CCWC mag Sept-Oct 2020_web

Dharavi slum, Mumbai, by B. Christmas, 2011
Millions of people still live in the South
African townships. The picture I took
in Soweto (South West Township),
Johannesburg, where one million
people live mainly in tin shanties
that flood whenever it rains. When
work colleagues smell smoke on you,
they know you live in a shanty with a
small firepit for cooking. When I was
in Cape Town, several xenophobic
killings occurred; these involve attacks
on people who migrate from poorer
parts of Africa, sometimes starving,
and are viewed as threatening to take
work from people who already live in
South Africa – so they are attacked and
sometimes killed. Undoing the impacts
of colonization has many similarities
from South Africa to Canada, but there
are also many differences. In Canada
a growing community of immigrants
from England and France eventually
marginalized the relatively small
Indigenous population. In South Africa
the opposite occurred as a small white
community tried, through extreme
violence, to oppress a much larger
black Indigenous population. In both
countries, however, the Europeans were
motivated to stay and keep reaping the
natural resources for export.
For the most part, however, the standard
of living in Canada is high and
people are immigrating here from all
over the world. The Canadian government
is currently expecting one million
people to immigrate to Canada over a
three-year period from 2019 to 2021.
Most will have increased security and
freedom in Canada. Many are highly
educated, with credentials that are unrecognized
when they move; many will
work in the convenience store industry.
Many will experience greater freedom to
participate in democracy than they had
in their country of origin. In Hong Kong,
for instance, people are still fighting for
the right to vote. In 2014 I was there for
a conference, to speak about my first
book on policing, and the protests were
20 / SEPTEMBER OCTOBER ISSUE