2023-08-26 01:02:46
Leandro PrazeresBBC News Brasil Envoy to Johannesburg
August 25, 2023
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The BRICS summit is being held at a convention center in Sandton, a wealthy area of Johannesburg that is six kilometers from Alexandra, the poor town where Mandela lived in his youth
In 1941, a poor 23-year-old black South African arrived in the city of Alexandra, neighboring Johannesburg, in search of a new life and a place to live. Shortly thereafter, he rented a small room with a tin roof without heat, running water or electricity.
“Although the city council built some beautiful buildings, (Alexandra) could rightly be described as a slum, a living testament to the negligence of the authorities. The streets were unpaved and dirty and filled with starving, malnourished children running around half naked,” he described. , decades later in a book.
The young man’s name was Nelson Mandela.
Eighty-two years after the anti-apartheid leader and former South African president who died in 2012 set foot in Alexandra for the first time, the city remains one of the most precarious areas of Johannesburg and the tin roofs remain one of the hallmarks of the place .
And thirty-three years after the end of the official regime of segregation between whites and blacks in South Africa, the country is, according to a World Bank report last year, the most unequal country in the world. While the World Laboratory of Inequality, directed by the Frenchman Thomas Piketty, states that the country has changed little in terms of income concentration in three decades.
The poverty in Mandela’s Alexandra contrasts brutally with the wealth of the stage chosen by the South African government to host the 15th BRICS Summit.
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The meeting that brought together the leaders of Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa this week took place in Sandton, an area in the metropolitan region of Johannesburg. The place is popularly known as the “most expensive square meter in Africa” and is six kilometers away from Alexandra.
There, tin roofs give way to glass-enclosed skyscrapers with a modern design that house multi-nationals with billionaire revenues such as mining companies such as Anglo Ashanti and technology companies.
The unpaved streets described by Mandela give way to wide lanes on which official cars have paraded over the last few days carrying presidents, ministers and businessmen from the Bric countries.
It is in this area, for example, that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and his entourage stayed.
A few meters from the convention center where the summit is held, there is a commercial complex known as Mandela Square (or Mandela Square).
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Statue of Nelson Mandela graces Mandela Square, a shopping complex in Sandton, Johannesburg
And it is there that another resident of Alexandra watches the movement generated by the Brics while waiting tables at a trendy Indian food restaurant.
Richard Malekano, 33, is a waiter and has lived in Alexandra for three years. He used to live in Cosmo City, another poor community in Johannesburg, but moved to be closer to his new job.
The restaurant where he works is in front of a metal statue of Mandela measuring approximately four meters in height.
“Did you know that Mandela lived where I live?” he asks.
Between one course and another, he says that life and the landscape in Alexandra seem to have changed little in relation to Mandela’s time.
“The streets are still dirty and we have to face blackouts all the time”, he laments.
Richard says he earns around 7,000 rand (local currency) a month, the equivalent of just over R$1,800.
With no money to own his own house, he rented a room from a tenant who built a property and divided it into nine small rooms with access to only one bathroom. Richard says he feels lucky.
“I feel lucky in Alexandra. My house, at least, has concrete walls,” he says.
He says he didn’t have the opportunity to study because, as the oldest, he ended up having to go to work and help pay for his sisters’ studies.
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Luxury car shop in Sandton, known as ‘Africa’s most expensive square meter’
Alexandra has a reputation for being a violent place and Richard says he knows that. Even so, he claims to feel safe in his neighborhood.
“I think I feel safe there because I’m poor. If you’re rich and you go to Alexandra, you might feel insecure. But when you’re poor like me, you think: even if I die, what do I have to lose? ’ says Richard.
During the conversation, a South African aeronautics jet makes a low flight over Sandton and he reflected on the number of politicians, businessmen and journalists in that affluent part of South Africa.
“Here in Sandton, most of the workforce lives in Alexandra. You (journalists) focus on who is coming here, but you don’t focus on who lives in Alexandra. It makes you angry and it hurts. It’s a scar. If you look, It’s full of police on the streets these days, but it’s not always like that,” Richard said.
Combating inequality has not gained spotlight
Thirty-three years after the end of apartheid, Richard says he doesn’t feel included in his own country.
“As Africans, we are still not free. We don’t go places not because we can’t, but because we don’t have the money to go. You don’t eat something not because you don’t want to, but because you don’t have the money to that,” he said.
In South Africa, the richest 1% hold 55% of the country’s wealth, according to a 2022 report by Piketty’s World Inequality Laboratory. A result just a little better than that of Brazil, which is also among the most unequal countries in the world and is the second most concentrated in income among the Brics (the richest 1% in Brazil accounts for 48.1% of total wealth).
“Although democratic rights were extended to the entire population after the end of apartheid in 1991, extreme economic inequalities persisted and were exacerbated,” says last year’s study.
“The richest 10% group is made up of 60% white South Africans, who represent only 10% or less of the total population”, informs the text.
Social inequality and the need to reduce poverty in the Brics countries was one of the themes that appeared in the leaders’ speeches during the summit.
“The most obvious sign that the planet is becoming a more unequal place is the growth of hunger and poverty. This is unacceptable. Despite their magnitude, these problems are not addressed with the urgency they deserve,” Lula said in a statement at the end of the meeting.
But inequality was far from attracting the main spotlight. What dominated the summit throughout the week was the geopolitical chess that resulted in the expansion of the bloc.
The group announced that it has invited Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Argentina, Iran and Argentina to join the group from 2024.
The announcement was the most anticipated moment of the meeting and was made at the Sandton Convention Centre. Just over 500 meters from where Richard serves his dishes.
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