Transcription of an MP3 Audio Diary, kept between Friday January 11th

and Saturday March 15th 2008. Part Five.

Monday, 4th February

Last night I wasn't sure whether to go to bed or not – might I have to present
myself to Immigration sometime during the night ? When the Chief locked the
bridge at 0025hrs I went to my chambers, decided to lie down anyway, but
didn't get to sleep before 0200hrs.
Still dark outside, but I was bright and early for breakfast. Far too early, so I
went out on deck and looked down at Duncan Dock; I could see one human and
two feline shadows moving under the orange lights...

In 1948, as we tied up in Duncan Dock, I anxiously searched the faces of the

crowd down below. I expected to see the large bustling body of Bill
Rowbotham, but it was the small still figure of my father that caught my
attention. As soon as I'd convinced myself that it was 'Daddy', he seemed to
shrink... it was as if I were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. I'd
already started closing windows in my head.
I've no idea, now, in 2008, whether I later inserted Wynne into that memory, or
whether she was in fact there, but that reverse telescopic view of the two of
them on the far side of a large happy crowd was a regular feature of my
frequent nightmares after my mother and I went back to England.

Still too early for breakfast, I collect my spare €uros and the 'useless' US dollars
and take them to Captain B's cabin, to put in his safe. He confirms that the
dollar has lost even more against the €uro, otherwise I might have decided to
offload my $200 in a South African bank...
At breakfast, the captain tells me that I should be at the gangplank at 0930 to
wait for the agent who will take me to Immigration and to the hotel. I'm no
longer his responsibility, but I know he'll warmly welcome me aboard in 2 or 3
weeks' time.
At 0930 there is no agent waiting at the gangplank. Only 'Majiet' driving a
minibus from a hospitality company: 'Albatross Marine'. The first thing he says
after 'hullo' is: “This costs ZAR250. Is that OK ?” For the first time since I left
Bussigny, there's a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “OK”. What else
should I have said or done ?
We drove to the Immigration building and and sat in the minibus waiting for
someone to phone him with 'news'. We waited three quarters of an hour. Then
the magic phone call came and we went up to the 5th floor of the building.
Then back down again. The lady immigration officer didn't like the 'Departure:
2nd half of February; Kapstadt-Rotterdam' on my ticket and said there should be
a specific date.
So back we went to the Grey Fox for Captain Böckmann to date, sign and
rubber stamp the ticket for '26/2' – all this in spite of the fact that the woman
knew perfectly well that cargo boat schedules have to remain flexible. By the
time I had got back into the Albatross mini-van, the company had been in touch
with Majiet: “As this procedure has been so long, we have to charge you
ZAR500. OK ?” “OK !” So off we go to see the little blond lady again, visa duly
attached to Swiss passport, then back down to the mini-van To go to the hotel.
“Which hotel ?”
“Well you tell me. I understood that the Agent was arranging it”
“You don't have a hotel ?”
“That is correct”
“Then we must find one”
“That is also correct”.
“The agent told me nothing of this. Can you pay for the 'taxi' now ?”
“No-one told me there would be charges to take me to Immigration. I only
have a few hundred Rand. Where can I find a hotel ? And... Is there an ATM
near here?”
We drove around for a quarter of an hour, giving me my first view of Cape Town
for 60 years. Then we went into a petrol station. So that I could get ZAR1,000
from an ATM.

4hrs later we are still driving around Cape Town ! So far we have found just
one room in a 5-star hotel: ZAR4000 a night... getting on for CHF600 ! The city
has been filling up since Saturday, in anticipation of next Friday's Opening of
Parliament. It seems that all the new MPs, their families, mistresses and pets
have all decided to make the most of a conveniently subsidised week's holiday
beforehand.
The city looked familiar, becoming almost an old friend as we drove up or down
certain streets for the 4th time. Then we drove past the Castle of Good Hope
and I was suddenly a junior schoolboy again. The castle is a regular five
pointed solid and each of the corners has a name. Before I looked up at the
plaque with the name of one corner, I found that I could recite them all, one
after the other: something that we had had to learn by rote at SACS. Then,
from the same forgotten source, I found myself saying out loud the names of
the volcanoes in Mexico, just as I'd done in class in 1948. Incongruous.
Majiet had been as helpful as possible, but (his company's rules) was unable to
call out from his cell phone, so we had had to visit the hotels rather than simply
ringing them up. In the end it was decided that he should take me to the
company offices and they would phone around from there. Their offices were
15-20Kms away from the city centre, so we set off in the direction of the Cape's
only nuclear power station. Then...
“Shit”
“Another problem ?”
“No. (longish pause) Do you mind staying at a 'Formula 1' ?”
By now I had envisaged kipping on the back seat of the minibus in some lock-
up garage, so...
“No, I don't mind at all”.
Majiet was allowed to use his cell phone to call into the office, so he asked his
boss to see if there was a vacancy at the Formula 1. And there was. In
Milnerton. Very close to the nuclear fall-out. So...
So he took me to the Formula 1, helped me unload, accepted a compromise on
the total fare (after calling in to the office again), wished me a pleasant stay...
and gave me the business card of a friend who was 'much, much cheaper' than
Albatross Marine.
They were very pleasant in the hotel, gave me a quick rundown on where I
could buy a few essentials, advised me to call a taxi if I wanted to go
anywhere, then left me to unpack, shower and change.
The view from my window was quite ridiculous... neatly framing The Devil's
Peak, Table Mountain, Lion's Head and Signal Hill. A view that you would pay a
small fortune to have... so long as you didn't look a little closer to home: also
neatly framed by the window, directly below the mountains and 40 metres
away from me was a Caltex Service Garage.
However, it was late afternoon, I had eaten nothing since breakfast and drunk
nothing at all during the 4 hours in the minibus. And the closest place to buy
something to stave off starvation was 40 metres away !
I came away from the Caltex mini-market with: 2 'English' steak & kidney pies,
a curried chicken & mushroom rissole, 100grms of springbok biltong, 6 cans of
ginger-beer shandy and... wine gums. Mini-Maynards Winegums ! There were
17 packets hanging on hooks. 16 of them are now on the table underneath the
telly. The other one is open, an ongoing dessert, as I surf the web on my iBook.
I signed up for 2 days of broadband, although I hate to think how slow non-
broadband must be ! Still, I've been able to add €50 to my United account on
my Sony-Eriksson cell phone and used my Skype account to phone and touch
base with my sister Jenetta (I woke her up !) and called Manoel Skype-to-Skype.
After a longish Tony Hancock-type conversation about the weather, I was at last
able to persuade him to fetch his mother and sister, so we were all able to
catch up a little on what had been happening since I left home on 11th January.
After the ladies had had their say, Manoel came back on line to fill in the
missing pieces. Although she said nothing to me about it, apparently Hannah's
chinchilla died this morning. My first day in South Africa is certainly a day to
remember. A real albatross of a day.

Tuesday, 5th February

Last night I surfed the web a little, then tried to get the hang of South African
TV news broadcasts and eventually switched off at 1.37am and went to bed.
After a short but deep, uninterrupted sleep, I woke with Table Mountain against
a vivid blue sky on my built-in screen/bedroom window. I went to explore my
immediate surroundings, only for motion sickness to send me weaving back to
'Formula 1', where the morning staff greeted me with a ZAR22-friendly
breakfast of limitless cereals, coffee, toast & marmalade. My first morning
proper in South Africa and a new lesson learnt. I should have continued with
the inner ear pills ! I had no problem on the Grey Fox, but this morning's
motion sickness on dry land was somat chronic.
My last complaint for the day !
I took the cinnarizine that I omitted last night and very soon I felt fine. But
while waiting to regain my 'sea legs', I chased up the correspondence on my
'travelling' Yahoo account. A couple of offers of work – last week – plus 756 E-
mails in the 'Spam' Folder: I have been offered so many penile extensions that,
by osmosis, I should by now have developed a member of such proportions
that it would terrify the life out of the next Nigerian politician's widow who
choses to offer to put large sums of money into my Swiss bank account...
Then I Skyped Jenetta and Stuart in order to work out my timetable for going
up-country. We decided that I should leave on Friday, stay with them in Jo-burg
Saturday evening & Sunday and go down to Hilton with Stuart on Monday.
Three days in Cape Town... so, in spite of the F1 manager suggesting very
strongly that I call for an official taxi, I decided to take the local bus from
Milnerton into the city centre.
A long wait at the bus stop (being bombarded by inviting mini-taxis, i.e.
minibus taxis vocally inviting patronage, that might be a risk too far on my first
day), but, all Shipshape and Bristol-fashion, I've finally caught a local bus from
the corner close to the 'Formula One' to go into the centre of Cape Town. This
seems to be a perfectly safe form of transportation. Passengers with smiling
faces, a driver who also gives tickets, patiently explaining the difference
between one form and another, asking politely for small change and informing
me that he will tell me where he thinks I might enjoy getting off...
In the end, I went right to the terminus, a trouble-free jaunt to the big bus
station beside the Town Hall.

A few minutes ago, I was propping up a bollard, just across from Cape Town
Town Hall (where Nelson Mandela made his first speech to the crowd from the
balcony overlooking the bus station, after his release), reading a mini tourist
guide: “Cape Town Castle/'Castle of Good Hope' is...” and I suddenly had a
distant memory of this building shaped like the Pentagon... each of the corners
has a name... and I could still remember them ! What they sounded like,
anyway ! I remember, at SACS, having to learn & recite the names of the
corners off by heart... fragments of memory, groups of names or facts in little
boxes with forgotten doors... “Leerdam, Castelademboden...” and Mexican
volcanoes... “Popacatapetl...” “Chimbaraso, Cotopaxi have stolen me away...”,
and Vita Lampada/The Torch of Life by Sir Henry Newbolt: “There's a breathless
hush in the close tonight, Ten to make, And a match to win...”
The Cape Town Castle of Good Hope has never been attacked. Apparently,
there's a daily tour; you can go down into the dungeons and the torture
chambers; Good Hope seems a bit ironic...
I walked from the bus station, then through the railway station concourse to the
far side to buy my sleeper ticket for Friday. A sleeper on the Shosholoza Meyl
from Cape Town to Johannesburg, 28hrs for ZAR310.-, that's about €28. Then
the lady asked me if it was Cash or Budget... it seems I could also choose to
pay over 12 months...

I am now standing in front of the big Artscape Civic Centre. There are theatre
posters for 'The Merchant of Venice', but it's someway out-of-town in
Maynardville, which is probably too far to go this evening. The production uses
quite a provocative idea: the play is set in 1943 just as Germany is about to
'invade' Italy, pointing up racism/anti-Semitism to the nth degree. Although it
might have made quite a local impact to caste Shylock as a rich South African
Asian or Cape Coloured Jew, during the apartheid era...
The name Maynardville is prophetic: no time to stop for a meal, but sustenance
is available from a pocketful of 'Maynard's Mini Wine Gums', bought last night
from the kiosk in the petrol station next door to the Formula 1.

Learning the street plan by heart & foot, I started 'spiralling' from Herzog
Square until I found my 1st Irish pub: no Magners cider, so had a pint of
Kilkenney to wash down Hake & Chips, then I set off up Long Street.

Someone's just stopped me to ask the date. Not the time, but the date !
It's Tuesday, 5th February and I'm walking up Long Street...

I'm now opposite 'Pepper Street', or what I used to call Pepper Street, but it's
now spelled P-E-P-E-R ... perhaps it always was. Just opposite, is a red GR pillar
box which has been there since the time of King George V. I remember it very
well from 1948... vividly and distinctly, because I was walking past it one day
when I heard someone shout “boo!”. I was convinced that there was somebody
hiding inside the pillar box and I ran off up the street and hid behind the hedge
in front of the Moslem Baths. That was years and years and years before
'Candid camera' or programmes like that... Anyway, I'm continuing up Long
St., towards the Baths which stand at a multiple intersection, then I'll cross into
Kloof Street to find out whether there is still a No. 44 and if not, whether
anybody remembers Harmony House Hotel, which is where I lived 60 years
ago.

Is this an odyssey, a pilgrimage, or what the hell is it? What best explains
what's happening ?

I'm in front of St Martin's Church which is at the top end of Long Street opposite
the Moslem Baths, and they're both across the corner from the beginning of
Kloof Street, where I lived. St Martin's Church is Dutch Lutheran.
There's another building that stands out now... I'm not 100% sure, but I think it
used to be the Overseas Members' Club, Overseas Visitors' Club or something
like that... it's now the Maharajah Indian restaurant.
The pedestrian lights have changed, so I am now going across into Kloof street.
This is the corner where we were stopped by traffic lights at least four times
yesterday, in the minibus, when we were looking for Hill Street, where I
PRESUMED Majiet had booked a room at a guest house! However, it seems
there is also a Hull Street... And it's almost impossible to tell the difference
between Hill Street and Hull Street when they are pronounced with a Cape
Town Afrikaans accent. And Majiet's accent was very strong! I think I was just
too disorientated yesterday... and I was certainly suffering from instant (but,
thank goodness, short-lived) depression, as a result of the initial unwelcome
welcome.
Hill Street and Hull Street must be on opposite sides of town (not that I
remember actually seeing Hull Street) and anyway the guest-house in Hill St.,
when we eventually found the place, said they had no vacancies. Then, to add
to my total confusion, Majiet said that HE had never called in the first place; he
presumed he was following up on a call that I had (NOT) made!! Pity. It's a
German guest house, quite central and reasonably priced. In spite of my
disorientation and brain working every which-way, I was surprised how much of
their conversation in Afrikaans I could follow... Nice place to stay, though: part
back-packer, part 3 star hotel, similar to the ones that I had been told about
that you usually find on the outskirts of built-up areas, just before the start of
the veld. It would have been cool to have stayed there. But, as we found out
on our travels yesterday, there were very few beds available anywhere within 5
miles of parliament... hence the F1 out at Milnerton. But with a reasonable bus
service (and the fact that I can always call a cab, if needs be), Milnerton is now
looking like a stroke of lucky genius.

On the opposite corner from where I am at the bottom of Kloof St., there is still
a bar that used to be important to me; tarted up and more of a sidewalk cafe
now, it used to be a corner shop-cum-milk bar, run by two Greek Cypriot
brothers. That was the first place I think I ever tasted Coca-Cola and certainly
the first place I ever read Captain Marvel & Superman comics and things like
that.
I remember sitting in there one afternoon after school, drinking a milkshake
and deciding that I didn't want to be Batman but I DID want to be Robin...
And... Dick Tracy, that's right! I always wanted to have a Dick Tracy watch to be
able to talk to other people while walking down the street... He had these two-
way watches with built-in videophone sound & picture... something that
wouldn't really exist for another 50 years...
I have become disenchanted with this South African pedestrian crossing, after
following seemingly clear instructions. You have to press the button. It says:
"press button, wait till traffic stops, cross quickly". It's also written in Afrikaans.
Green pedestrian light and now I'm walking across... I'm half way across and
the green 'WALK' light is already flashing red... and there's a lady driver coming
straight for me... she doesn't slow down and I've just made it onto the
pavement!
Now's not the time to dawdle, but I must come back to the SA pedestrian
lighting system, when I have a traffic-free moment...

So, I went up the street – but number 44, Harmony House Hotel was not there: I
didn't really expect it would be. Where it should have been, is in Internet cafe
in the middle of a row of newish shops...
However, I did find a little turning that I recognised, going up beside where
Harmony House Hotel should have been, leading to the second school I went to
in 1948. I walked up the steep little hill, went into a plush reception area and
asked if this used to be a school: "No. Since 1715 this had been a tobacco
company". Foiled again.
It's now the headquarters of the third South African television channel. They
invited me in and showed me around... and when I gave them my card they
immediately asked me if I was working or if I was interested in working ! I told
them I was just visiting, didn't have a work visa (for something as official as a
national TV network), but thanked them for the thought or the offer anyway!
I told them that I thought the building had been my old school, but obviously I
had been mistaken. Then the elderly (white) doorman told me that there was a
similar building behind this one. He took me out through the back archway,
past a pasta factory, round to the right, and what did I find... I found the
entrance to "Varsity College". I went inside and spoke to a little old lady sitting
behind the reception desk.
“Yes,” she said “this used to be a school”
“I mean... quite a long time ago... about 60 years ago... 1948...”
“Oh yes. I was at school here then”
We might possibly have been in the same class !
I went outside and took a couple of photos of the entrance for my album... the
entrance to the second school I went to in 1948; not South African College
School (SACS), in the Gardens, but, when we couldn't afford to send me to
SACS any more, I went to this... poor-white school, where I think there were
Cape Coloured children as well, although in 1948 the law changed, segregating
the races... But I'm pretty sure there were still coloured kids in the school is
well... much more friendly... Anyway, it's now Varsity College, part of the
University of Cape Town. How about that, then? Didn't recognise the little old
lady, though.

This is more and more bizarre. In this old tobacco factory complex, with my old
school at the back of it, there's another little entrance with steps leading up to
a wooden door. This is the 'City Varsity' which is a Creative Arts and Media
School, producing: 'professional actors for the camera, makeup people,
cameramen, photographers etc. etc.'.
I'm thoroughly enjoying my afternoon in this beautifully sunny but very windy
city... The wind has been incredibly strong... I noticed on the boat when we
came in the other night that the wind was up to about 40 knots which is quite
strong... and it's been very strong most of the time I've been here. Quite often I
have felt myself fighting the wind, to the extent that I have to watch out for the
traffic if I'm standing or walking near the kerb-side; with a self-locking kneecap
and ankle, and the resulting uncertainty of balance, one could easily end up
under a bus.
But back to the City Varsity: it's all part of this block that has been ripped down,
built back up again and extended; there's a rabbit warren of communicating
passages underground between all of the facilities; but the frontage on the
main road is where Harmony House Hotel used to stand.

Today I took relatively few photos, but there's lots of MP3 recording to
transcribe !
Bus back to 'Formula 1', then next door to the service station to pick up supper:
steak & kidney pie, 2 samosas (spiced with the pineapple chutney I had bought
in a supermarket, all washed down with 3 bottles of 'Hunter's Extra Dry' cider
from the same source).

I took my usual 'SUNSET' photos for posterity (I've decided I shall prepare a
study of the sunsets I have met), then I SkypedOut and informed the Swiss
family Worrod of my firmed-up plans. I decided to type up a few key diary
notes while listening to 'Stand-Up in Leicester' on BBC7 on the Web. I shall
listen to (and eventually transcribe) today's verbiage at a much later date.
G'night.

Wednesday, 6th February

It's Ash Wednesday, 6th February. 'Formula 1' 22-Rand Breakfast, then bus into
Cape Town. Getting to know the city on foot, I've just stopped outside
'Artscape' which I visited yesterday. It must be coffee-break time, as the
smokers are outside, not being allowed to smoke in any enclosed public areas,
the law being just as strict as in Europe. Three ladies are standing together
with their Moslem headscarves on, outside to have a quick fag; I wonder what
would happen if they were completely covered up... Smoke seeping out from
behind a yashmak or burqa might be very provocative... or even enticing.
Once again I walked to 'Waterfront' which only a few years ago was exactly
what the word says, with the additional rider of 'virtually derelict'. Now it's 'the
place to be' and looks like a step up from the leisure side of Canary Wharf in
London, with an adopted display of fur seals who have chosen the wilds of
tourist cameras, for which they perform, sending up (theatrical expression for
taking the piss out of) the camera-clickers while waiting for the 3rd or
4thobserver to repeat: “He really is dead/dying/drowning”... before coming up
for a swift intake of air, then playing possum once again.

Up on walls and hoardings, there's lots of publicity to sell products to the

general public, but there's also an awful lot of publicity offering to sell to
hawkers. Coming from the UK, where the only time you see the word hawkers
in print is in negative publicity, it's quite a surprise. So these are sales outlets
that sell to a middleman, but the middleman is pushing a barrow or servicing a
market stall.

From where I'm standing, I can look up to the top of Table Mountain, but I have
to squint to do it, because the wind is even stronger and there's quite a lot of
dust in the air.
I wonder if the cable car is running today... I'll find out later, as I intend to take
the red 'Hop On-Hop Off' bus and perhaps even the blue one later: the red bus
concentrates on the city centre, then goes to Sea Point, Green Point and back
to the Waterfront and it also goes up to the cable-car station below Table
Mountain... (I'm not sure what speed the wind has to reach for the cable-car to
be temporary closed...); the blue bus goes into the countryside and down to
Hout Bay, much further down the coast.

In the end, I bought a 2-day 'Hop On–Hop Off' bus ticket and took the 'red'
(inner circle) trip at once. Using the trip to re-orientate myself even better.
Both Red and Blue buses start off their tours through the city centre
(downtown!?! - well, it really is 'down' in Cape Town, on land reclaimed from
Table Bay). As we passed Woolworth's, the guide told us that the store is
actually part of Marks & Sparks. For some reason, the son of Michael Marks
(M&S) was not allowed to use the brand name so known and loved in the UK.
So he called it Woolworths! (This seemed so unlikely, I later checked on the
web. And this is what I found: The Woolworths brand is popular with the
South African middle class. The chain is not related to the United
States chain F. W. Woolworth Company, rather it is affiliated to Marks
& Spencer in the United Kingdom.)

My memory of one particular thing in Woolworths in 1948 is still vivid. They

had a donut assembly line. I'd never even tasted a doughnut before coming to
South Africa, but here you could follow your donut from the individual
ingredients being dosed into a mixing bowl, move on to extrusion of the donut
into a vat of cooking fat, then follow its progress as it was flipped over several
times on a rising series of draining trays, onto a conveyor belt covered with
sugar, to be flipped once again, then suddenly you were at the counter where
the apronned and hatted sales lady was smilingly waiting to serve you your
donut... I think they also did krapfen along the same route, but with a slight
deviation to be injected with jam or cream.

Decided not to Hop Off in Sea Point or Green Point. There were hundreds of
people on the beach, but virtually nobody in the sea. Summer sea
temperatures are lower than those in the winter and can go well below 10C
(cold current from melting ice in Antarctica) and the 4 people in wet suits
braving the waves were an indication of how cold the water probably was
today... and anyway I'd decided to 'go back to' the Sea Point Fish Market for a
special meal... tomorrow. It's one of the few places that I remember eating out
in 1948. After a Fish Market lunch, there was always time for a splash about in
the tidal swimming pool.

So I had today's lunch at the original 'Clock Tower' near the Waterfront
terminus of my red bus trip. The Clock Tower is just beside the 'Nelson
Mandela Gateway', which is where you catch the boat to Robben Island,
Mandela's home for 18 of the 27 years he was imprisoned.
I'd decided to eat at the Clock Tower because it was conveniently placed to
listen to the marimba band entertaining the customers at the various eateries
around the swing bridge and inner harbour and, once I had ordered a beer, the
waiters were in no hurry to take my order for food, so I was able to record some
of the music without being interrupted by nearby human voices. I became very
fond of marimbas after I got to know 'Wait a Minim' in the early 60s. WaM was
a South African revue that picked holes in the SA political system, and the Tracy
brothers provided a wide range of African music and musical instruments. I
have a scratched LP at home and tried unsuccessfully to get a new copy when I
went into a record store this morning, but there seems to be nothing by the
Tracy brothers, and Jeremy Taylor's humorous songs are politically non-correct
and probably not available... although I did find a copy of his 'Aach Pleeez
Deddy!'!
My beer has arrived, served by a waiter with a huge grin on his face and a
finger to his lips, showing that he didn't want to interrupt me, but I shall have
to stop recording, otherwise I'll never get any lunch...

I think the most impressive thing about this morning was going round on the
bus past Camps Bay with the beautiful expanse of shining white beach and
nobody in the water. Very odd.
The plastic duck noise that I just heard wasn't part of the musical
accompaniment, but came from the ferryboat going across to Robben Island...
Interesting piece of information: they are proposing that visitors who go across
to the old penal colony be shackled the way the prisoners used to be... But
you'll have a choice... And you won't actually be tied down to the boat as were
prisoners as recently as Nelson Mandela.
Way, way back, with Jan Van Riebeek, the first Dutch criminals were sent to
Robben Island... Then it was used as at typhoid base, to get people away from
society, then a home to more prisoners, and later a leper colony... Basically,
people most of us wouldn't normally want to snuggle up to.
I must buy some marimba CDs before I leave Cape Town...
In the meantime, I'm feasting on good South African beer plus an ample cheese
plate.

After lunch I'll jump onto the 'blue' bus and take the complete tour for an
overview. Then I'll go again tomorrow, having chosen 2 or 3 places where I
want to Hop Off for a closer look...
The Blue Bus goes much further out of the city centre, into the countryside,
down to Hout Bay, from where there is a trip out to Seal Island, although
whether there will be time to do that this afternoon I doubt... and also we go
back to what used to be called District 6. We went through there this morning
on the Red Bus and will have another look at it this afternoon; it was razed to
the ground years ago... When Jan Smuts was voted out of office in 1948, ultra-
right winger Malan took over, quickly imposing the “Thou shalt not go to bed or
break bread with anybody who is not the same race as you” laws. Which means
they immediately started breaking up District 6 which was home to all possible
combinations of race, creed and colour... And joy! That's what they really tried
to smash, I think.
This Blue Bus visits one of the townships that were created mostly from Cape
Coloured people who were thrown out of District 6 and 'relocated', to use an
unhappy euphemism. This township has been preserved in the same state that
it was when the whites were in control. The whites tried (possibly not very
hard) to establish a certain number of cottage industries to be run by the
people in the townships and here there is the original 'Teabag Production
Company' factory which we shall visit. They don't produce tea bags: they make
things FROM used tea bags...
We also visit the world-famous horticultural Park near Newlands, an area from
which all the geraniums in the world are said to originate.
Then, as I said, we go to Hout Bay, Seal Island if there is time, otherwise I can
do it tomorrow, as I got my ticket for two days.

However, I've already photographed my first seal from close to; after I finished
lunch at the Clock Tower, this seal was slowly drifting under the weigh-bridge,
playing dead... and it obviously plays to the crowd. After lifting one nostril out
of the water, it subsided beneath the surface, turned over, lay there with one
little flipper sticking up in the air, dribbling out a few air bubbles from its
mouth, staying under for a very long time, just until -- it happened three times
while I was there -- somebody said: “I think he's dead”... “I think she's dying...”
Then the seal would surface, snort like someone trying to subdue a laugh, look
slowly at the sea of faces above it on the footbridge, from left to right and right
to left, wink, then (after the crowd had moved on) go through the whole
procedure again, only moving aside when the weigh-bridge had to open to
allow a yacht into the inner Harbour.
And in the inner Harbour, there is a raft beside a kind of enclosed swimming
pool for the colony of fur seals that obviously find it convenient to live cheek by
jowl with man, rather than further round the coast.

Our Blue Bus commentator informs us that we now moving up towards the area
where Desmond Tutu, Mark Thatcher and Princess Diana's brother, Earl
Spencer, have their hillside residences.

We've stopped outside Kirstenbosch: the plant reserve; I think it's best to call it
that, rather than visualising a giant Garden Centre. It's incredibly complete, as
far as the indigenous plants are concerned. It's quite close to Newlands, where
the rugby ground is, and also to where South African College School (SACS)
transferred. The old SACS building near the Gardens in the centre of Cape Town
is now part of the University of Cape Town, as I think I said.
From here, we're going to stop at the famous township; I think I'll save that visit
for tomorrow...
The most impressive thing at the moment is that when we came into Newlands
it just sort of clouded over; you can see way off in the distance blue, blue sky,
but we are completely under cloud here. According to the lady doing the
commentary on the bus, they have over 80 inches (200cms+) of rain here, four
times that at Cape Town International airport, which is only 13 kms away. So it
is very wet, very damp; and great for plants... probably great for the rugby
players as well, but not at all like the rest of the weather around here. It's
completely covered over and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we had a tropical
downpour or forked lightning... But back towards Devils Peak and over Table
Mountain it's clear blue sky.
All the geraniums in the world actually originated here. In 1600-and-something,
the Dutch took plants back to Europe; prior to that, the geranium had been an
unknown species.
The Arum Lily is called Pig's Ear here; they are so common they grow like
weeds.

In Kirstenbosch, there's row upon row of greenhouses - not to harness the sun
& moisture and so on, as we use them at home, but quite the opposite: it's so
wet and humid here, they need to keep the plants dry, as many, many of them
have been brought from the more arid areas of Southern Africa. These gardens
are the biggest single centre of indigenous plants anywhere in the world.
The commentary tells us that most of the trees around us and even on the
slopes of Table Mountain are equatorial. One of the indigenous trees that HAS
survived is the silver tree, a few of which have been replanted out here. The
silver tree only occurs naturally on the slopes of Table Mountain. The
characteristic silver sheen of the leaves is produced by the thousands of hairs
that cover each leaf to protect the plant. There are fewer and fewer of these
trees on Table Mountain, because each year dozens are destroyed by fire...
either natural or man-made.

The bus commentary gave us quite an insight into the Khoikhoi (called
Hottentots by the settlers) and their dealings with the Dutch settlers:
“All (the Dutch East India Company ships) seemed to want to do, was to load
fresh supplies and be on their way again. But later they brought Dutch settlers
to the Cape.
By the time Jan van Riebeek came to the Cape, the Khoikhoi already knew a
good deal about the Europeans, who cheated them of their cattle in trade for
trinkets and copper wire.
The Dutch East India Company decided to give farmland around here to their
freiburgers or free citizens, to appease the unhappy company workers at the
Cape. The Khoikhoi realised that their land was gradually being taken from
them permanently...
The small (Dutch) settlement around the castle was tolerated by the Khoikhoi
for its lucrative trade, but now their grazing and hunting land was being
appropriated. They retaliated by stealing the free burgers' cattle and in 1651
the Dutch started what is known as the First Khoikhoi war.
After about a year of war, the Khoikhoi agreed to peace talks and the Dutch
actually left a remarkably candid record of this meeting in which the Khoikhoi
asked some pertinent questions about the loss of their land rights: People
wanted to know what would happen if they, the Khoikhoi, had gone to Holland
and settle on land, willy-nilly, without asking permission. Nevertheless, the
Dutch just threatened more bloodshed if they insisted on reclaiming their
ancestral land. And that ended the so-called peace talks.
“There are numerous telephone lines crossing the road, so those of
you on the top deck, please remain seated while the bus is moving.”.

Pre-Mandela, some Hout Bay residents declared their town an Independent

Republic. There are stories about the emission of Hout Bay passports and
residents travelling overseas on them. This was done by private citizens as a
declaration that they were sick and tired of being presumed supporters of
apartheid... refusing to be tarred with the same whitewash?
Near Hout Bay, are 'The Dungeons'. There are several other beaches fine for
surfing, but The Dungeons is where the world's most famous big wave surfers
gather between May and August, waiting for the green light, which is when the
waves are between five and six metres high, and when competitions take
place. For real die-hards, competitions have been known to take place with
20m waves -- if that's not enough to scare you, there's also the icy water to
contend with. Surfers say that the temperature is far more dangerous and far
more critical than the height of any wave.

One of the strangest things about today was realising that I am one of the
relatively few people in Cape Town in 2008 who spent time in District 6, and
certainly one of the very, very few (thanks to the ravages of AIDS, TB and other
levellers) who went there before the law was passed to outlaw relationships
across the racial divide. The boundary road of District 6 was at the back of
SACS and I used to walk out of the far side of the (Dutch East India Company)
Gardens to go to one of the bioscopes: Roxy & Royal (cinemas where your
ticket included a drink and some edible snack)... After the segregation,
expulsions and eventual declaration of District 6 as a 'Whites Only Residential
Area' in the 60s, virtually all of the houses were razed to the ground, leaving
only a handful of mostly 'religious' buildings – churches, mosques etc. Today, in
2008, the whole area is still fallow: no crops, no buildings. So far, they have
built just 24 new houses on the prime site where thousands of people used to
live in such a vibrant borough...
If you can imagine a single district that was part ghetto, part Chinatown, part
Malay, part Buddhist, part Christian, part Moslem (although ex-slave Moslems
from Madagascar, Indonesia, Malaya and elsewhere had created their own
quarter below Signal hill on the other side of the main street)... most of them
living in real harmony... I'm sure there are other ethnicities to whom I do a
disservice by leaving them out. My little 9yr-old has a memory of a happy,
noisy, musical fairground of a place, where I was greeted joyfully at a time
when there was precious little joy in my life elsewhere.

A near nightmare memory from Harmony House Hotel ...and a connection to

Kristian in Swakopmund and Colin West at Bablake... I believed that the owner
of Harmony House Hotel was a witch. I can remember very little of her physical
characteristics, except that I always found myself focusing on the tip of her
nose in order not to come under the spell of her eyes or be devoured by her
wide, non-smiley mouth. My mother told me that she was always complaining
about my behaviour. At the time, I believed my mother, although in retrospect,
I think that my mother almost invariably 'passed on' (sometimes non-existent)
complaints or insults from others, rather than express her own anger or
frustration. Not sure why, but the witch invited us to visit her apartment, I
think, for afternoon tea. I don't remember sitting down, although I presume I
must have done. Anyway, as we were leaving, the witch took a bowl of fruit
from beside her telephone and offered me a guava. I didn't know what guavas
were, or how to eat them. So she showed me: you pinch the guava on either
side; then you bite through the flesh, squeeze, and suck out the delicious,
sweet & sour innards. Nothing could be simpler. She handed me one to follow
her example. Pinch, bite, squeeze, suck... and the innards squirted out from
the other side of the guava, onto the centre of the witch's living room carpet.
Then, terrified, I really blew it by dropping to my knees and trying to clean up
the mess! The witch screeched: “Please, take him away!” and my mother
grabbed me by my upper arm and frog-marched me out of the witch's front
door, across the courtyard and up the outside wooden stairs to our room...
When I had lunch with Kristian in Swakopmund, he couldn't decide which fizzy
drink to order to wash down his lunch. Unusual for him, he decided to be
adventurous and try something he'd never had before: a guava drink. And
'guava' rang a distant bell. Now I remember why !
Perhaps things don't change too much over a lifetime; when I met my Bablake
classmate Colin West in Bern before I went to Viet Naam in 2005, he told me
about his clearest memory of me at school: at the end of a school lunch (a
Tuesday or Thursday in summer, because I was wearing a white cricket shirt,
rather than regulation grey) we had stewed plums as dessert. I attempted to
slice a plum in two with my spoon... and succeeded in spraying my shirt & tie
more or less the same colour as a Bablake School blazer. Being me, I played up
to the general hilarity, but deep inside I was terrified and the little nine-year-old
was again trying to scrub the stain out of the witch's carpet.
Back in the school dining-room, I seem to remember the laughter subsiding,
the plum pulp having been spooned onto my plate. Then I carefully tried to
finish my pudding. I THINK (but I must ask Colin to be sure) I moved the
remaining plums to the far side of my plate and tried again... and re-sprayed
my shirt... or is that just a heightened memory for comic effect ? Colin, please
help me !
But back to Harmony House Hotel...
Little boys have big ears and I had heard how the witch took advantage of my
friends, the black 'boys'... at the end of the month she paid them and gave
them a bottle of whisky. They duly got drunk, were arrested and were later
bailed out by the witch – the fine to be deducted from the following month's
wages. And so on, month after month. The 'boys' couldn't afford to leave, so it
was a really vicious circle; 20th century semi-slavery.
I'm aware now that my friendship with the black and coloured 'boys' in their
corrugated iron huts in the inside courtyard of the Harmony House Hotel must
have caused my mother untold difficulties at the time, with the hotel owner
and the other guests. But the 'boys' were the only ones who were prepared to
spend time and energy on me, while my two pet adults had their own problems
to sort out.
Tomorrow I shall go to the District 6 Museum.