While South Africans bleat and moan about crime, I'm still having fun with my budget Canon. I took these Sunday, down at Llandudno, where a chunky swell gave the body boarders something to smile about. It seems I missed a big swell Saturday, but so what?
We were on the mountain at Devil's Peak, below Rhodes Memorial. It seems some people were mugged there earlier today.
Leaving Llandudno after sunset, I asked a surfer washing down his wetsuit how large he thought the waves were. "Depends what you mean," he answered curtly.
"I mean how big do you reckon the waves are out at the back?" I persisted.
"About three foot," he muttered, turning back to his wetsuit.
I dunno. I put him down as a typical Capetonian, unwilling to chat and unfriendly to boot. Some six-foot waves were coming through at the back, a break called The Wedge, and the body boarders made merry with them while the surfers messed around in the shore break — a vicious enough wave, as small as it was.
Yeah, crime. Apparently, Capetonians are doing something about it. Alarms, security fences, armed response, bicycle patrols, and ADT huts on every second corner are the order of the day. Now, whenever suburbia is rocked by a robbery, every Tom, Sipho, and Sally e-mails hundreds of other besieged residents.
Quite what they hope to achieve by doing this, I've no idea.
Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to find out. Those now doing something about crime tend to be those 300,000 ADT customers who can afford to do something about it — even if only by regaling the neighbourhood with personal Tales of the Terrible.
There are a couple of breaks out at Llandudno. When the tide comes in, the body boarders get a good ride off incoming swells pushed up by the outgoing wash from both the beach and the rocks. Their boards have a far better shape these days too — the concave tail offering a better and more comfortable fit around the waist, stomach or chest.
Oh, yeah, the Somalis. Rethabile posed an interesting question quite some time ago. Are Basotho racist? Or something similar. I remember the post because it gave us something to chew on. Refugees finding their way here generally find South Africa a living hell. Most South Africans give them an extraordinarily hard time and I can quite easily see why some would label such aggressive behaviour 'racist'.
It's not. In my book, racism carries with it an assumption of one's culture being superior to others. Xenophobia, on the other hand, explains things pretty well. It's a cultural thing and as old as humankind. Basically, it boils down to a fear of the Other manifested through violence.
Mohamed Hassan Ahmed, a Somali refugee living in Cape Town, was murdered this past Friday night. I believe xenophobia played a large part in his needless murder.
Now, Cape Town's a pretty cosmopolitan place. We have Rwandans, Burundians, Congolese, Senegalese, Tanzanian, Zimbabwean, Nigerian, Kenyan and other nationalities fleeing to Cape Town in large numbers. Somalis, fleeing the civil war and genocide in that country, make up a pretty small part of the cultural brio we have going down here.
Yet Mohamed was the twenty-seventh member of the Somali community to be murdered this month. During July, twenty-one Somalis were murdered. In Cape Town. The police aren't that concerned.
Forget Darfur. Come to Cape Town.
We spent quite some time on the rocks yesterday, enjoying the sun and watching the sea. Although only a moderate swell was evident, the insanity of surfers was on full display. Not only do these body boarders kneel or stand on their damned boards, they paddle dangerously close to the rocks when making their way out to their chosen spot.
One guy popped into view beneath me. He didn't seem to be making much headway, a set was coming in, and he was being pushed back onto the rocks time and again. I was worried. Calling out to him above the roar of the surf made no sense, but I felt maybe I could ascertain whether or not he was in trouble before calling for some help.
It seems he knows Llandudno well, and within minutes, he'd escaped the rocks and was doing 360s on some fast-breaking rough stuff.
Umm... yeah, the refugees. That they might be, but it seems we offer them no refuge. Accorded refugee status if not deported to the charnel houses they've fled, they're not allowed South African citizenship. Children born to refugees remain refugees.
It seems we don't want them here.
Okay, so I'm working through this crime thing. Why? I don't know. I guess I want to understand where everybody's coming from. Although my extended family has been hit hard by violent crime, I've not been mugged, hijacked or shot.
I've a feeling most people have escaped such trauma. And I've a feeling most feel there's more mileage to be made from scoring points from and speaking about crime than there is in doing anything about it.
Meanwhile, the rich folk erect ever-higher electric fences, send each other e-mails and get shot in their drives while the poor get blown away wherever they happen to be. It's said that about three percent of white South Africans, who make up less than twenty percent of the population, are affected by crime.
Black, predominantly poor South Africans and refugees from all over Africa are taking a beating. For some reason, white South Africans, because they take their security fences and year-round sunshine for granted, remind me of the surly twat I encountered at Llandudno.
It seems there's a little bit of xenophobia in all of us and it sure as hell doesn't help...
Note: I gave Independent Online a hard time yesterday...or the day before. All the stories linked to here come from their site. Ehem...
