Cape Town Today
The legacy of the city’s stint as World Design Capital 2014 (WDC2014); the threat of electricity blackouts (known as ‘load shedding’) due to a struggling national grid; political tussles between the Democratic Alliance (DA), who run the city and the Western Cape, and national governing party the African National Congress (ANC); and is Cape Town the most racist city in South Africa? These are among the ongoing conversation topics across the Mother City.
Best on Film
Black Butterflies Biopic about Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonkers (a powerful performance by Carice van Houten) set in Cape Town in the 1950s and '60s.
Sea Point Days (www.seapointdays.co.za) Documentary by François Verster focusing on the suburb and its promenade as a multicultural crossroads.
Love the One You Love A phone-sex operator, a dog handler and an IT technician are the main characters in Jenna Bass' debut feature, set in Cape Town.
Best in Print
A City Imagined (ed Stephen Watson) Fine selection of original essays by local writers, revealing different aspects of the Mother City.
Reports from before Daybreak (Brent Meersman) Cape Town is the principal setting for this impressive novel about the turbulent decade before democracy and its damaging effect on people of all races. Also read the follow-up Five Lives at Noon.
The Last Train to Zona Verde (Paul Theroux) The great travel writer shines a light on Cape Town at the start of an overland trip to Angola in 2011.
WDC2014 Legacy
The impact and lessons learned from the 460 official WDC2014 projects – some new, others ongoing – were under the microscope at the start of 2015. From the city's point of view, it's the event's legacy that's crucial, in particular a change of mindset from identifying problems to solving them. Such a collaborative approach was captured by switching the city government's slogan from 'This City Works for You' to 'Making Progress Possible. Together.'
What will you notice as a visitor, apart from the Yellow Frames angled at Table Mountain? A list of ongoing initiatives can be found at www.capetown.gov.za/WDC2014 and makes for enlightening reading. Projects of note include 543 public-housing units created in Ocean View, built partly from stone found in the location – the construction of which trained a score of locals in stonemasonry; the Art54 project, to be used as a model for temporary public art around the city; and a series of co-creation workshops, such as the one on developing the tourism and community potential of Khayelitsha's Lookout Hill.
The Politics of Name-Calling
The renaming of Table Bay Boulevard to FW de Klerk Boulevard in early 2015 proved controversial. Both the ANC and the Congress of SA Trade Unions came out against the name change, citing the former president’s role under apartheid. It was a similar story with the revamped Company Garden's Restaurant. It had reopened in November 2014 as Haarlem & Hope (after the Dutch ship, the Nieuwe Haarlem, shipwrecked in Table Bay in 1647), but when this was branded a 'callous celebration of colonial power' by activist Zackie Achmat on social media, the restaurant decided to revert back to the original name.
Speaking at the ANC’s 103rd birthday celebrations in Cape Town in January 2015, President Jacob Zuma blamed apartheid for the recent failures of the national power grid run by Eskom. At an earlier township rally he delved further back into history, saying 'All the trouble [in South Africa] began in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck landed in the Cape.' That comment provoked a storm of protest from white South Africans, including Mandela’s former personal assistant, Zelda la Grange. It's all proof that the deep wounds of South Africa’s troubled history still run raw, and particularly so in Cape Town, where the divide between the largely white rich and the majority black and coloured poor is starkly evident.
Murder City?
It’s a common view internationally that Cape Town suffers (along with the rest of South Africa) from high crime rates. Newsworthy cases, such as the kidnapping and murder of Shrien Dewani in Gugulethu in 2010, feed into this perception. However, the truth is more complex. Suburbs such as Camps Bay and Claremont are among the safest places to live – not just in South Africa, but the world – with no murders occurring in 2014. In comparison, Khayelitsha clocked up 146 murders, while Nyanga had 305, making it the nation's most deadly location.
Drill down further into the stats and you’ll find that the killings generally don’t involve unfortunate tourists, but are between family members or drug gangs. Bringing it home vividly was the murder of Vicky Ntozini in November 2012. A pioneer of township B&Bs in Khayelitsha when she opened her shack home to paying guests in 2000, as well as a mother of six, Vicky was killed by her husband.
Township Trials & Triumphs
Turning a spotlight on the daily trials faced by township residents are organisations such as Ndifuna Ukwazi (www.nu.org.za) who report on safety, policing and justice issues, and the community journalism project Ground Up (www.groundup.org.za). Both would recognise, though, that the bad news is only part of the overall picture.
In our opinion it has never been a better time to see how the vast majority of Capetonians live. Alongside grim shack neighbourhoods you’ll discover places such as Gugulethu Square, a glittering mall that would not be out of place in Camps Bay; many clean streets lined with impressive houses; and spiffy public complexes such as Khayelitsha District Hospital and Langa’s Guga S’Thebe Arts & Cultural Centre. Langa is also the focus for two ambitious social support programs, the Langa Quarter and Langa Cultural Precinct.
