Destination Cape Town

Destination Cape Town

By Patrick Matbob

 The surging mounds of waves crashed angrily against the giant rocks, sizzling out in white froth dotted with lengths of uprooted giant sea weeds. The chilly gust at 13 degrees Celsius howled incessantly as a reminder of how unfriendly this coastline could be. This was Table Bay in Cape Town at the bottom end of Africa. About 50 km southeast along the peninsula was the Cape of Good Hope, a familiar name from my high school world history class. Yes, the Cape was so named because it gave hope to European sailors (mainly Portuguese) who ventured out in search of the new world.

Part of the table mountain towers of Cape Town

Cape Town is a beautiful city in any weather condition, sprawled around the Table Bay with the spectacular Table Mountain peaks towering overhead like granite sentinels. The city looks like any in England or Europe with the streets lined with shops and high-rises, pubs along the sidewalks, a public transport system and populations of blacks, Asians and whites. It is only when you venture into the townships and see the shanties that stretch out for kilometers that you realize you are in Africa.

I was in Cape Town to participate in the World Association of Christian Communicators Congress which attracted 300 journalists and communicators from 70 countries. It was an opportunity to get a glimpse of this part of the world that had been at the centre of the quest by European powers to build their empires since the late 1400s.

Mandela's bed in Robben prison

South Africa is looking forward to hosting the World Cup Soccer in 2010 and Cape Town, which will be one of the main venues, is experiencing a hive of activity in infrastructure development. The construction work greets you right at the airport as you step off the plane. A new international terminal is being built so passengers have to disembark and board planes on the tarmac and wait for their flight under a gigantic canvas tent. Travel through the city takes you longer as all major streets are being expanded. A massive soccer stadium is also rising, its structures and the towering cranes visible from almost every point in the city. The economic development is providing employment for the country’s vast population of blacks as well as attracting migrant workers from other parts of Africa, especially the neighboring Zimbabwe.

Unemployed youths at Gugulethu township. 

The hopes of many, including the taxi driver who was delivering me to the airport, depend on such booming economic activity. Of Asian origin, he had been working up until the early hours of the morning and had only four hours of sleep. When business was good, he dared not rest.

“I could be out of a job tomorrow, you know,” he said. It was hard to understand that this person driving a luxurious cab could be unemployed tomorrow.

Such indications of insecurity and poverty are visible elsewhere, a seeming paradox in this city of glittering wealth. Out at the edge of the city is Guguletu, a township built during the dark days of apartheid. At first sight, the township looks like a middle class suburb of any developing city. Homes made of brick lined the paved streets and vehicles are parked in some of the yards. However, the scene can be misleading. Pastor Mzukisi Faleni of the Presbyterian Church of Africa tells us that poverty, unemployment, crime and the HIV/AIDS epidemic are prevalent amongst the residents. Standing in the township’s church building ominously fortified with barbed wire, Faleni talks about his people’s suffering, first from apartheid, then from poverty.

 

“Apartheid was a terrible crime, left people with deep scars. Poverty is worse than that. Apartheid had to do with rights and privileges, poverty is attacking the human being, it is attacking the dignity of the human being, it is humiliating and dehumanizing.”

As a preacher, Faleni is constantly challenged in ministering to the people.

“How can we preach to someone who is unemployed, who went to bed last night without food,” he explained. He said HIV/AIDS epidemic has become uncontrollable because of the poverty in the township.

“People are getting anti-retroviral and they are told by doctors, please take something in your stomach before you take these tablets because they are dangerous … and they (the people) do not have food!”

Near Gugulethu, shanties line the freeway for about a kilometer and they look more like the settlements of PNG. Those who live here are migrants from other parts of Africa and the Cape Town city government is assisting them. Next to the shanties, blocks of brand new apartments of several stories high are being erected by the city authorities and the migrants are moving into them. The plan looks good for Cape Town especially for 2010 World Cup as it gets rid of the shanties that are an eye-sore for visitors. However, getting rid of poverty for the majority of the city’s black population would be a much bigger challenge.

Visit to Cape Town is incomplete without a trip to Robben Island prison where Nelson Mandela was kept for 26 years. The small low lying island is only 12 kilometers from the mainland and was the first settlement for the European sailors before Cape Town was established. Later the island became home to the unwanted people in the society. Native black Africans who went against the colonial powers found themselves exiled to Robben island together with criminals, mentally handicapped and lepers. Although the island is at the entrance to the Table Bay, it is surrounded by inhospitable waters that effectively isolate it. Early sailing ships that had the misfortune of running aground on the rocks around Robben island were pounded to pieces in no time and many sailors drowned. It was here that Nelson Mandela was locked up in 1964 in the maximum security prison until he was freed in 1990.

 The luxurious double-hulled catamaran Sikhululekile brought us over the choppy seas to Robben with its sparse vegetation where we were greeted by the local populations of rabbits and penguins. Today the island is a museum and a UN World Heritage site. From the wharf the old maximum security prison looms like a fortress of cement and steel. At the gate of the prison, we were greeted by a former inmate Modise Phekouyane. Modise was a political prisoner there in 1977 when he was only 14. He recounted the horrifying experiences within the cold grey walls of being tortured and made to sleep on the cold floor by his apartheid masters.

 Eventually, Modise led us to the block where Nelson Mandela was kept. The famous cell block was no more than 6 square feet but had walls that were two feet thick.  There was a bed of mat and blankets on the floor, a small wooden bench and a bucket that was used as a toilet. Mandela who was more than 6 feet tall had to bend his long legs when lying down because the space was too small. Outside the cell block was a yard where Mandela and the other prisoners exercised and brought their buckets out to wash and clean. At one end of the yard, Modise indicated where Mandela had cultivated a small garden of tomatoes and other vegetables. The garden was actually a cover for the site where he buried the scripts of his now famous novel Long Walk To Freedom which he began writing in 1971. Later we boarded a bus and toured part of the island including the limestone quarry where the prisoners had dug up rocks which were used to pave the roads and extend the prison.

Modise said Mandela never condemned his captors nor was he bitter towards them. He said at first he was angry with Mandela thinking he had sold out to the apartheid masters. However, Mandela recognized that apartheid system not only enslaved the blacks, but also the whites who had designed it and they, like the blacks, had to be freed from it.

“I used to consider him a traitor and a sellout. But just his message and his persistence that we always didn’t have to regard even prison warders – these were our captors – we didn’t have to regard them as our enemies, but that we were all victims of apartheid… and to know that tomorrow we will need to hold hands, walk and work together to build a better South Africa for all of us.”

While in prison, Mandela who is a lawyer by profession assisted prison officers with advice for their problems. Since then Modise has had the greatest respect for his South African leader.

Before leaving Cape Town, I decided to take a ride on the ‘mini bus’ to the city centre. The mini buses are like our PMVs and cost only 5 Rand (K1.60).  However, I was soon to find out that just like our PMVs, some mini buses can be notorious for abusing traffic laws. We bullied our way through the traffic, overtaking vehicles illegally and stopping almost anywhere including the traffic lights to pick up passengers. The South African police seemed to tolerate the mini-buses, I thought, just like PNG police.

Long Street at the city centre was a hub of business where the wealth and poverty of Cape Town was displayed. Amongst the glass shops and offices, the Flea Market was bustling with activity as black Africans displayed and flogged their exotic jewelry and artifacts at exorbitant prices. The vendors are persuasive although one can bargain.

As I picked my way through the flea market, a heated political demonstration was taking place in another part of the city. A power struggle had erupted that week within the ruling African National Congress (ANC). It was a reminder of the fluid political situation in many of the African states. Just over a decade ago, South Africa had been freed from the clutches of apartheid and a new democratically elected government headed by Mandela was established. The tensions and scars of the past political struggles are still there and like the ever-changing weather of Cape Town, conflicts flare up as this great nation forges a new future for its citizens.

ends.