A Visit To Slum Area Essay

[Oswald Lemus]

Slumtourism, also known as poverty tourism, makes my skin crawl. The idea of turning impoverished homes into a tourist attraction reminded me of my decision to forgo the DMZ at the border of North and South Korea.

Mfundo leads us up the hill for a sweeping view of Soweto. In the distance, we can see the World Cup training stadium and the iconic electric generators with a 100-metre bungee jump strung between them.

At the end of the tour, we share traditional locally brewed beer and an icy fruit smoothie from clay bowls. Over the open fire, poike stew simmers in black pots: chicken, beef, vegetable and chicken feet.

After exploring Soweto on foot, we visited the Apartheid Museum. We spent nearly two hours reading signs, viewing old photographs and videos and learning about what life was like during segregation, and how political prisoners fought their way out of it. It was a humbling, interesting and educational experience.

Rather than making me feel like an inauthentic tourist, the Soweto walking tour and Apartheid Museum were a refreshing break from my carefree days drinking wine. They granted deeper understanding about the complex culture of the places I explored.

A very interesting article, Ali. As you know, we did not do the tour for the very reasons you mentioned, too intrusive, etc., but the walking trip seems to be quite different, connecting with the local people and not just staring at them. I am glad you found this tour, and had a meaningful experience, ( which is also what travel is about!)

When slum tourism is organised to benefit local people like it is in Lebo Sowetto baclpackers I thing it it is a very good thing to do.

When I am in Johannesburg I usually stay in Sowetto because it is the safest place in Johannesburg to stay.

The village justice system of local people in Sowetto makes it safe for tourists because they would kill anyone who harms a tourist and puts their tourism at risk. Not sure I agree with somebody being killed on my behalf, but it is unlikely to happen anyway because people in Sowetto would be afraid to attack me because of what might happen to them.

But every time that I was about to make the trip, something would interfere. At one time it was my visit by prior commitment to Ghana.3 At another time my publishers were pressing me to finish writing Stride Toward Freedom. Then along came Mrs. Izola Ware Curry. When she struck me with that Japanese letter opener on that Saturday afternoon in September as I sat autographing books in a Harlem store, she not only knocked out the travel plans that I had but almost everything else as well.

After I recovered from this near-fatal encounter and was finally released by my doctors, it occurred to me that it might be better to get in the trip to India before plunging too deeply once again into the sea of the Southern segregation struggle.

I preferred not to take this long trip alone and asked my wife and my friend, Lawrence Reddick, to accompany me. Coretta was particularly interested in the women of India and Dr. Reddick in the history and government of that great country. He had written my biography, Crusader Without Violence, and said that my true test would come when the people who knew Gandhi looked me over and passed judgment upon me and the Montgomery movement. The three of us made up a sort of 3-headed team with six eyes and six ears for looking and listening.

The Christopher Reynolds Foundation made a grant through the American Friends Service Committee to cover most of the expenses of the trip and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Montgomery Improvement Association added their support.4 The Gandhi Memorial Trust of India extended an official invitation, through diplomatic channels, for our visit.5

We missed our plane connection in Switzerland because of fog, arriving in India after a roundabout route, two days late. But from the time we came down out of the clouds at Bombay on February 10, until March 10, when we waved goodbye at the New Delhi airport, we had one of the most concentrated and eye-opening experiences of our lives. There is so much to tell that I can only touch upon a few of the high points.

Virtually every door was open to us. We had hundreds of invitations that the limited time did not allow us to accept. We were looked upon as brothers with the color of our skins as something of an asset. But the strongest bond of fraternity was the common cause of minority and colonial peoples in America, Africa and Asia struggling to throw off racialism and imperialism.

We had the opportunity to share our views with thousands of Indian people through endless conversations and numerous discussion sessions. I spoke before university groups and public meetings all over India. Because of the keen interest that the Indian people have in the race problem these meetings were usually packed. Occasionally interpreters were used, but on the whole I spoke to audiences that understood English.

The Indian people love to listen to the Negro spirituals. Therefore, Coretta ended up singing as much as I lectured. We discovered that autograph seekers are not confined to America. After appearances in public meetings and while visiting villages we were often besieged for autographs. Even while riding planes, more than once pilots came into the cabin from the cockpit requesting our signatures.

We got a good press throughout our stay. Thanks to the Indian papers, the Montgomery bus boycott was already well known in that country. Indian publications perhaps gave a better continuity of our 381-day bus strike than did most of our papers in the United States. Occasionally I meet some American fellow citizen who even now asks me how the bus boycott is going, apparently never having read that our great day of bus integration, December 21, 1956, closed that chapter of our history.

India can never forget Gandhi. For example, the Gandhi Memorial Trust (also known as the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi) collected some $130 million soon after the death of "the father of the nation." This was perhaps the largest, spontaneous, mass monetary contribution to the memory of a single individual in the history of the world. This fund, along with support from the Government and other institutions, is resulting in the spread and development of Gandhian philosophy, the implementing of his constructive program, the erection of libraries and the publication of works by and about the life and times of Gandhi. Posterity could not escape him even if it tried. By all standards of measurement, he is one of the half dozen greatest men in world history.

I was delighted that the Gandhians accepted us with open arms. They praised our experiment with the non-violent resistance technique at Montgomery. They seem to look upon it as an outstanding example of the possibilities of its use in western civilization. To them as to me it also suggests that non-violent resistance when planned and positive in action can work effectively even under totalitarian regimes.

We argued this point at some length with the groups of African students who are today studying in India.11 They felt that non-violent resistance could only work in a situation where the resisters had a potential ally in the conscience of the opponent. We soon discovered that they, like many others, tended to confuse passive resistance with non-resistance. This is completely wrong. True non-violent resistance is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflictor of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.

Non-violent resistance does call for love, but it is not a sentimental love. It is a very stern love that would organize itself into collective action to right a wrong by taking on itself suffering. While I understand the reasons why oppressed people often turn to violence in their struggle for freedom, it is my firm belief that the crusade for independence and human dignity that is now reaching a climax in Africa will have a more positive effect on the world, if it is waged along the lines that were first demonstrated in that continent by Gandhi himself.12

India is a vast country with vast problems. We flew over the long stretches, from North to South, East to West; took trains for shorter jumps and used automobiles and jeeps to get us into the less accessible places.

Most of the people are poor and poorly dressed. The average income per person is less than $70 per year. Nevertheless, their turbans for their heads, loose flowing, wrap-around dhotis that they wear instead of trousers and the flowing saries that the women wear instead of dresses are colorful and picturesque. Many Indians wear part native and part western dress.

The food shortage is so widespread that it is estimated that less than 30% of the people get what we would call three square meals a day. During our great depression of the 1930's, we spoke of "a third of a nation" being "ill-housed, ill clad and ill fed." For India today, simply change one third to two thirds in that statement and that would make it about right.

As great as is unemployment, under-employment is even greater. Seventy per cent of the Indian people are classified as agricultural workers and most of these do less than 200 days of farm labor per year because of the seasonal fluctuations and other uncertainties of mother nature. Jobless men roam the city streets.

And then there is, even here, the problem of segregation. We call it race in America; they call it caste in India. In both places it means that some are considered inferior, treated as though they deserve less.

We were surprised and delighted to see that India has made greater progress in the fight against caste "untouchability" than we have made here in our own country against race segregation. Both nations have federal laws against discrimination (acknowledging, of course, that the decision of our Supreme Court is the law of our land). But after this has been said, we must recognize that there are great differences between what India has done and what we have done on a problem that is very similar. The leaders of India have placed their moral power behind their law. From the Prime Minister down to the village councilmen, everybody declares publicly that untouchability is wrong. But in the United States some of our highest officials decline to render a moral judgment on segregation and some from the South publicly boast of their determination to maintain segregation. This would be unthinkable in India.

3a8082e126