Cape Town, South Africa: that Third World place with First World ambitions, which just means it's caught somewhere schizophrenically in the middle...
Find the first photojournal post in this series here.
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I took a walk from the University of Cape Town to the Rosebank train station yesterday....
I'm a postgraduate student that's run out of funding. So, in order to afford to continue living, I've taken on freelance work, and waitressing. My days are long, and filled with doing what is necessary, rather than what I'm passionate about, but my walk from university to my evening job is one of the most pleasant caesura's in my day.
View over the Cape Flats from Jammie Steps, UCT. 03.08.2017
Rhodes' old podium, overlooking the UCT rugby fields and the Cape Flats. 02.08.2017
Let's talk about Cecil John Rhodes for a bit... He was a colonialist who became very rich by exploiting the people whose land he stole. Racist AF, he is largely still remembered in euphemised terms because he donated a lot of his (stolen) estate to the University of Cape Town, and other educational endeavours (such as the Rhodes' Scholarship). His statue sat on the grey podium you see in the picture. It was removed after some WOKE students and staff stood up to management, started questioning the institutionalised racism woven through the fabric of this country, and turned their attention to iconographies of oppression. You can begin reading about the Rhodes Must Fall movement here.
Shadow of Rhodes. Spray-paint on paving. UCT Upper Campus, 02.08.2017
But the statue, and all it stood for still casts a shadow. And an astute anonymous artist made that shadow visible to us in a wry visual comment that I particularly love.
UCT rugby fields, 02.08.2017
This picture is quite dark, but I promised not to edit anything in order to maintain that truly unstaged feel, so.... The point is: Cape Town is going through a SEVERE drought, and look at how green that lawn is... The rainclouds you see pictured are rare, and we're in the middle of what should be a very wet Winter. The drought is so severe that local government is considering turning water in our taps off for periods of the day, but at least the rugby team (composed of predominantly privileged white males) can pretend they don't live in one of the countries where severe drought basically amounts to the knowing that the (predominantly underprivileged, indigenous Black) poor may die. As long as it doesn't interrupt their game, I guess, because the ghost of Cecil John Rhodes is watching.
On to brighter things... This is a view of Lover's Walk. ...I'm on one of the gentrified slopes of Table Mountain (with my back to the summit), looking out over the Cape Flats. It's filled with winter flowers, like this one:
Winter flowers are one of the things that make life a gentler place....
This is a Strelitzia flower. It's also known as a Crane flower. They're indigenous to the Cape, much like the mountain....
View of Table Mountain, hidden by rain clouds. 02.08.2017. View from a bridge over Woolsack Drive.
And just like the Strelitzia flowers hide in Summer, sometimes the mountain hides in Winter. It weirds us out a a bit when this happens: the mountain is our compass and we only really notice it when it absents itself from our visual field. And then strange things happen: like I begin to share the darker side of the lived reality of Cape Town...
With all the love,
Ciao for now!
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If you have suggestions of things you'd like to see, feel free to drop me a comment : )