...on the road.
Nothing was delivered | And I tell this truth to you, | Not out of spite or anger | But simply because it's true.
"Where were we?"
"Fucked if I know. Centre of town somewhere."
"Oh yeah. Anyway, now we're heading out of town..."
"Okay."
"Well, not really out of town. We're heading towards Mitchell's Plain. There used to be nothing there but bush. It was 'out of town' until we dumped all the coloured people there back in the 70s."
"What'd you do with black people?"
"Further. Khayalitsha. But we can do that another day. I'm tired."
"And people travel into town by taxi every day?"
"Yeah. Cool, eh?"
Brownsville
Now, I hope you won't object to this, | Giving back all of what you owe, | The fewer words you have to waste on this, | The sooner you can go.
It might be cool. What would I know? I'm just a white boy from the suburbs. Somehow, though, and given our taxis, I doubt it. Cape Town's kinda like Baghdad. You get the Green Zone which takes in the Waterfront and skirts the mountain.
"Yeah?"
And then, like Baghdad, you get the rest. It's linked by the road to the airport. Okay, so people don't use IEDs, but give 'em time. For a national road, it's a hell run. Between the sandstone of Table Mountain and the Malmesbury Shale of the African continent, the grey, windswept wastes of the Cape Flats are home to most Capetonians.
Treeless, sand blasted, hot and dry in summer and cold and miserably wet in winter, Cape Town's urban sprawl is a Kafkan conurbation devised by social engineers on meta-amphetamines (tik).
Look, we do have this great bloody mountain in the middle of the city, so we have a problem with space. However, back then, when planning long-term concentration camps out of sight and mind, we conveniently forgot such things need good plumbing, sewerage, telecoms, roads, houses, electrical fittings and all the other crap some of us take for granted.
Essential services would have been a good idea. Cape Town's townships, now fast becoming suburbs, received none of these things. And most Capetonians have very little of it today. Half are unemployed. Crime is rampant and we have no police force. Tuberculosis is a killer and infant mortality is still unacceptably high.
Whites, ever full of shit, probably voting DA and still implying apartheid's a damned good idea, will tell you how wonderfully we've looked after the black and coloured folk down the years—forced removals hurt us too, you know.
They'll then go on to blame easily prevented social and health evils arising from dire poverty and living in squalor directly on the citizens to whom they denied the most basic amenities and infrastructure some four decades ago. Even when trying to convince ourselves of something specious, we Capetonians tend to "talk past one another."
Little boxes...
Nothing was delivered | And it's up to you to say | Just what you had in mind | When you made ev'rybody pay.
Anyway, this is all beside the point. The point is that I can go from one side of the city to another and what do I find? Little boxes. Less elaborate little boxes, but little boxes nonetheless. Whether like the one pigeon, I look to the mountain or, like the other, to the Cape Flats, all I see are millions of little boxes—staring back at me. In the end, that's what it's all about (the pun's intended).
Some Capetonians have better little boxes; most suffer worse.
"You get many tourists out here?"
"Not really."
"Good. Can't stand the fuckers. Too much money."
"Yeah."
The Cape Flats used to be covered by sea. The land will return to the sea. Before it does, though, I get quite a kick out of that which I call the Cape Flats's Revenge. A sea of people, it's filling fast and is starting to erode the green-leafed quietude of the suburbs hugging the mountain. It's about bloody time something or someone came back to haunt us.
Next week, we'll look at security fences.
Nothing is better, nothing is best, | Take heed of this and get plenty of rest.
Bob Dylan | Nothing Was Delivered
