South African Activist: Space Shortage Is Severe

Inequalities within the Black community in South Africa are largely the result of a severe shortage of living space, a Cape Town anthropologist told a packed lecture room in Longfellow Hall last night.

In Radcliffe's seventh annual Rama Mehta Lecture, University of Cape Town researcher and political activist Mamphela Aletta Ramphele said space constraints have created a system that gives adult male Bantus unequal control over other Blacks living in work hostels.

The government gives beds to the male Bantus, who then bring their families to live with them.

"Apartheid is merely a symptom," said Ramphele. "We need to be focusing on the fundamentals of power in that society."

Ramphele described the squalor of the hostels, most of which provide only 16 beds for as many as 38 residents. Such hostels often have one toilet and one kitchen, she said.

In this limited world, power is based on access to a bed--access that is legally restricted to males, according to Ramphele. She said that the issue of space therefore determines power relations of race, class, gender and age.

Ramphele asked the audience to consider the nature of organizations and clubs to which they belong and to reflect on the parallels between their situation and those of Black South Africans.

"I invite all of you to dream, even if dreaming seems impossible, because history demands us to do so," she said.

Ramphele, a "distinguished visitor" at the Bunting Institute, was named South African Woman of the Year in 1983 for her social work at Lenyenye. Next week, she will begin a national tour to promote her new book,Uprooting Poverty in South Africa, co-written by Francis W. Wilson.