Yet South Africa’s first black democratic leaders, wary of repeating the failures of previous post-colonial African presidents, focused less on transforming the lives of the country’s poorest citizens than on keeping life relatively easy for the wealthy whites who lived in leafy suburbs far from the townships. When apartheid did end in the early 1990s, one of the main promises made by the country’s new leaders was that black South Africans would finally be able to get out of the townships-or that they would be transformed into more livable places. The hatred bottled up in such language choices was unleashed in the 1976 Soweto uprising, a huge protest against the forcible use of Afrikaans in schools that helped hasten apartheid’s unraveling. Using the term was associated with seeking favor with the Afrikaner oppressors. In that period, ekasi was associated with those who were considered “relaxed”-a pejorative for black people who didn’t seem to care enough about the liberation struggle. Older black South Africans, those who were adults during the late stages of apartheid, didn’t hear ekasi uttered as much by their own peers. A form of this word was eventually adopted into Zulu. From the start of the 20th century, when the first segregated townships were formed, speakers of Afrikaans tended to refer to any given one of them simply as a “location,” or lokasie. It originated from a word in Afrikaans, the language of the largely Dutch-descended white minority that ran apartheid South Africa until the arrival of majority rule in 1994.

It’s a term of affection, even as it connotes the negative, even shameful, sides of contemporary black South African life in this way, it works a little like the English word “ghetto.” Ekasi represents the swagger and boastful flamboyance that often accompany the crime that plagues contemporary South African townships-whether the sleekness of Thebe’s friend’s gun or the weekly party where his other friends do wheelies in the Audis they’ve stolen from richer, white neighborhoods.Īnother paradox emerges from ekasi’s origin. The word suggests authentic, real, and the heart of black South Africa.Īt its heart are paradoxes. But it also functions the way the word “soul” or “home-cooked” does in front of “food” in American vernacular.

Technically, ekasi is just the Zulu term for “township,” a segregated neighborhood where black people were forced to live under apartheid.

Definiton of townships south africa