A rest day

November 29, 2020

Steytlerville

Rest days are probably best described as work days because this is when we get the chance to deal with work matters.

However, we started today with a gentle cycle around the town, as opposed to the township, section of Steytlerville. A central pillar of apartheid, via the Group Areas Act, was keeping the towns and cities "white" and ensuring that "anderskleuriges" (literally, people of another colour) lived in townships sufficiently removed to make the whiteys think they had the place to themselves. It has been thirty years since the Group Areas Act was repealed but spatial divisions remain, largely due to the wealth gap. Demographically, Steytlerville's population is overwhelmingly what is known in South Africa as "coloured", Afrikaans speaking people of mixed race. There are a smattering of black Africans, mostly Xhosa speaking, and a similar number of people of primarily European heritage but the town itself remains predominantly "white". This is the case in most cities and towns. One wonders, sadly, how many generations it will take for it all to change.

The rest of the day was spent working.

Tomorrow will be a long, by current fitness levels, ride to Willowmore, about 90 kilometers to the west.