South Africa has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the world's most disparate societies. Along with Brazil, another country known for its shantytowns, South Africa has the largest gap between the rich and the poor. Here, this gap goes far beyond the issue of money.

Cape Town is a modern city with coffee shops, malls, and streets lined with real estate agents selling houses with infinity pools. The whites live here in the shadow of Table Mountain in large houses with tall fences and well manicured gardens. Most of the blacks live 15 miles outside the city in clusters of tin shacks set on what was once miles of endless sand dunes.

The Group Areas Act, one of the pillars of apartheid, determined where you could live on the basis of your skin color. While this act was abolished in 1986, it's legacy remains.

"I didn't know" is the mantra of many whites when asked how apartheid could have lasted until 1990 in South Africa. And indeed they have a legitimate argument. It used to be that the government would dump mountains of sand alongside the highway so that anyone traveling to and from the airport wouldn't have to see the shacks piled on top of each other. Whites who did want to see where their gardeners or domestic workers lived couldn't enter the townships without permission from the government. Each area had just one entrance and it was closely monitored. The sand has long since blown back to the sea and the tin shacks boldly line the 20 mile strip of highway outside of Cape Town. It is impossible to not see them and yet they are as invisible as they were twenty years ago.

The townships are South Africa's biggest secret. The white people who do enter the townships tend to be tourists and foreign NGO workers. "Ulungu", the children say. "White man". And children who live 20 minutes from the most cosmopolitan city in Africa ask me, "Is your skin white under your shirt?"

Khayelitsha, like the dozens of other townships surrounding Cape Town, is a city unto itself. Unless someone works in the city, there is no reason to leave. Cows graze in the median of the highway and goats pick their way through the garbage bins. Their parts can be found for sale later on nearly every street corner. Thousands of churches and bars are disguised as living rooms and garages. Clinics and schools are situated in all four corners of the the neighborhood.

There are two answers to the question, 'are things better now?' The older people will say 'yes, the police no longer arrest us for not having the right documents, the bloodshed has stopped'. Younger people complain about crime, unemployment, and boredom. Perhaps to appreciate the progress one had to have been here before Nelson Mandela and his government took power. To the outsider it never ceases to amaze—the piles of tin and cardboard that pass for housing butted up against each other, the rain leaking through rusty roofs, and the sand blowing through door frames that don't fit. And yet the government's attempts to provide housing don't look any less bleak— cement frames too small to accommodate entire families and row after row of uniform salmon and yellow paint. There is something unspeakably beautiful and life-affirming about the townships: blues, pinks, unnatural greens; gates made from old shopping carts; fences from discarded boxes; flowers and trees trying desperately to take hold in sandy lots. Laundry decorates every front yard the moment the rain stops. And everyone stops to greet passerbys on the street.

The townships are bursting at the seams with young people. Kids close off all but the major streets to play soccer and hundreds of variations on that theme. Children pile into beds three, four, and five at a time. Mattresses are folded up during the day as the living rooms are transformed into beauty salons and taverns. These kids are about to inherit the same legacy of apartheid that their parents lived with—50 percent unemployment, overcrowded schools and inferior educations. Every alleyway, backyard and spare room has been converted into housing for newcomers. Where this burgeoning population will go when they leave home is an unsolved problem. Very few people move out of the townships to a better situation. Bonqweniå is where many of them go, a place that means "pride". It's meaning an ambiguous blend of admiration and jealousy.

South Africa will host the World Cup in 2010 and the more cynical here might suggest that plans to modernize the strip of shacks lining the highway from the airport are a more sophisticated version of the imported sand dunes of the apartheid era. The shacks aren't going away. For every person who moves out there are two more who come from rural areas and from neighboring countries to find work in the cities.

This is not just South Africa's problem. In the United States our townships are the border countries that supply our cheap labor and goods. And it's very easy to say, "I didn't know" because these communities are no more visible than the shacks off the side of the road. The inequity and the physical and psychological barriers between the rich and poor are increasing around the world. One can see it more clearly in South Africa because here it is in black and white.