Cape Town Introductions

Cape Town is a city of stark contrasts. Beautifully imposing Table Mountain looms in the backdrop of every cityscape. The restaurant scene is cosmopolitan and ever expanding. And the wine produced in neighbouring Stellenbosch and Franschoek is world class.

But it's impossible not to see and feel the racial frisson that years of history has scarred this beautiful city, and country, with. I've never felt so white in my life and I'm not even. When driving into and out of the city, we saw the scale of inequality. Upscale neighbourhoods are spread out, whilst Townships, a code name for tin shack village slums, house thousands of people in a similar space, just a road away. News 24, a South African news site, has posted aerial photography here. This obvious inequality has created a host of problems. According to The Economist, the murder rate in Cape Town has risen 60% in the last eight years. It comes in third place in the country for sexual offences, not something you really want to be on the winning pedestal for. 

I have a good friend at work whose father was a prominent South African historian and so I'd beefed up on my SA history. Apartheid will leave a lasting legacy for generations and there's not a lot that anyone can do about that. While we were there, talks of reparations for black South Africans were ongoing, but we encountered an entrenched racism that I think many white South Africans want to pretend doesn't exist. 

These tensions were on our mind for the entire trip. The night we arrived into the airport, we'd booked a car transfer who never showed up. We ended up in an uber, keeping our heads down as we sped past some dangerous, dangerous parts of the city. The next morning, Gemma headed out early for a CrossFit class, opting to take the big, busy roads to get there. This didn't stop two men from jumping out and mugging her at knifepoint. They got £40, a driving license, a string backpack and a banana.

The police's comments were unhelpful: you're lucky it wasn't worse. And from then on out, we didn't feel safe walking on our own, nighttime or daytime. Although the people we encountered from that point showed us nothing but kindness, it was impossible to relax. With over 40 years of combined travel experience between the three of us, we were finally introduced to the lesser side of nice. 

We all took a moment to check our privilege knowing that this is nothing in comparison to the everyday life that many experience the world over. I grew up near one of these divided cities; my parents did everything to shield us from that reality. But even now, a year later, I have nothing poignant to say. I don't know how a society heals from the powerful poison of its own history.