South Africa's Dividing Line

Twenty-five years after Nelson Mandela was first elected, the country remains two unequal nations

- Aryn Baker

EVEN FOR THE WESTERN CAPE, A PROVINCE KNOWN for its stunning vistas, the view from the settlement of Imizamo Yethu is extraordinary. A panorama of rolling hills, sand dunes and stone cliffs unfurls to the sea. To one side is a fishing village that has gentrified into quaint cafés and handicraft shops; on the other are stately mansions, horse paddocks and the expansive campus of a prestigious private school.

The view of Imizamo Yethu from the suburb below, Hout Bay, is also extraordinary, if for different reasons. This ramshackle settlement clinging to a rock escarpment is made up of small brick houses, corrugated- aluminum shacks and lean-tos constructed from old shipping pallets. The few paved roads intersect with a network of mud paths that reek of raw sewage in the summer heat, and flood under winter rains. More than 6,000 black families live in this area, which is about the size of a suburban American shopping mall. Hout Bay, which is about 50 times larger and mostly white, has roughly the same number of residents. Violence in Imizamo Yethu is rife; in April, five people were killed in a shoot-out between rival transport cartels that run the minibus networks linking the settlement to central Cape Town, 12 miles away.