Tuesday, 16 December 1986: Waxing Geographical at the Southern Tip of Africa
December 23, 1986, 8:40 PM, Helmsley Hotel Bar, Cape Town
After another photogenic drive, I arrived at Cape Agulhas and had lunch at Africa’s most southern restaurant. This cape isn’t spectacular like the Cape of Good Hope, 30 kms or so south of Cape Town. Nevertheless, there was something exciting for a geographer to look out over the Indian Ocean and realize there was no more land in this part of the world except for a handful of barren islands between me and Antarctica, 3850 km (2400 miles) to the south. Travelling east, there would be no land until I reached Australia, about 8500 km (5300 miles) away. And travelling west, the next land I would reach would be South America (southern Brazil), about 6550 kms (4050 miles) distant.
My route from Gansbaai to Arniston on December 16. Cape Agulhas (southeast corner of map) is the true southern point of Africa, about 55 km further south than the Cape of Good Hope (northwest corner of map).
A “selfie” at Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa
After lying out in the
sun for an hour at the cape, I drove north to the picturesque village of
Arniston. There was only an expensive
hotel in town, so I checked out a local campground. There was a big sign at the entrance
announcing that the facilities were for “Europeans Only”. It really goes against my grain to stay in
places like this although I realize there are other places where I stay without
signs that have the same policy. I feel
I am copping out by taking advantage of the color of my skin to get good
treatment. I decided that I would at least
make a point this time by politely asking if there was a multi-racial campground
in the area. However, the elderly
Afrikaner lady who came to the door at the registration office was so nice I
didn’t have the heart to say anything about their racial policy. The fee was a steep R10.00 but she decided to
let me camp there for the day use fee of R1.00 since I was alone and only had a
tent, not a trailer. And maybe, it was
also because I was a white American, and she wanted to win me over to South
Africa’s side, I suppose. Ah, moral
dilemmas.
Not many people talked politics to me on this trip but this night was an exception. There were four young surfers camping next to me. We got around to talking about my temporary job in Botswana, and they asked why I didn’t try to get a position in South Africa after this year. “Well, for one thing, I’d be blacklisted for teaching jobs outside of South Africa,” I chuckled. Oh right, they’d forgotten about that problem.
From there, the conversation drifted into politics. These guys were in the last year of high school or thereabouts. They were English-speakers and didn't have much good to say about the government. Yet they drifted into the same old tired arguments that I’ve heard ad nauseam from white South Africans over the past eight months: Look at how badly the Australians treat the Aborigines and the Americans treat the “Negroes” and “Red Indians”. The rest of the world expects South Africa to change overnight. Bla, bla, bla. And then, of course, the communist paranoia. Whites here are at about the same place as Americans were in the early ‘50s, seeing a Red under every bed. The government and South African television have them convinced that if the blacks take over, there will be a civil war among the various tribes, and the Soviets will somehow exploit this to install a communist government.
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