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Magazine
EXPERIENCE
Hedonism and hardship
SARAH HIDDLESTON
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The past hovers over your shoulder when you least expect it in Cape Town.
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Bo Kapp nicknamed Cape Malays, actually belongs to the descendAnts of Dutch slaves freed in the 19th century from various places including India, Sri Lanka and Madagascar.
PHOTOS: SARAH HIDDLESTON
Different realities: Some stores have locks to keep out the unwanted.
Every city has its history. In Cape Town, as in Bombay or Delhi, hedonism rubs shoulders with hardship. Cape Town is known for its great restaurants, luscious wineries, bijoux bars, funky shops and clean beaches. But, riding into the city from the ai
rport, I am faced with a different reality in the guise of a wiry white cabbie with a personality busting out of his puffa jacket:
“Right Journalist (with a capital J), welcome to South Africa where our vice president has been in the dock for rape and our health minister thinks we can cure HIV/AIDS with garlic. To the left is the spanking new football stadium for the 2010 Football World Cup. Right underneath it is one of Cape Town’s poorest slums.”
The long arm of the past reaches out.
In a short space of time, it’s difficult to know what to make of it. Set at the base of one of the world’s most striking mountains and fringed by ribbons of white sand before the glittering blue sea, Cape Town seems idyllic.
Controversial areas
But just when we come across a particularly green, open plot with a sea view, I am informed that this is District Six, once a vibrant township buzzing with the beat of Africa but declared “White” and bulldozed in the 1960s. Such was the controversy, the luxury condos that were planned never came up. Caught in legal wrangles and paper trails, the original residents never moved back in either.
With only an afternoon to explore, I have my work cut out. There’s another part of the city that had much in common with District Six but managed to hold onto its identity. Bo Kapp is one of the oldest residential areas of the city. The area, nicknamed Cape Malays, actually belongs to the descendants of Dutch slaves freed in the 19th century from various places including India, Sri Lanka and Madagascar. With its brightly coloured houses, minarets, cobbled pavements and spiced smells it feels bohemian, somewhat familiar, safe. On one corner a man is barbecuing kebabs, on another, a café bearing paintings of Taj Mahal-like domes declares “Pure ghee, roti dough, raw samosas” but also “Hot Koeksisters” and “steak and kidney pie”.
Just as I lose myself pondering the burst of colour against the unreal outcrop of Table Mountain someone says, “Hey, that camera. Use it, fine. Finished, put it away.” Behind me a white sign stands out against lapis blue walls “End ANC racism”. A swanky SUV style pick-up carries two white men and two white men painted black.
I walk on into the city bowl.
Life on Long Street is definitely hip. It houses some of the coolest cafés, one-off designer stores, and antique showrooms as well as the music lovers must-stop — The African Music Store. The store houses everything from the traditional sounds of Africa (Ndebele, Sotho, Xhosa), to Umquashiyo, Mbaquanga, Masquanda, to Afro House, Gospel, and the special type Jazz that has developed in the melting pot of the rainbow nation.
Outside the African Music Store on Long Street.
I pick up an exotic sounding Xhosa-Cuban blend. The beat is sensational. Only later do I understand that it is dedicated to the clan chiefs of the Xhosa who resisted the Boers, the British and Apartheid. The past hovers over your shoulder when you least expect it.
Musing on down, I’m pulled up short trying to enter a store for an African-print, retro-cut dress I’ve spied in the window. It has a lock and a buzzer. But it’s not closed; it’s to keep out the unwanted. I look around.
A bunch of coloured kids are trying to pass time on the corner in front of the store. One scruffy eight-year-old dude sporting sunglasses crosses his arms at me, his fingers making either a ‘v’ for victory, or an extremely rude sign for go away. I choose the former (whether intended or not) and on a reflex snap his picture and show him the image on digital playback. The kids are entranced. The whole gang joins in. I’ve forgotten about the dress.
Leaving Long Street for a late lunch I pass into Greenmarket square, where trestles of African trinkets nestle between an English church and neoclassical colonnades. Its tourist bees to the proverbial honey pot, so I let them do their thing and sit outside a café, enjoying the Cape Doctor, the south-easterly wind that cools the afternoon sun. One freshly made tomato, basil and mozzarella baguette and a coffee later, the mountain dominating the landscape beckons.
Panoramic views
Nothing can prepare you for the panorama at the top of Table Mountain. In the mountain ranges I am used to, mountain views greet mountain views. Not here. Such is the gradient of the 1087 metre massif that you feel as if you are hovering unsupported above the city. Short or long hikes, nature trails, even rock climbing are all possible but, rather light-headedly, I ping pong back and forth between vista points, until, saturated, I buy a bottle of South Africa’s best and soak in the setting sun.
Until recently, Blacks, coloureds — pretty much anyone who wasn’t white — were banned from Table Mountain. Not much seems to have changed in practice, despite changes in the law. Maybe it’s too expensive, or maybe it’s a statement but the only non-white people I see are those who run the small restaurant and gift shop.
A Bohemian café in Bo Kapp.
Despite the late lunch and maybe because of the mountain air, it feels like time for dinner. This is no bad thing as being out late after dark in some parts of the city is a risk not worth taking, whether alone or in a group. It feels noticeably edgier, the people of the city seem to retract from the streets at night.
Food matters
Food in South Africa is all about meat. At the modern bustling Savoy Cabbage on Hout Street you can find not only braised beef rib and pan-fried duck but brine-cured warthog loin and rare kudu fillet. Not for me the cute animals of game parks! It’s not easy to make vegetables exciting in western cuisine — they can be very bland. But the salad of honey and spice roasted walnuts, saffron poached pear, mesclun and gorgonzola cheese was sensational, the vegetable cassoulet was subtle and flavoured with wine and herbs. With its combination of glass and brick exposed walls, wooden chairs, open kitchen and wine cellar, marble floors and copper lights it is the epitome of the upbeat swinging city we hear about.
The next day I am in listening to tuberculosis stories in Khayelitsha Township, which houses roughly half a million people. Thirty per cent of them had HIV in 2006 and the same year nearly 6000 contracted TB, of which 109 had drug resistance, according to Medecins Sans Frontiers. Its miles of corrugated iron roofs are homes built after forced removals in the 1970s and 1980s.
It’s a world from Savoy Cabbage in just half an hour’s drive. But as I’ve learned, that’s Cape Town.
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