Hopelessness and hope: Cape Town

It says something that I've spent ten days in South Africa and am marveling at the United States' capacity for violence and racism. Some people might be expecting me to blame the president, or have some glib solution to intractable problems. I do neither. What I have to say to my native country I say with great love: There is no way this is the best you can do.

Come on, you are Americans! The people who put a man on the moon, led the Allies to victory in 1941-45, and invented so many things. You are the country of Yankee ingenuity. When faced with a challenge, Americans don't wring their hands helplessly or fall in a heap. You pull together and integrate the armed forces or whatever you do. You have to do better than this.

We started our visit to South Africa’s oldest city in the most touristy way possible: with one of those open-top, big red bus tours. Normally I shun such things as tacky and overpriced, but in this case, it was good value for money. I’d been so focused on Kilimanjaro that I’d put almost no effort into researching any of our subsequent travels, so my orientation to Cape Town was nonexistent.

The bus not only took us around the Atlantic Seaboard Coast and up to the Table Mountain cableway (which, as on most days of our visit, was closed because of high winds), but provided more interesting commentary than most such tours. For instance, I was fascinated to learn that the Afrikaans language was first written in Arabic script (early 19th century) by Cape Muslims. Many white Afrikaners in the past, eager to create a myth of racial “purity,” made an effort to convince the world that Afrikaans was just a dialect of Dutch, devoid of African, Asian, and indigenous influences. I am sure I wasn’t the only foreigner, therefore, to associate Afrikaans with white speakers and in particular its apartheid history. In fact, the majority of speakers of this language, the most widely understood in South Africa, are not white, but “Coloured.”

Martin, our unforgettable taxi driver down from Table Mountain on a day the cable car was open, identified as Coloured. At the risk of oversimplifying, the Cape Coloured identity has its roots in people who were taken from East Africa and the East Indies as slaves, as well as the indigenous Khoisan people. During the apartheid period, everyone was classified from birth as white, “native” (black African), or Coloured. Naturally, this history of forced classification means that many people don’t like and no longer use the term Coloured, but others claim it, as a unique culture whose origins are far older than apartheid.

Cable car, Table Mountain

Martin told us his entire life story, including the loss of his longtime job because someone crashed his government car on a drunken evening. Not the most reassuring thing to hear while careening down the road from Table Mountain. One thing Martin had to say from his years in government he probably has in common with most South Africans: Nelson Mandela was his “father,” his hero. Like many other people, he doesn’t think anyone else is up to Mandela’s standard, except the ailing Bishop Tutu.

But he was just getting started. He informed us that the neighborhood where we were now staying, Woodstock, was “the worst” during the apartheid years, run by notorious crime bosses. Now, as we could see, Woodstock is undergoing a transformation into a trendy area—with all the costs that gentrification imposes. We began almost to feel guilty for staying there, as Martin regaled us with the dangers of his own neighborhood (somewhere near the Cape Flats). Every night by 7:00, he parks his BMW, which belongs to the taxi company not him, and is seated in front of the television; otherwise, “a bullet in the head. But don’t worry, ma’am!” he said cheerfully.

After exiting Martin’s taxi, we took our lives in our hands and explored our new neighborhood, which seems to have more craft breweries than gangsters these days. Just down the street from us was The Old Biscuit Mill, like many former factories (including our apartment building) now transformed. On Saturday mornings it’s jam packed with people enjoying artisan craft shopping, live music, and all kinds of wonderful fresh food. Or, as Martin put it, “it’s crazy!” Takes one to know one, buddy.

The railroad is just beyond, and we were never far from people whose lives are clearly running on the wrong side of the tracks. But even in South Africa, a traveler can’t spend all her time thinking about poverty and its evils. After all, I’d mostly recovered from my Kili trek, and there were other mountains to climb.

We started off thinking we would hike Signal Hill, just behind the first place we were staying, in the gay quarter. Despite my best research (i.e., I asked a man walking his dog), we did not find the path up Signal Hill, but ended up on a Lion’s Head trail. Lion’s Head is between Table Mountain and Signal Hill and peaks at 669 m.

We thought we’d stop at the place where the Signal Hill and Lion’s Head trails join, have lunch, then walk back down. But T., having recently celebrated her BIG birthday, was in Energizer Bunny mode, and said, “You’re sure you don’t want to go up a little bit?” “A little bit” turned out to be most of the way up Lion’s Head, including the infamous rock scrambling; we only turned around because the last bit towards the top is ladders and chains. You would have needed to put me in chains to make me continue, after my Kili experience. We hadn’t set out to spend the whole day hiking, and I felt the descent more than usual; but it was nice to get back on the horse, so to speak.

The big red bus people do a harbor cruise, too. And as the sunshine was continuing (the Western Cape is actually suffering a drought), we decided to enjoy this feature of Cape Town the next day. It was worth it just for the seals! They were all over the harbor, obviously so used to boats and people that they couldn’t care less. Not having seen any dassies (rock hyrax) on Table Mountain, I was glad the seals were so generous with their time.

My account of our South African travels would not be complete if I didn’t rave about how well we’ve been eating and drinking. I realize the economy is not doing well here, so things would not be so affordable were we earning rand. Still, South Africans love their meat, and their wine, something I hadn’t tasted since Europe. 

Ostrich shwarma. Not on the menu at every kebab shop!

I can't say enough good things about the national airline, which not only served hot meals on each leg of our flight, but metal utensils! What do they take us for, adults?

Tasting, Old Biscuit Mill wine shop. Martin the taxi driver shops here faithfully!

I really do have to plug for the City Sightseeing bus tours in Cape Town. They took us all around the peninsula, and they also partner with a local initiative in what I found the most interesting part of our stay. That was our visit to the township of Imizamo Yethu, which started to creep up the slopes near Hout Bay only in the 1980s. It was the closest we got to a glimpse of how the majority of black South Africans live to this day.

Primary school

We were lucky enough to be hosted by Mr. Kenny Tokwe, who seems to know everyone in his township, like a kind of informal mayor. Kenny, it turns out, has met with Bob Geldof and the president of Ireland (the Irish have been very involved with building permanent homes in Imizamo Yethu), as well as visited Niagara Falls. A United Church of Canada in St. Catharines, Ontario is another organization that has partnered to help build schools and training programs in the township.

From the road, all you see is tin shacks up the hillside, but there is a lot more to this community. The brick houses (some with shamrocks and Irish green painted on them). The satellite dishes. The churches, which were just letting out their well-dressed congregations at 1:20 on Sunday afternoon, and the more numerous informal bars, which as in Ireland are called shebeens. Kenny told us there are fifteen African nationalities in the township, all speaking English as a common language—plus the Chinese! God bless them, everyone else in Imizamo Yethu is black but everywhere you go in this world, there are Chinese people running shops.

Shebeen. No smoking or pregnant women allowed inside, and free condoms. "Less pregnancy, less AIDS, more fun," as Kenny said.

It’s a hard life and I’m sure not everybody cared for us spending a little bit of our time and money in their community. But some did. The little kids who screamed the Xhosa equivalent of mzungu, and ran to hug us around the legs. (“They’re saying ‘white people,’” Kenny explained unnecessarily. If there’s one thing I know after a month in Africa, it’s how white I am.) And the Arsenal football (soccer) fan who shouted “We love you!” and was only too eager to talk to a Manchester United fan (T.), if only to rib poor Kenny, who supports Liverpool. Football in South Africa has a primarily black and Coloured following. Much was made of the Liverpool theme song “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” 

"If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk with others." --Kenny Tokwe

This country has such formidable obstacles to overcome, but South Africans have already shown their ability to do this. I really hope I get to come back and see how far they get, because there is great potential for the future. You should visit here.

The Bo-Kaap neighborhood. Residents were not allowed to wear bright colors, so they made up for it with their houses.

“I see white folks and colored walking side by side

They’re walking in a column that’s a century wide

It’s still a long and a hard and a bloody ride”

—Shel Silverstein/Jim Friedman, 1963