My trip into the hinterland of my home country of South Africa recently, was like a trip back in time. I was able to drive over the mountainous pass from my coastal paradise residence, into what looked like another world altogether. Not only was the landscape and vegetation distinctly different, but the architecture was also from another time in history. It looked to me as if some of the country were still living in the past.
I’m sure it’s like this even more so in Europe for example, where architecture from hundreds of years ago prolifically adorns the entire region. And locals are born into a world with its feet still firmly planted in a reality from the past, despite the modern technology that we have. I can’t imagine what it must be like roaming around the ruins and relics of Rome or wandering about the castles and chapels of England.
But here in South Africa, our country was only populated by colonizers from Europe in the late 1600s, so architecture emerged back then for the first time, at least in modern history. In my home town of Cape Town, also known as The Cape of Good Hope, I had one real relic, called The Castle, which was a five-pointed star-shaped fort built by the first Dutch settlers and traders. They claimed the Cape as a refreshment station for ships rounding the south of Africa on the trade route to India. The Dutch East India Company ruled the waves back then.
And as more settlers arrived, they ventured inland and set up a colony with massive farms for viticulture or grape farming to make wine, of which South Africa is or was famous. So there are a few old architectural features and buildings from the 1700s and onwards, though they are few and far between compared to Europe of course. So when I took my magical mystery tour into the Cape hinterland and semi-desert regions, it was like going back in time to those days as I saw the old Dutch style houses and buildings still standing firmly on the desert plains.
Although about 500 km to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, the traditional “Cape Dutch” architecture, as it became known, is fully evident, reminding travelers of the heritage that has its roots in Europe. As a person of European descent born and living here in Africa, I feel a bit out of place, and although this is home to me and I am naturally acclimatized to the weather, I am a stranger in a strange land. I am a rare white skin among the masses of black skins all around me.
Nevertheless, if I were to try to relocate to Europe, I would simply not manage the cold conditions and cramped lifestyle. Africa is so big and spacious as well as warm and sunny, so I’m actually an African by birth and conditioning, despite the European genes of my forefathers. And to see the old early architectural features in the buildings on my journey through the desert was like touring a museum of my own history. I’m no expert in local history or architecture, so I’m merely reporting my personal subjective impressions of the adventure into the desert of the past.
I’m not even sure how old the buildings really are that I passed on the road, but one can see the classic thatched roof of the Cape Dutch style, as well as the thin narrow windows. Perhaps they kept the place cool in the desert by controlling the light and air flow. Nowadays in my seaside locale, the opposite is the trend. Windows are designed to be as big as possible, from floor to ceiling. This maximizes the view of course, since it’s by the sea and the view is spectacular. I watched over the years how windows grew bigger and bigger until they took up the entire wall.
Regardless of the few historic and quaint buildings still standing, the majority of the local population actually live in nothing of the sort, but are relegated to masses of small squashed up tin shacks. The heat must be intolerable in summer in the desert, and the cold equally so in winter. Despite no snow, deserts can also get really cold overnight.
The “noble” European settlers had run the country for hundreds of years already, when the country was handed back to the original inhabitants – the Bantu African people under Nelson Mandela – but the locals have very little to show for it. No grand architectural homes for them. Only tin shacks that look like the dog houses of the masters who might live in the Cape Dutch buildings.
Admittedly the new regime is slowly building free housing for their people on the outskirts of CBDs all over the country, but it’s so slow that it will take hundreds of years to house everyone at this pace. And in the mean time the locals sit it out and wait for their free government house, all the while living in a tin and wood shack crammed on top of each other, with no trees or greenery to speak of. They would rather sit in that shack for decades if it means that they can keep their place in the line to receive that free government house one day.
And the free house is no bigger than their shack, still the size of a match box compared to a normal two-roomed house. And the windows are small and solitary, which appears unlivable to me, so it baffles the mind of a person conditioned by European norms like myself. The legacy of Apartheid was tragic and kept the local African person impoverished for 50 years, but we have been over that for 25 years already. Yet still the locals are content to live in tin shacks. Something is not right in my opinion, but then that is politics for you, which is in bed with economics. The politicians are massively corrupt and lining their pockets at the top while the masses are relegated to their tin shacks for generations at a time.
How strangely cruel humanity seems. The planet appears to be primarily a place of suffering for the vast majority of humanity, while just a few at the top live a lavish and luxurious existence by comparison. And as I can see by the architecture that reveals all of this to me, it’s not just the European colonizers that were harsh to the less civilized locals, but it’s the black leaders themselves now who subject their citizens to another sort of oppression.
So it appears that human nature is rather cruel wherever you go throughout time and place in history. As I learned when studying the ancient philosophy of India called the Vedas, “the material world is no place for a gentleman”, but is rather “a hard struggle for existence”. The drastic divide between rich and poor certainly shows this in South Africa, which is perhaps why the crime rate is so high here. And we are merely the canary in the coalmine of the planet because emerging now in Europe and USA is the same widening divide between rich and poor as the middle class is wiped out by design.
At least here in sunny South Africa the climate is better than many places, regardless of your dwelling. It might be more of a struggle in Europe in years to come for the majority. Even there it’s only a relative few who reap the rewards of luxury while the majority are currently falling into poverty – coming soon one state at a time in the old EU, who have now ironically been colonized by African and Middle Eastern refugees by the boatload.