Call These Things Houses? Don't Think So

Nearly 50 years ago, before he was arrested on treason charges, Nelson Mandela lived in what is described to liberal tourists as a "humble little house" in Orlando, Soweto (left). "How shameful the conditions were that the Nationalists made the blacks live under!" they are told as they gingerly make their way through the sturdy little shrine.



The blacks of South Africa today should be so lucky. The best RDP house (see this beauty at left) is as small as the garden shed behind Mandela's "humble little house". Why does no one point out that RDP houses (government keeps telling us they have built 1,5 million of them, as if that's a good thing) are way worse than Nat housing?



They are small single rooms made of cement blocks (see hundreds at Kokstad, left) and at best serve as temporary shelter for a couple of months until they fall down. Is this what freedom is all about? Are blacks so dumb they are going to suck this up indefinitely? Going by the Zimbabwean example - probably.