A view of Kliptown, an "informal settlement" in Soweto

6:30 AM, Johannesburg. It is the last day of our two weeks in South Africa and D.R. Congo. I leave the hotel with three Japanese doctors and board a microbus for the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. The Institute is not far and normally we could get there in 30 minutes. Today however, we have started off ninety minutes before our appointment, and yet I cannot stop checking my watch. The reason: since 5:00 AM, Johannesburg’s taxi drivers have been striking.

A strike to wind up the trip. Strangely fitting. For two weeks, we have been looking at poverty in D.R. Congo and South Africa. Originally, we planned to visit Madagascar and Congo, but the day before we left for the Malagasy capital of Antananarivo, the country began to disintegrate toward a coup d’etat. We were determined to examine Malagasy poverty, but our froup leaders decided that visiting a potential war zone was just too dangerous. When it was announced that we would spend the week in South Africa’s slums instead, the group was disappointed, but at the same time everyone breathed a small sigh of relief.

The countries we did get to visit showed us poverty in many forms. There was the “informal township” (South African for squatter camp) where 43 water faucets served 45,000 inhabitants. Or the two-room apartment where 30 people lived without water or electricity. The hospital ward completely filled with mothers comforting their dying infants. Africa taught us that poverty cannot be learned from books. For two weeks, we had stood eye to eye with it, breathed its stench, and filled our lungs with its dust. We learned that, until this trip, we had never really understood all those articles, books and movies about poverty.

Visiting a home in Durban's black settlement

In South Africa, we travelled through beautiful white neighborhoods with every modern convenience, black neighborhoods without even basic services, and Indian neighborhoods that fell somewhere in between. Race seemed to determine the supply of all necessities. Water. Electricity. Gas. Public transportation. Even health services. I was told that the taxis of Soweto were not allowed to take customers outside of Soweto. Customers going from Johannesburg’s business district to some location within Soweto had to actually change taxis at the township border. Though apartheid had ended years ago, economically it still seemed to be very much alive.

We had been on the African Continent for two weeks. We felt overwhelmed, fed up. Tired of poor people. We were ready to go home. And then the taxis went on strike. Suddenly, Africa’s problems left the realm of “people’s hardships,” and made them, even if only superficially, ours as well.

To oversimplify, the strike was about buses. In the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup, host cities like Johannesburg are modernizing their transportation systems. On a human scale though, the problem is that if Johannesburg gets an efficient bus system, countless taxi drivers will lose their jobs. Many will slide from merely being poor, into absolute poverty. The strike was an expression of fear, anger and resistance over this looming threat.