have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest police brutality in townships in an echo of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.

This article originally appeared on Thomson Reuters Foundation

Photo: Wikimedia