Sunday 27 July 1986: The Good & Bad of Cape Town in One Day

Sunday, August 17, Mafeking train station waiting for my train to Botswana 

I arrived in Cape Town by train on Sunday morning, July 27.  After finding a clean, centrally-located, cheap hotel (called the Café Royal - US$6.72/night including bed, breakfast and sales tax), I phoned a company which does boat tours of the harbor.  They told me to get over to Pier 5 at Victoria Basin by 2:45PM for a trip out toward Robbin Island where a large ship is grounded.   It turned out that the Sunday trips are Rotary Club fundraisers.  As soon as I got on the old boat, I longed for U.S. Coast Guard regulations.   There were no life jackets; only a few large seat pads that looked like they might float.  Nevertheless, as soon as the boat was out beyond the breakwater, there was a great view of Cape Town and Table Mountain.  With the exception of Rio, I can’t think of any city with as beautiful a natural setting as this one.  And a boat in Table Bay is the best place from which to view it.  

View south from tour boat leaving Victoria Basin, Cape Town.  Lion’s Head on the left; Signal Hill on the right.

 

Wearing my handy but bulky camera vest containing various lenses, extra film, and assorted photographic paraphernalia.  View of Cape Town with Table Mountain on the left; Lion’s Head on the right.

 

We didn’t go all the way to Robbin Island, site of the infamous prison where Nelson Mandela was once held.  About a mile shy of Robbin Island is a large South Korean freighter which went aground a few months ago on Whale Rock.  It’s now hopelessly stuck there, a rapidly rusting ghost with a gaping hole in its belly.

Southerly, panoramic view of Cape Town and Table Mountain.  The Cape of Good Hope lies several miles south of the mountain on the right edge of the photo.

As the passengers were getting off the boat upon its return to the Victoria Basin docks, I got to talking with a South African chap of about 45 who had made the trip with his two teenage kids.  He offered to give me lift back to my hotel.  I accepted, and Ivan, an ENT doctor, decided I should see a little more of the city.  We drove around Sea Point, a dense concentration of high rises abutting a sandy beach.  Then south along the Atlantic coast a couple miles through Bantry Bay, a wealthy suburb, where he stopped to let me get a photo of Clifton and its four beaches.  The coast here is flanked by the 2500+ foot Twelve Apostles mountain range.  It puts Sausalito, California to shame in terms of scenic appeal!  Ivan drove us up to the top of Signal Hill on the southwestern flank of Table Mountain.  To the south were the Twelve Apostles; to the north and west, Table Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; to the east, Cape Town backed by the imposing edifice of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak.  I snapped five panoramic photos.  Then Ivan drove me back to the Café Royal Hotel.  There was no charge – just a massive exchange of good will.

Northeasterly view of Cape Town and Table Bay from Signal Hill.  Victoria Basin docks are on the left; Table Bay Harbour on the right.

 

Inevitably Ivan got around to the subject of politics.  Ivan’s attitudes were typical of the white English-speaking professionals I’ve met here.  Perhaps his were even more progressive than most.  He deplored the government’s intransigence on reform especially as regards education for young blacks.  If people like Ivan were running the government, meaningful reform would have started years ago.  Apartheid would never have become the law of the land, and progress in desegregation would have gradually moved forward much as it has in the USA.  South Africa would still have large unemployment and poverty problems, but its vast mineral wealth and technological resources would enable it to battle these challenges with a degree of success.  South Africa would be a multi-racial democracy exercising a stabilizing influence and leadership role in southern Africa.  But people like Ivan effectively have no say in the government and have not had for the past 38 years.  They are represented in Parliament by the outspoken Progressive Federal Party (PFP) whose members comprise perhaps 20% of that body.  They find themselves constantly pissing in the wind – the wind being the formidable Nationalist Party led by P.W. Botha.  Whereas minority parties in the U.S. and Britain can exert a moderating influence on the ruling party, the PFP is ignored by the Nats.  South Africa might as well be a one-arty state for all the good that the opposition is able to do. 

 

Wee hours of Monday morning, July 28, Café Royal Hotel, Cape Town 

This is the most beautiful city in the world and I got photos this afternoon to prove it.  The setting beats San Fran (which I’ve touted as the fucking Mecca of the Western Hemisphere since I first visited there in 1968 while attending U.S. Army field wireman school at Fort Ord, California).  The weather today was perfect.  None of the negative shit I’m about to relay should in any way detract from the grandeur of this place. 

This evening I was in the Tudor Restaurant on Greenmarket Square just down the street from my hotel.  There were about a dozen Asian guys a couple tables over.   One of them was asking the waiter to take their picture.  I figured the waiter would screw it up, so I offered to shoot it.  Besides, it would give me a chance to find out who these guys were.  They were more than happy for my help and encouraged me to sit down with them for a drink after the photo session.

We had a great time.  My newfound friends were South Korean sailors – fishermen to be exact.  Their English was almost as bad as my non-existent Korean but, through drawings in my notebook, etc., I learned they had been catching tuna near the Falkland Islands.  Now, they were on their way to Singapore before returning to Inchon.  We drank numerous toasts to America and South Korea.  One guy kept raising his glass and declaring, “America, I love you.”  Since he grabbed my leg a couple times, he may have meant “American”, not “America”!

The management decided to collect their bill.  There seemed to be a problem with it, as my friends looked it over in confusion.  I offered to help.  They had drunk a lot of beer.  The bill came to 115.50.  It didn’t seem unreasonable for 12 tipsy sailors.  Then I learned that it was US$115.50, not R115.50.  They only had US $s as their ship had just arrived in Cape Town that morning (a Sunday).  They were being charged US$1.00 for a bottle of local beer, a royal rip-off considering the most I’ve ever paid has been R1.50 (US$0.60) in swank establishments.  Okay, fair enough -  they had agreed to the prices.  But as I looked over the bill, I learned that the waitress “couldn’t add”.  There were 60 beers, 3 cokes, and a few orders of French fries which should have totaled about $75. 

Being a typical self-righteous American committed to justice, I protested.  Wow, was the management pissed off.  They said it was none of my business.  I persisted and told the Koreans not to pay.  I also pointed out to the management that South Korea is very friendly toward South Africa, and South Africa needs to hold on to the friends it has.  These Korean guys were some of the friendliest and warmest people I’ve ever met.  It really irked me to see them getting taken by these Boer assholes.  The management finally settled for $74.50 (although they only gave the Koreans about R50 change from a $100 bill, a fleece-job at the current rate of exchange).  In return for my championing their cause, I was practically made an honorary citizen of South Korea.

The Koreans wanted to go to a disco.  After stopping by my hotel so I could show them pictures of Colorado, I got directions to an area of night clubs from a local Indian guy.  We wound up at a dive called Chinatown, just east of the corner of Strand and Bree.  Again it was a rip-off scene:  R20 for a six-pack of beer.  The Indian jerk running the place would only give them 2 to 1 for their dollars and I’m sure he’d taken the poor fuckers to the cleaners by the time I’d left.  What he didn’t get, the bar girls probably did. 

Some of my drinks were paid for by the Koreans, but I wound up spending R40 ($16) to try to keep them from getting screwed.  In the end they got screwed anyway.  It was almost like I fought the Korean War single handedly in one night.  You really like these people and you want to help them.  Yet in the end, they get taken anyway.  Could that be what the Korean and Viet Nam wars were all about?  It only cost me R40 to learn that lesson.  It cost my countrymen nearly 120,000 lives in those two wars.  Maybe I learn faster than politicians in D.C.  Hey, don’t get me wrong.  I still like Koreans! 

Christ, I’m drunk as a bloody skunk, and I didn’t even do any business with the bar girls.  Some lovely coloured ones, by the way.  Time to pop two Di-Gel and two aspirin.  Hope I don’t hate myself too much in the morning.