Half light...There's a new one out now. It's called
Night and Day. For banal and obvious reasons, of course.
Late last night, my photo-journalism associate McCracken McCracken and I were sitting in my car atop Signal Hill overlooking Cape Town. A wicked westerly blew squalls of winter rain in off the Atlantic, and the guard the city's posted to the desolate, windswept spot to report tourists being mugged, raped and/or murdered, told us things would soon turn ugly.
"It's going to turn ugly," he said, adding: "Soon."
I looked at McCracken McCracken and snorted. She took a swig of her beer and snorted in return. I turned to the guard. "Look, my good man, we are photo-journalists. My name's Mike and this is my associate, McCracken McCracken. I've no idea where you come from, but in my business, we don't back down until the job or we have been put to bed."
He understood. A refugee from the Eastern Cape, he'd seen tough times too. And so it was that I found myself huddled under an umbrella held by McCracken McCracken, drinking lousy coffee, smoking cheap cigarettes, and taking the occasional shot of a rain-sodden city.
Besides the guard and the occasional cop van, it seemed we were the only people on the mountain. So much for tourism. Perhaps the gangsters had bagged the lot.
"We're photo-journalists," I explained to the cop when he asked me about my car's broken headlight and lack of a licence. "We earn less than you do."
"
Kak," exclaimed the burly Afrikaans sergeant in the driver's seat. "I read your blog. There's bugger all journalism there. It's all pictures."
McCracken McCracken and I giggled. "You dumb sot," she sneered. "Of course it's all pictures. In my culture, a picture speaks a thousand words. That's why you people read it. You're an illiterate bunch."
He was a bright bastard and, like the guard, caught on immediately. We exchanged pleasantries and he and
Kolskoot, his sidekick, left us alone. From Signal Hill, we made our way to Table Mountain, or
Hoerikwaggo as it's now known — in honour of a culture as dead as the Romans.
"You think they had a problem with barbarians here?" I asked McCracken McCracken as she poured me some more coffee, lit us a couple of cigarettes, opened herself another can of beer, and cleaned my camera.
"What about my shoes?" I asked, peevishly. She started cleaning them too. Decent help is hard to find these days. I count myself fortunate.
"Of course they did," she retorted, eyeing me suspiciously. "The fucking Europeans."
It happens occasionally. I forget. The Europeans headed out this way with their Java-nese slaves during the Seventeenth Century and genocide, disease, and the Bible followed hot on their heels. Africa was ruined forever.
In search of a public lavatory (McCracken McCracken again), I pulled in to the Lower Cable Station on Table Mountain. It's a massive bloody edifice dwarfed by the mountain looming above it. It reminded me, in the dark, of the Voortrekker Monument. I was in a cultural mood. The loos on Table Mountain, late at night, are open and are probably as clean as those down on the Waterfront. I doubt the Voortrekker Monument ever smelt as sweet.
Mind you, you don't know the hell those people went through. The British are a murderous bunch of bastards and the Euro-trash already here were wise to flee when their sails appeared on the horizon.
Today, the British are still causing havoc in Cape Town. We found them in Long Street and we found them in Observatory. I asked three local bouncers hanging around outside the Moonglow club in a manner befitting the heroes of that great British novel,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, if I could photograph them. They refused.
I'm used to being turned down. When I tried to take pictures of a couple of automatic-rifle toting bank guards in Kevlar vests outside our local ATM, the guys in the van nearly jumped me.
And it was a Kenilworth housewife who ran me off her property when she found me trying to take snaps of her security fence at 06:30 in the morning.
These things do not trouble me.
We awoke early this morning. A heavy mist hid the weather of the night and, hoping for better, McCracken McCracken and I headed off into the day to complete our assignment. "Photo-journalism's a great gig," I explained to her.
"How so?" She was looking a bit jaded. All those beers.
It's one of the few professions in which technology makes you look better than you are," I answered as she sipped on the hair of the tail of the dog that had bitten her hours earlier. "All you need is integrity, insight, talent, flair, imagination and all that shit...and you're away."
"But you have none of those things," she commented wryly. "Where does that leave us?"
"At the top, McCracken," I responded, without missing a beat. "A bit of fanaticism, perseverance, dogged stubbornness, and a fair whack of good luck are different names for the same things, and we have all those things in abundance."
She agreed. The secret's actually far simpler. It has to do with monkeys and typewriters.
It was a tough day, but once the assignment was over, and the beers, coffee and cigarettes had run out, we headed home. Tomorrow will be a tough day as well, but I shall be at work, so it won't be half as enjoyable.
Besides, McCracken McCracken won't be there with me, and I really do appreciate her company.
