CAPETOWN  (SOUTH AFRICA)

The 11 hour flight in from Amsterdam is running late anyway.  There is a long line at the car rental counter, and of course the usual dodgy “extra fees” and disclaimers and attempts to pass the liability buck not mentioned when first booking the vehicle online.  Then the vehicle itself.  A six speed Hyundai, steering wheel on the right side, shift stick on the left.  Turn indicator toward my right hand.  Windshield wiper on the left.   And of course, you drive on the left.  Just the opposite of The States.

I pull out of the parking garage at 1 AM, grinding the gears like a broken down tank due to the reversed shift pattern.  Reverse gear itself does not work.  My very first turn is into oncoming traffic.  No way to back out (until later, when I discover there is a small reverse button on the shifter which must be maneuvered just-so to go backward).  A rapid U-turn is executed – and yes, that is the correct use of the word – and I head out for the hotel.  The navigation system is not intuitive, and there are no directions.  It has its own sense of humor.  It is called “try as you might” and pray like hell.

When I am finally able to enter in an address, it does not inform you that you must be specific as to district and neighborhood also.  Following the prompts, I enter in a street name and number and “Capetown.”  After going in huge loops multiple times and putting 77 kilometers on the car before even getting out of sight of the airport, I unwittingly pull into a suspect area with furtive youth excitedly pointing at the car.  Nav system is double checked.  I am in Khayelitsha, one of those refuges of the underprivileged (called townships here) that virtually every guidebook warns you about not entering alone or at night.  They are much like the favelas (slum shanty towns) in Brazil.

The Hyundai idles in a dead end, overhead map light brazenly announcing my presence.  Inspired youth begin to excitedly circle the car.  I make a lurching departure, not really caring about a destination.  What a way to start your birthday …

After arriving two hours late at the hostel and already having consumed one-sixth of a tank of gas, I wipe down the windshield.  It is covered with spittle from all the times a turn signal was intended but instead the rain wipers were actuated.  Madeline and Tjaart, managers of the Surf Shack Hostel, are gracious upon arrival.  “Welcome to South Africa,” they offer cheerfully at nearly 3 AM.  My first night’s sleep is very restless.  The morning weather in the Blouberg beach area district, however, is stunning.  Clear and 65 degrees Fahrenheit.  Table Mountain, the iconic mesa which is the backdrop for Capetown and one of the new “7 Natural Wonders of The World,” beckons like a come-hither look from a beautiful woman.  No waiting.  Time to dig into the sites.

Table Mountain both dominates and partitions Capetown, from a 3000 foot rise in elevation.  Directly below is the (also) dominant cone-shaped mound of the misnamed Lions Head peak.   To its right is a bustling waterfront, a rabbit warren of shopping stalls, restaurants, pubs, museums, and boats of all manner of description -- a definite tourist magnet in this European style town. Beyond and about three miles offshore is the notorious Robbens Island, where world famous political prisoner Nelson Mandela (first black President of South Africa after the fall of apartheid) was incarcerated for 18 of his 29 years as a captive.  To the left and below, the azure colored beaches of Clifton and Camps Bay and Llandudno contrast with the darker blue waters where the cold surf of the Atlantic Ocean meet the warm waves of the Indian Ocean.  Far beyond to the left and south is Cape of Good Hope, the infamous navigation headland for turning round Africa and focal point for over 640 shipwrecks since the 1500s, due to its fog obscured and storm tossed waters.

An aerial tramway which ascends steeply to a shoulder of Table Mountain is often shut down due to low visibility and high winds.  I am blessed that my birthday is not to be one of those days.  The views are distant, clear, and stunning.  A photographer’s dream.  Mist rolls in from the north, then peels back, as if not quite sure it wants to ruin this spectacular outing for so many visitors.  Most  have waited three days for a clearing.  A cafe at the top offers unrestricted 180 degree peeks of the thrilling view below.  I have a Peroni beer (Italian heritage must be honored) and sample ostrich stew for the first time in celebration of my birthday.

After descending from the peak, Cape Point becomes the new objective.  Along the way the beaches previously observed from on high experience a close-up examination. Hyper busy sidewalk and seafront cafes line the route.  Really no different ambience wise than touring the west coast of Italy, or the south coast of France.  There are very few swimmers however -- the waters from the Atlantic are much too cold.  Spectacular carve-outs among the granite bouldered cliffs allow traffic to drive out of surf’s reach but still directly above the waves much of the way.  The road is smooth, a bit narrow, but paved and well marked throughout.  No nav system needed here.

One unique stop is at Simonstown.  A colony of Cape Point “Jackass” Penguins (so-named due to the braying sound they emit when excited) pulls traffic in from the highway for what is almost a required pit stop.  Shortly on down the road as one heads toward Cape Point along the inside of “False Bay” (a huge crab shaped inland sea of sorts with The Cape of Good Hope as its left pincher and Cape Agulhas as its right) several signs warn of the presence of baboons in the area.  I inquire as to their exact whereabouts.  “Be careful what you wish for,” growled one rather annoyed local, barely restraining a pit bull on a short leash as it dragged him back to his car.  “They are very aggressive.  Leave your car window open even a bit and they’ll get everything inside.  And I don’t mean just the food.”  He then went on to explain Baboon wranglers had to be hired to keep these adaptable critters away from the locals.

Cape Point – the actual tip of the broader geographic feature of The Cape of Good Hope – is reached just before sunset.  Rather anticlimactic, in some ways.  The vista is excellent, but it is hard to compare to that offered by the commanding view from Table Mountain.  A somewhat melancholy retreat is made to Blouberg for dinner at the nouveau Caribbean Cubana Restaurant to hoist my favorite drink – a Brazilian caipirhina – and contemplate not only the day’s highlights, but my birthday gratitude attendant with richly experiencing another adventurous year.

Capetown Castle is a pentagon shaped Dutch military fortress located just beyond the waterfront, in an obvious defensively commanding position looking over the flats of the city.  Built between 1666 and 1679, it is the oldest surviving building in South Africa.  A bell tower was added in 1684.  The multi-hued stone fortress served as the military, civilian, judicial, and administrative center of the city until very recently.  I spent two hours here, enjoyably reviewing the history of conflicts (and thus the national progression of South Africa) between the Dutch and natives in a series of nine territorial wars, the Zulus and the British over land rights, and the Dutch and British in a fight for national dominance.

Probably the most interesting part of the castle however, was the locally renowned William Fehr collection – a series of historical paintings and well-preserved period furniture which have special relevance to the South Cape.

Included within this collection was a most impressive wooden dining table for 100.  Each place setting is laden with sets of uniquely designed and colored placeware (mostly ceramic), each from different artists, celebrating Capetown as the Design Capital of The World for 2014.  A ground-level dungeon and torture chamber might have proven to be equally interesting, but its instrumentation had long since been removed.

An increasingly popular District 6 Museum celebrates what used to be a place, and now represents an idea.  The idea of “Never, never again …”  and the memory of a thriving multi-racial community, deliberately eradicated under the racially divisive apartheid Group Areas Act of 1950.  Starting in 1966, one of the world’s foremost examples of urban repression saw the forcible removal of 66,000 people over approximately 20 years to create a whites only area.  Homes, churches, schools, hotels, cinemas, and businesses were systematically demolished in a make believe show of “urban renewal.”  Ironically, whites never moved into the area.  Today, repatriation claims are being worked out, former residents are slowly moving back and both government and individual families are attempting to rebuild District 6.

Its modest two-story frame tells a chilling story of painful loss and the hope of return in hundreds of  personal bios displayed in narrative form on the museum walls.  A story that was nearly as devastating as the Nazi extermination of the Jewish Quarters in Warsaw and other cities during World War II, lacking only the death camps as a final solution.

I recall one gentleman remembering the difficulty of relocating his 49 pigeons.  When his building was demolished and he was forced to move, the birds were kept indoors at his newly assigned (and diminished) home in fear they would not yet adapt to their changed locale in the Cape Flats to the backside of Table Mountain.  He finally released them months later.  When he returned home that evening, not a single bird had returned.  He checked the razed  and now unmarked streets of District 6, trying to find his former address.  With some difficulty, the spot was located.  As he suspected, all 49 birds were huddled there.  “They looked at me,” he said, “as if to say: We’re home!  Why aren’t you?”

Another spoke of being evicted from District 6 and torn apart from his wife, almost like slaves at market in the American South 100 years previously.  He was black.  His wife was colored (black mixture, not a native or purely racial black woman).  They were assigned to different townships.  Each had to carry a set of hated ID papers that served also as a transit pass (the “dompas”).  Despite being married, his pass only allowed a visit with his wife but every three months, and at that for only two hours at a time.

One quote from a female survivor of the forced exodus named Deborah Hart sums up the tragic episode nicely: “Whereas some of the economic and social costs of the razing of District 6 may be ascertained, its toll upon individual lives and emotions is immeasurable … oral evidence, literary accounts, and almost two decades of news reporting unite in their testimony to the fear, humiliation, bitterness, and anger that accompanied the displacement.  Not least among the consequences was fragmentation of the identity and heritage of a particular community which had profound implications for its social, political, and cultural expression.”

When asked later what I most noticed most about the NEW South Africa, after the prison release of Nelson Mandela, the end of Apartheid and the Group Areas Act and the establishment in 1994 of a new constitution offering “one man, one vote,” this quote came back to me.   I thought about the question for awhile.  Then answered: “The absence of fear.”  I notice most blacks finally able to be at ease in their own country, not having to show a pass or constantly be looking over their shoulder.