Cape Town is not what any of us expects. Unlike so many other cities in what we think of as the Third World, much of its urban infrastructure is relatively modern—for all the fact that it is ringed by townships that range from secluded estates for the super rich to modest homes in older communities to corrugated metal-roofed shacks in the slums. The ship docks in a highly developed waterfront area that is a smart and vibrant mix of renovated historic buildings and facilities for tourists alongside a hugely busy commercial port. We see evidence of sophisticated efforts at urban sustainability that far surpass what we do in most cities in the United States—everything from point-of-use solar panels and windmills to paying-for-plastic bags and containers.
The city itself is crammed in front of the northern aspect of the famous Table Mountain, which looms over everything. You cannot go anywhere in Cape Town without seeing Table Mountain. But what surprises us even more is how much history has been preserved here and how vital the downtown is, dating back in many parts to the 17th and 18th centuries, and beautifully restored. For almost 200 years until slavery’s abolishment in 1834, Cape Town was the site of auctions of slaves and indentured laborers from both Africa and Asia resulting in the nonwhite populations now designated as black and coloured. There are many memorials and museums on the legacy of slavery.
A friend, Jill, the ship’s nurse practitioner on duty in Cape Town (a second nurse practitioner is on one of the safaris along with Warner and Nancy), has a terrible night on call with medical emergencies. But she still wants to get off the ship and go out for the day. So, after lots of caffeine from the excellent coffee in a wharf restaurant, we head out to walk the 45 minutes to downtown. We walk through the city all day long and are amazed to find, among many other sights, a long public promenade and an enormous, beautiful public garden—The Company Garden—established by the Dutch East Indian Company in the 1600s. A huge stage is going up in the Greenmarket Square, not far from the historic Dutch Reformed and Methodist churches and just a couple blocks away from the garden and St. George’s Cathedral, a liberal Anglican congregation—Desmond Tutu’s home church—whose leaders had the courage to stand up to the apartheid government.
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Cape Town’s people are not what any of us expects, either. Instead of resentment towards white, well-off Americans, we’re astonished by how welcoming, helpful and friendly everyone we meet seems to be. People of every nationality, ethnicity and race go out of their way to strike up a conversation with us and ask us where we’re from. Instead, people actually offer to explain when they see we’re puzzled by something. (We are particularly mystified by spent gunshot shells on the streets with people’s names on them below large signs urging people to give up their guns and ammunition. Both turn out to be a clever way to make it worthwhile for people to give those up.)
Also striking is the number of hard working people from Zimbabwe. Mandela is the one who insisted that South Africa should take in refugees from Zimbabwe, but there has recently been some violence in objection to people from that hard-pressed country taking jobs and scarce housing away from South Africans. They all send remittances home from South Africa to their families. (I learn a great deal about Zimbabwe—formerly Rhodesia—because I become smitten with Peter Godwin’s books, Mukiwa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun about how the country went from one of the most prosperous in Africa to a complete basket case under the dictatorship of Mugabe, a man who at one time was seen to be the newly independent nation’s savior.)
Cape Town is the first place since Japan where we encounter no surly hawkers. (On the other hand, given our experience with desperate sellers of goods and souvenirs, we continually wonder whether people are earning enough from what they sell. Possibly they are. Prices in South Africa are much more nearly like prices in the US and Europe. Many of us also wind up buying much more in South Africa, even at those higher prices, because many of the sellers are members of cooperatives marketing directly to buyers.)
It takes Cape Town’s people to remind us how much our experience there must be like what many people who come to American cities here must encounter. That is, the level of crime in urban South Africa is pretty much like most American cities. Most visitors to American cities are amply forewarned about crime and yet they also frequently remark upon how friendly the American people are. There is less violent crime in South Africa than there is in the US, but there is a good deal of petty thievery—I am unfortunate to lose my little point-and-shoot camera to a pickpocket on my next to last day there—and there is certainly more breaking-and-entering. Almost every dwelling or building we see of any size in any township or the central city is either secured by an armed guard or ringed by a fence and window bars, or all of the above. (A front page ad on the weekend Top of the Times in the Cape Times features an ad for “burglar bars with style” guaranteed to provide “an almost impenetrable barrier against burglars, without your house looking—or feeling—like a prison!”) Something to look forward to in the US if our growing gap between haves and have-nots continues to expand.
There is much agonizing in the newspapers about what to do to combat both the entrenched poverty and crime. Too many young men have no work to keep them occupied and help them focus on a future. To make matters worse, the economic downturn has meant the loss of many jobs and young people coming out of school with technical and professional degrees cannot find work. While we are there, a national panel is engaged in a well-publicized series of discussions on The Next Economy focused on education, health care and crime that are not unlike similar problems in the US. But in South Africa all of these are much worse. Inequalities in the society are not improving and progress on all fronts is painfully slow. People worry that their leaders don’t want to attack the hard issues and that there is no shared dream for the future. (The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality of income or wealth. The US is high on that scale—about 50—but South Africa’s is one of the highest in the world—over 60. Apartheid institutionalized that inequality and now the country is still struggling to fight its way out of that systematic disparity. It could take a very long time. Privileged classes don’t give up easily, even if doing so is the only real hope for their own security and future.)
One of the many discussions I have with working people in Cape Town is with a shop attendant early one morning while I’m getting coffee. Her shop next door to the café is not yet open because her manager is nearly always late, despite the fact that he has a car and she has to take three buses for two hours to get to and from work. She works a 12-hour day—in addition to the 4-hour commute–and leaves work at 9pm which makes the last leg of her journey home to the township where she lives a very dangerous one. She runs a gauntlet of hooligans going to and from her home. But she tells me she is luckier than most because her parents live with her and care for her young child while she is at work.
On the second evening, Amy and I (Amy is a new friend, a younger academic who has also taken some of the same chances I have with her professional career’s twists and turns) go to an Ethiopian restaurant where we have a memorable meal on a tabletop that is almost as monumental as Table Mountain. The Ethiopian managers and servers are all from Ethiopia—they are tall, thin and regal in bearing. One or two of the women resemble Nefertiti.
Afterwards, Amy and her driver—who will take her on to a visit to a friend on the East Cape—are generous to help me find Jill and other friends in another restaurant because one of them is leaving to go back home and I want to say goodbye to her. The driver is, in turn, kind to actually track down this other restaurant and I run in to check that they’re there and then run back out again to pay the driver a bit for his time. I hug Amy and wish her well for the visit with her friend.
The reason for all of these complications is that we also want our friend, Ketsy, who is leaving to go back home, to have a chance to go to St George’s Cathedral to walk the all-night Maundy Thursday candlelit labyrinth. As is customary for Holy Week in so many parts of the world, the church’s members are on vigil for Holy Thursday and they make sure that the church and the labyrinth are safe throughout the entire night. Ketsy had heard there was a labyrinth in the historic cathedral and wondered where it was; Jill and I had found it that afternoon while walking the town.
We help Ketsy’s driver find a parking space nearby and he heads on foot for a few minutes of listening to jazz in Greenmarket Square. We walk through the cathedral and the labyrinth. I finish the labyrinth first and look up to see crystal clear sky and stars. (I don’t know that I’ve ever seen skies as clear as those we’ve enjoyed every day in Capetown. It must have something to do with the dry winds that kick up and clear everything out a couple of times each day.) The jazz in the background from the Square a block away makes the whole scene all the more full of grace.
The next day everyone I know is committed to some form of organized trip so I go out and walk on my own this time, intending to get to the cableway tram up Table Mountain and later to the District Six Museum. The latter documents a particularly shameful chapter of the apartheid story, involving the removal and demolition of a historic township consisting of 60,000 households near the center city that was alive and well with people of all races and backgrounds living for many decades in harmony. It was also the epicenter of South African culture, music and art. When those artists were dispersed and their homes destroyed they took their talents to many different parts of the city and the country. As devastating as that outcome was for those individuals, it may have contributed to the very rich stew of creative juices in Cape Town. Although musicians and artists barely make a living here—just as everywhere else—there are countless performance spaces, music schools, workshops, and stages in homes and buildings throughout the city.
Like other societies we visit where the emphasis is on bringing people up from the bottom, many more people are employed in simple tasks. One of these is in collecting fees for parking rather than having parking meters. The addition of so many people on street detail also contributes to the security of people in the parks and on the sidewalks. We’re told by people who live in the city that we will be even less of a target for crime if we don’t look like tourists.
But that would mean that we can’t look at maps and we wouldn’t be able to take photos. I decide I’m just going to have to be a target since otherwise I won’t know where I’m going and I won’t be able to remember all of the stirring sights I’ve seen. This voyage has been the first time I’ve tried to record in pictures where I’ve visited and I’ve found it really does help remind me when I write my notes up and send them home.
I wind up pretty much talking to people all day long. I don’t get up the cableway tram because it is closed due to high winds. Although I do find a taxi to take me to tour the district, I don’t get in to the museum because it is closed due to the Easter holiday.
Oh, well. Time and time again, we find that the sights in South Africa are nothing compared to the people. Robben Island and Table Mountain are just symbols for so much more. If you get to them, fine. If you don’t, fine. Speak with the people instead. You’ll be rewarded in spades.
