Cape Town

C

CAPE TOWN: March 30-April 5, 2010

iKhaya Lodge

My lodge is on a one-way side street. Somehow, though, I found it by car, and as I explore more it is in a convenient location, not touristy, but set among small offices (psychotherapists, for example), decorators and other artsy folk. It’s in walking distance of Parliament (which has giant inflatable soccer balls outfront in support of FIFA bringing the World Cup to Africa for the first time in June), and, I found out later, many attractions, including the Waterfront. It’s friendly and low-key and the bill for six days including breakfasts is less than one night at the game reserve!

Number One to see here is Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, among many other male political prisoners, were incarcerated for years. I take a taxi to the waterfront and learned from a bored-acting woman at the information booth there were no tickets available the entire weekend. I persevered and went to the ticket window where I was able to purchase one for 3 p.m. Saturday. Not ideal, but better than missing it altogether.

Table Mountain

Another must-see site here is Table Mountain. Actually, you can see it from most of the city most of the time, but going to the top involves driving part-way up the mountain and then, if it happens to be a warm holiday week, waiting in line for nearly two hours for the chance to buy a ticket to ride in a cable car to the summit. Helpful signs note that you could have paid a bit more, ordered your ticket on the Internet and skipped to the head of the queue. But, in the case of high winds, which are frequent, the cable car does not run, so it’s a toss-up. The cable car floor rotates so that all the passengers can be face-to-face with the granite and sandstone horizontal face of the mountain and get the panoramic view of the sprawling city on lower hills and seashore below. You can also walk up the less challenging sides of the mountain. At the top of the mountain, hard to make out from its base, are trails, a souvenir shop and a restaurant that serves wine, beer and different kinds of food (kind of like today’s college cafeterias, with the salad bar, the burger line and the full meal choices).

Cape of Good Hope & Boulder Beach Penguins

The next day, I drove down the Cape of Good Hope, to Hout Bay, Noordhoek and across the steep and windy Chapman’s Pass from the West to the East side of the peninsula, with lunch at Simons Town and then a few more kilometers to the penguin colony at Boulder Beach. The colony is protected by fences and gates, but the penguins are very friendly and sometimes end up in the parking lots and nearby yards. They let people get right in their faces to photograph them and make a funny braying sound, hence their name, the Jack Ass penguins. (Although officials are trying to get these warm weather ones to be known as African penguins.) Got my feet wet but did not swim.

On the way, shot vendors on highway cutouts selling crafts and hides, including zebra, which I had been excited to see in the wild only days before. At lunch (see menu board), many of these animals were on offer to eat.

Taste of Jazz

Going to Africa alone as a single woman, planning every detail myself, was somewhat daunting, especially since so many people and publications advised never going out alone, much less at night. But this night, Thursday, April 1 was balmy and thousands of people were expected in Greenmarket Square for the free concert, part of the 11^th Cape Town International Jazz Festival, which runs Saturday and Sunday and is sold out. It was also Maundy Thursday, so when I arrived by taxi, I was greeted by a digitized sign behind the stage that said the concert would resume at 8:05 after the church service was over. Thousands of people were in the square (last year police estimated 8,000). About 8, who should show up but the politician Helen Ville, a former reporter, now Premier of the Western Cape Province and leader of the “official” opposition, the Democratic Alliance? Through her press secretary Melody Kuhn, Ville had, after weeks of e-mail back and forth, refused my request for an interview. Clad in a long red jacket this evening, she led the singing of happy birthday to the square (350 years as I recall) and announced that it would soon get free WiFi. (I really could have used that; I had to pay for Internet access during most of my trip.) Then she and a lucky few onstage shared birthday cake and champagne. As a caution, I had stashed my stuff in a plain plastic bag so as to look like a local. There were plenty of police and ordinary people of every hue around, so the admonitions seemed silly. I was glad I went, glad to find a taxi waiting after my delicious dinner for one at an outside bistro.

Easter - a very big deal here -- to the Waterfront!

I knew I was going to be in Cape Town over Easter weekend, but what I did not realize is that almost everything shuts down on Good Friday and Easter, in particular. It’s a common time for holidays (last beach days before Fall and Winter, the kids are out of school and most businesses and offices close. Even the newspaper here is not published on Good Friday!). This made most streets nearly deserted, although there were kids and people in the walkways near the Botanical Gardens (the park itself was locked) and the Iziko Slave Lodge was open for only 15 Rand. The only big gatherings of people and open stores were at the Waterfront. Promotional literature says Cape Town planners used waterfront developments in the United States, such as in San Francisco, as models. This one is huge, encompassing several piers. It is where cruise ships dock (the Seven Seas semester-at-sea ship was in port; the Queen Mary II had been here two weeks ago – I saw it in the Durban Harbor). Away from the tourist part is the working harbor of container ships. The complex includes upscale offices, hotels, shops from cheesy to quite elegant, and, in the main (Victoria) mall, upscale international shops, as well as branches of the ubiquitous local grocery chain Pick ‘n’ Pay and drugstore Clicks. It’s also the departure site for Robben Island, although that sober museum is almost lost among the many other distractions nearby, including street performers from tumblers to drummers to a silver man (just like on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago). There are many outdoor and indoor restaurants. The three I sampled (on different days!) were all delicious, and Sunday’s had live jazz outside, so I did hear live music twice even though I did not make it into the big event at the Civic Center. At 5 p.m. Friday, I met an arts administrator named Zayd Minty, a friend of Colette Gaiter’s, at Fork, a tapas place on Long Street, an excellent base for younger, hipper travelers, who can choose from backpackers’ hotels to fancier ones, including some with hip or hip hop in the names and one called Daddy Long Legs. First time I ever tried ostrich steak, in delicate little tapas-sized servings.

Robben Island

On Saturday morning, I walked to the District Six museum. Somehow, missed it. Asked. No one knew. Turns out I walked right by it, on the other side of the street. Also turns out it was closed, no notice on the door or on the website, guess people are just supposed to know it’s not gonna be open on Easter weekend. Turns out that Saturday IS the day of the big flea market just a short distance away, however, and this one is for real people looking for real bargains, not the “craft” shops that spring up wherever there are likely to be tourists.

At 3 p.m., I was at last on the ferry to Robben Island. I had known that ex-inmates are the tour guides. I had not known that most of the trip around the island is on big buses. The guides, recognizable by their berets, were knowledgeable, the prison stark, even though it has been repainted and the island itself is beautiful, making it all the more poignant to think of the prisoners being able to see the mainland across the sea. Because I had read “struggle literature” before I came, I knew much of what the guide said. But I did not know the story of Robert Sobukwe, who, according to the Boston Globe’s Derrick Jackson, “led the mass resistance to pass laws that ended in the 1960 Sharpeville massacre where police shot and killed 68 peaceful protesters.” Sobukwe was regarded as such a brilliant threat to their rule that the apartheid government made him a special visitor with his own cottage. In other words, he was never formally charged or convicted, never went through the legal system. They would not permit him to speak to anyone and rotated his guards every three months so no human bonds would be formed. He eventually went mad and lost his ability to speak. During the early years of his imprisonment, selected reporters were permitted to see him. After his mental health declined, his four children and his wife were allowed to see him, staying nearby in the walls-within-walls compound, but only permitted to see him for short prescribed periods of time. Eventually, he died of lung cancer. Today, some of the former wardens and former prisoners, if they choose, live in the village on the island, including one of the Robben Island Singers. Jeff Spitz, my Columbia College Chicago colleague, is making a documentary about them and has brought them to Chicago to sing for public school children.

Townships

One legacy of apartheid is segregated housing. Of course, if you have the money, anyone can live anywhere. Although people are free theoretically to live anywhere, many black people live in townships. This is a wealthy country, blessed with natural resources and in the big cities, a First World economy for many. On the outskirts of every city I saw, however, are settlements that range from small but sturdy houses to ones that look like the worst slums of India, Brazil or any other country where shantytowns exist.

On Easter Sunday, I had arranged a visit to several of the townships around Cape Town, drawn by the opportunity to hear gospel music. As it turned out, we spent less than half an hour in the Lanka Baptist Church. The minister went back and forth between English and Xhosa. The church was modest, with a rough-hewn cross, but a computer projection showed the words to the hymns. The home page of the church featured 2010 at the bottom, with soccer balls representing the zeroes. The parishioners, mostly dressed up, were in the front rows. In the back rows were rotating groups of white tourists, most in jeans and even shorts, snapping photos and shooting video. Afterward, our guide, Thabang Titotti, whom I found out later owns the company, took us into several people’s homes (he knew them), including a woman entrepreneur named Vicy Ntozini, who advertises her B&B in a hand-painted sign outside as South Africa’s smallest hotel. Thabang told me she sends her four children to school in the city, where she expects they will get a better education than in the township schools. We also met Ivy, whose hand was bandaged. She and another woman had been set upon by three or four youths intent on robbing them. She held up her hand defensively and they cut her with a knife, requiring stitches. She sat in her meager home, at least that’s what I thought at first, a single bed, a television, a sink and refrigerator, all in one room. She actually has one of the newer houses, stucco and a plaster ceiling, not tin, next door, where she lives with her four children. Thabang explained that there are three types of township settlements: official, informal and illegal. The first category is government-recognized and has electricity, water and sewage, schools and clinics. The other two are usually nearby, but have no services and shelters made from whatever scraps (tar paper, tin, wood fragments, paper) people can scrape together. Children from those settlements can go to the township schools, although illiteracy is high and encouragement for education is not always present, Thabang said.

We visited another small business, where two women make beer for men who pay to join the club. When the beer is ready, it’s poured into metal cylindrical canisters and set on a wooden mat with a circle where the base fits. That’s where the men put the money. A ledger is kept as to who has paid what. Someone in our group (a Swedish couple, two young women from Germany and me) asked if women could come, since all those sitting around drinking and smoking were men. One of the men replied that the women were home cooking. Yet they were here drinking before noon on Easter.

We also met a tribal healer who explained that most of his patients use his services and those of what we would consider “modern” medicine. His remedies, from the evidence of our eyes, seemed to be mostly animal-based. He had skins, skulls and hides hanging from the ceiling and ropes, and lots of jars of various kinds on shelves in his crowded hut. He also spoke excellent English and thoughtfully answered our questions. The Swedish woman is an orthopedic surgeon, so she had plenty of questions. He told her a lot of the complaints were about stomach problems. He said he does not do a physical examination, but asks many questions before making a diagnosis and a prescription. I asked him about mental health issues. In those cases, he said, he tries to work out a plan with the patient.

Thabang also pointed out the many rough three-sided enclosures where women were grilling meat for sale. Outside one, a live sheep rested among his slaughtered peers. At another, the specialty was roasted goat head. The young German women blanched at this sight, and asked Thabang to stop when he started describing the brain as similar in consistency to cottage cheese, but tasting much better. He said a full head costs 34 Rand, 17 for half.

This trip of more than three hours, including pick up and delivery to where you were staying, cost 380 rand. A 10 percent tip is customary. And I left 50 Rand in the tin box for the township children with Vicky. Well worth it, but now out of local currency again, so, after being dropped off last and thus having a good conversation about his vision for his company, I got into my rental car and headed once more for the waterfront, to find an open ATM (doors were locked and gates secured at the downtown ones, I had discovered on Friday) and to tote up my anticipated VAT refund. Unbeknownst to me, this does not apply to food or accommodation or hired cars, most of my expenses, other than museum admissions. Also, I am supposed to show the stuff to the VAT people at the airport, when I have it mostly bubble-wrapped and/or wrapped in dirty clothes in my suitcase. So, is nearly 300 rand worth that trouble? We’ll see at the airport tomorrow. Had a late lunch, early dinner, wind strong today, came home and promptly fell asleep, so now have time to write this and pack…Last night in South Africa.