Cape Town. City.
As much as I love Johannesburg, Cape Town will always be my home city. I wrote this paean to it for Visi magazine two or three years ago, and I’m republishing it as a tiny homage. But bear in mind it’s about Cape Town of three years ago, not now.
My city used to be like an iceberg – all you could see was a white tip sticking up above the sea, with the dark bulk of the berg hidden underwater. Things have changed a lot. Now, at night, when I walk out of my front door into Adderley St, I’m walking into a real South African city.
Men congregate on corners, or in the now ubiquitous internet cafes that serve as lifelines back home. They share gossip in many languages, about cities I’ve never been to, cities in the DRC, Sudan, Nigeria. There’ve always been a variety of languages here, but when they’re part of your daily fabric you don’t really notice them until you’re forcibly reminded. Returning recently from a trip to the Middle East, I was astounded to suddenly realise how much Arabic is spoken here.
Capetonians of all stamps might be accused of having overly-European sensibilities at times. But the beauty of my city is that while you can get a kick ass Italian salami at Giovanni’s in Green Point, you can also get a gracious salaam a’leikum at the falaffel joint in Longmarket St. There are coffee shops aplenty, and while Cape Town has always had its fair share of coffee shops, places like vida e caffe on Kloof St, and the Woolworths Cafe on Longmarket St, now sell actual coffee. That you can drink without wincing.
When you wander around at night, music spills into the streets – goema, jazz, hiphop, kwaito, , mazy electronica – along with forcibly ejected drunks and the overly enthusiastic. When I was growing up in Cape Town, it had a very different soundtrack. Legendary clubs like Rita’s and The Base hosted a hodgepodge of genres: European influenced bands with bitter, quirky names like the Safari Suits, Housewives Choice, or Kalahari Surfers; singers like Thandi Klaasen; and virtuoso musos like Jimmy Dludlu and John Mair. Cape Town has a musical history that not enough of its denizens know about.
It’s a growing history, of course. There are some great live music venues, like the Mercury Lounge and Zula, where self-conscious bands like Three Bored White Guys, Kobus and Godessa make music that reflects the confusion of anchorless styles that is Cape Town. Although they’re playing, respectively, country and western, Afrikaans rock, and hiphop, it’s all Cape Town
My city sometimes forgets that it’s a port city, and owes its existence to its safe harbour. I’ve tracked the Cape Town’s changes from the sea, bobbing about on boats being seasick, and that’s a perspective you don’t get if you’re always immersed in the city’s motley architectural heart. Over the decades the skyline has erupted in slowmo, and now you can eat dinner in a plush eatery high in the sky, buy yourself an eyrie on top of a converted office building, or stage a boardroom coup looking down at the city’s wheeling seagulls.
People don’t realise how much the city has changed. An old surfer I once worked for used to tell me that, in the 60s, you could ride a wave from Thermopylae, the erroneous name given to the remains of the wreck of the Athens that you can see protruding from the sea at Mouille Point, all the way to where the V&A now squats. The same surfer used to bitterly tell me about the woman counsellor responsible for the building of the promenade along what used to be the gorgeous Sea Point coastline. That story probably says more about nostalgia and misogyny then it does about Cape Town
The Waterfront used to be called the docks, with a small d. That’s changed, for the same reasons that flats in town are now called apartments in the city. Back then, we’d park our Ford Escort panel vans down at the pier, lie drunkenly in the back and fall asleep watching oil slicks dance turgid fandangos with the southeaster. Now the Waterfront fills with all kinds of people, all the time. Gauche Eurotrash who have travelled thousands of kilometres to Africa to buy products made in Europe, sun-damaged yachtspersons breaking their voyage, and locals who shop for their groceries and never take the time to look out to sea.
I wrote this story on a plane bound for San Francisco. Before I left, several people told me that “San Francisco is just like Cape Town.” None of them were Capetonians. We would never say that. Only Cape Town is like Cape Town. I’ve been to some of the places that people say are “just like Cape Town” – Sydney, Tel Aviv, Beirut. They’re not. I think what people mean is that they wish Cape Town was like those cities. And that’s why it’s never a Capetonian who says that.
I don’t, honestly, know what makes a Capetonian. Perhaps the distinguishing characteristic is that you’re too lazy to have an identity crisis. The very name is an identity crisis. A city called town? That’s like having a rotweiller called Fifi – it’s just confusing, especially for the rotweiller. But the city doesn’t worry about that, and Capetonians tend not to worry about anything at all, or at least not for too long.
My city is not my city. As a port city, it belongs to whoever passes through, and claims of originary preference have no place here. When I have breakfast at Lazari’s in the Gardens, home to the best Eggs Benedict in the Cape, I look out at a building that houses a purveyor of ridiculously marked up Indonesian furniture to the stylistically challenged. When I looked at that building a few years ago, it was an advertising agency, selling myths to consumers. Before that, as I walked past on my way back from school at Cape Town High, it was a synagogue.
That building is like Cape Town. The city gets used in many different ways, by many different people, but it retains its essentially fractured character, and that’s what makes a great city. A great city is always continually creating its identity, and is always at war with those who want to fix its character, both morally and in stone.
(First published in Visi magazine.)
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Ya, but now you prefer Joburg. Which is a REAL city, as opposed to a windblown hulk of fynbos and granite, repurposed as a “refreshment station” by the Dutch.
No… I like Joburg a lot, but you can’t beat Cape Town if you’re actually from there. Guess it depends what you’re used to. Not much surfing in Joburg, for example. That DOES make a slight difference!
Having stayed in Sydney for 8 months, I agree that Sydney does not even come remotely close to Mother city. Cape town is way too beautiful.
Although Sydney is a damn nice city too. And fantastic food, of course.
Touching stuff.
I wept, but only at the memory of that vastly-overpriced Jakartan side table I bought in Oranjezicht a few years back, which I thought I had buried (the memory and the table).
Ah, furniture regret. Very poignant.
Hi Sir I hope this finds you well,
I would like to say thank you so much for inspiring me, through you writing and knowledge of a place I can now call home.
I would like to know if you could become a contributor to my blog.
I am a scholar at Hilton College, and my blog focuses on creativity and politics.
If you are unable to help could you please advise on any others.
We’re still here and still love it.
You can add a few nationalities to those you mentioned along Adderley St (Senegalese, Zimbabwean to the nth power, Somalians a-plenty spring to mind), plus a load of cranes and a new stadium to the skyline but otherwise it’s much the same.
Great article, I read it to the final full-stop
Hi Alison – thanks for getting to the end, a very internet achievement. Thando – Not really, I have way too many places to contribute to as it is. But your blog looks good – everyone else, take a look at it.
Great article, Chris. In March I’m moving back to Cape Town after 6 years in San Francisco, and I can’t wait. I definitely see the similarities in the two cities, but I agree — only Cape Town is Cape Town…
Hey Rian, thanks. Still, if you have to live somewhere else, San Francisco is top of the list. I’m over there at the end of Feb for a couple of days, looking forward to it.
Cape Town is growing in popularity as a tourist destination, a fact that becomes apparent when you visit popular tourist locations. However, avoiding the crowds while getting an insider’s view of Cape Town isn’t difficult. This top local secrets in Cape Town list gives you a starting point. On a beautiful day, you may find some of these places quite busy, but most likely you’ll be sharing the space with local Cape Tonians rather than tour busses of tourists. Just avoid Platteklip Gorge and the Cableway, remember to take a map, ask locals, and check out some of the Peter Slingsby guides for some good trails. It look very much similar to London’s cities. Just a note, while Table Mountain is obviously not a secret, there are plenty of hidden paths and nooks on the Mountain.
You had a Ford Escort panel van?
of course. who didn’t.
Dear All,
I have been living in Bahrain for the past 4 years and there is not a day that goes by that I do not think of Cape Town.I am not making things better by reading all your stories but it does inspire me to make plans and return back home.Sacrifices needs to be made, I am well aware of that but we only have one life,right? Do I live it in a place where I am 50 % happy and have a great life style or do I move back where I am 100 % happy but might not always afford all the comforts …..??? Sigh ……….
well, from this distance, the answer is easy – hurry back!
That’s the best advice you can ever give – get a Slingsby map. But hey, you can walk up Platteklip if you’re moderately fit, Roshan?