“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”—Nelson Mandela
I’d long heard about Cape Town from friends, books and news reports—heard of its beauty, of its role in the worst and best of South Africa’s history, and of its culture and vitality. It indeed was all it is reputed to be.
One thing that was different than I expected, however, was the waterfront where the ship was docked. I knew that there was a complex there, but I expected some hokey Rouse-type development. The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (named for Queen Victoria and her son Alfred, who visited in 1860) is more than that—it’s a city within a city. It takes the best of waterfront development, shopping mall and downtown street, and puts it all in the beautiful seaport area. With the fabled Table Mountain and Signal Hill rising above it, the setting of the waterfront is just about picture-perfect. A person could spend several days there and not exhaust its offerings—a fine aquarium, smaller museums and craft houses, shops, restaurants, sidewalk arts, and the jumping off point to get to Robben Island (more about that later). A place where visitors and locals mingle, nightlife and street life prevail.
We were not on the ship when it sailed into this lovely waterfront. Instead, we flew into Cape Town from our safari, and so had our first view of the city as we rode in from the airport. That drive was a study in contrasts. There is new construction around the city, including a massive new stadium in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup, but many older sites still in place. What stood out was the large township we passed—one that was formed during the apartheid years but still exists today. However, transition was visible. There were parts that were the shantytown of the photos we’ve all seen, but parts that were being renovated and improved into very nice homes. I suppose it’s a form of evidence of the change that the country is experiencing.
We would later see other shantytowns that were suffering the opposite change—a deterioration of condition. These, we learned, are the newer townships being formed by immigrants and refugees, mostly from Zimbabwe and Somalia. Some from both countries are in the same townships, and are not getting on well together. Other shantytowns have been abandoned, as the violence against immigrants from several months back has driven the refugees away. With 25% unemployment in South Africa, it’s a tense situation, as turning against the immigrant when times are tough must be something of a universal.
We arrived at the ship in the evening, and went out to the waterfront for dinner, at a Cape Malay-style restaurant, then wandered around the complex a bit. The next morning, we met a guide that we’d engaged through Hylton Ross, one of the big tour-guide companies, and four of us set out in a car with Kim, our guide, first up to Table Mountain, then through the towns and seaside areas on the way to the Cape of Good Hope. We were very fortunate in the weather that day, as Table Mountain was clear and the winds were low, so that the cable car was in operation, and our view from the mountain over Cape Town and the bays, ocean and cape, was clear and lovely.
I had particularly looked forward to the Cape of Good Hope, as it had captured my imagination ever since I’d read about it (and its challenge to explorers) as a child. We’d missed sailing around it, since we were on safari when the ship made that part of the journey (and probably a good thing—I’m told the seas were rough). So the drive was a kind of consolation prize. It was a picturesque drive through wineries, beaches and a number of pretty towns. One highlight was a stop at Boulders Beach, where we watched a colony of African penguins. It was molting season, and so the penguins were in a variety of conditions depending on where they were in the process.
The cape point itself was a bit eerie and windswept—exactly as I’d always imagined it. Along the way, we encountered ostriches and baboons along the road. In fact there were large baboons at the place where we stopped for lunch, as well as men whose job it was to keep chasing the baboons away—apparently, baboons can get pretty nasty with their propensity to steal food and other objects and fling pooh (and I’m not talking Winnie here).
We also went through the former District 6—an area of a once-thriving ethnic community, until the powers of apartheid deemed that they should all be moved to a township and removed from this prime real estate. Ironically, despite the massive displacement, the area that was plowed down was never re-developed, and to this day lies rather empty. There is an effort underway to get some former District 6 residents to return, but so far few have done so.
That evening, the ship had arranged a dinner for the people on the full voyage at Buitenverwachting, a well-known fine restaurant on the Constantia wine estate. Groot Constantia is the oldest vineyard on the Cape. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena, he selected their wines as substitutes for his favored French wines. The building where the restaurant is housed is an example of Cape Dutch architecture. The meal was excellent, the wine even better, and the company terrific. A nice evening all around.
The next morning we had arranged tickets to tour Robben Island, Cape Town’s answer to Alcatraz (actually, comparisons to San Francisco are apt in many respects—the two cities have similar feels). However, Robben Island reflects the greatest shame of South Africa’s history—it is where male, non-white political prisoners were held during much of the apartheid era. It is where Nelson Mandela spent the bulk of his 27 years of imprisonment.
The tour is well-organized and very moving and informative. You take a ferry from the pier where the prisoners used to be sent, and arrive on the island for a general overview tour. The island is much larger than expected, and had functioned variously in its history as simply a town, then an insane asylum and leper colony. It eventually came to be used as a prison, but also boasts a settlement of people who, during the prison era, worked in the prison and now work in the museum. There is even a school on the island, though it only goes up to the equivalent of the 7th grade. The children go the mainland for secondary school.
The guides in the prison itself are all former prisoners. Our guide, Wiseman, was himself imprisoned there for 10 years for anti-apartheid activities. It is a reminder of how recent this history is that Wiseman is a fairly young man. I doubt if he is older than 45. In fact, many of the children who attend school on the island are children of these former prisoners. Some of the former warders also work in the museum, in a variety of functions. It is a tribute to the reconciliation of recent years that former prisoners and warders can work side by side, but having read Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” I can understand how that simpatico could have developed.
Wiseman gave us a clear view of the hardships of imprisonment, and the degree to which prisoners of different racial backgrounds were treated differently. Black prisoners received less food (both in quality and quantity) than other races, and were in many respects treated more harshly. Wiseman was in a “group” cell, where some 50 prisoners slept, at first on thin floor mats but eventually on bunks. We saw the cell where Mandela was kept—he was one of the isolated prisoners because he was deemed “dangerous.” That seems ironic today, given the role of reconciler he played upon his release, but then the U.S. only just recently took him off the list of “known terrorists.” Mandela certainly engaged in guerilla warfare in his time, in the long fight for freedom, but the line between those acts of sabotage and the wanton attacks on anonymous civilians that we see today is not a thin one.
After that sobering and educational morning, we spent the afternoon strolling the waterfront and doing a little shopping. We sailed away in late afternoon, with a surprising number of people on the pier waving goodbye. In fact, I was surprised at the number of passersby who took pictures of the ship while she was in port. I gather that, while cruise ships do call at Cape Town, it isn’t often that one is small enough to dock right at the V&A Waterfront. I’m so glad we did.
After a beautiful sail-away, we were bound for two days in Walvis Bay, Namibia, my next entry.
I’d long heard about Cape Town from friends, books and news reports—heard of its beauty, of its role in the worst and best of South Africa’s history, and of its culture and vitality. It indeed was all it is reputed to be.
One thing that was different than I expected, however, was the waterfront where the ship was docked. I knew that there was a complex there, but I expected some hokey Rouse-type development. The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (named for Queen Victoria and her son Alfred, who visited in 1860) is more than that—it’s a city within a city. It takes the best of waterfront development, shopping mall and downtown street, and puts it all in the beautiful seaport area. With the fabled Table Mountain and Signal Hill rising above it, the setting of the waterfront is just about picture-perfect. A person could spend several days there and not exhaust its offerings—a fine aquarium, smaller museums and craft houses, shops, restaurants, sidewalk arts, and the jumping off point to get to Robben Island (more about that later). A place where visitors and locals mingle, nightlife and street life prevail.
We were not on the ship when it sailed into this lovely waterfront. Instead, we flew into Cape Town from our safari, and so had our first view of the city as we rode in from the airport. That drive was a study in contrasts. There is new construction around the city, including a massive new stadium in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup, but many older sites still in place. What stood out was the large township we passed—one that was formed during the apartheid years but still exists today. However, transition was visible. There were parts that were the shantytown of the photos we’ve all seen, but parts that were being renovated and improved into very nice homes. I suppose it’s a form of evidence of the change that the country is experiencing.
We would later see other shantytowns that were suffering the opposite change—a deterioration of condition. These, we learned, are the newer townships being formed by immigrants and refugees, mostly from Zimbabwe and Somalia. Some from both countries are in the same townships, and are not getting on well together. Other shantytowns have been abandoned, as the violence against immigrants from several months back has driven the refugees away. With 25% unemployment in South Africa, it’s a tense situation, as turning against the immigrant when times are tough must be something of a universal.
We arrived at the ship in the evening, and went out to the waterfront for dinner, at a Cape Malay-style restaurant, then wandered around the complex a bit. The next morning, we met a guide that we’d engaged through Hylton Ross, one of the big tour-guide companies, and four of us set out in a car with Kim, our guide, first up to Table Mountain, then through the towns and seaside areas on the way to the Cape of Good Hope. We were very fortunate in the weather that day, as Table Mountain was clear and the winds were low, so that the cable car was in operation, and our view from the mountain over Cape Town and the bays, ocean and cape, was clear and lovely.
I had particularly looked forward to the Cape of Good Hope, as it had captured my imagination ever since I’d read about it (and its challenge to explorers) as a child. We’d missed sailing around it, since we were on safari when the ship made that part of the journey (and probably a good thing—I’m told the seas were rough). So the drive was a kind of consolation prize. It was a picturesque drive through wineries, beaches and a number of pretty towns. One highlight was a stop at Boulders Beach, where we watched a colony of African penguins. It was molting season, and so the penguins were in a variety of conditions depending on where they were in the process.
The cape point itself was a bit eerie and windswept—exactly as I’d always imagined it. Along the way, we encountered ostriches and baboons along the road. In fact there were large baboons at the place where we stopped for lunch, as well as men whose job it was to keep chasing the baboons away—apparently, baboons can get pretty nasty with their propensity to steal food and other objects and fling pooh (and I’m not talking Winnie here).
We also went through the former District 6—an area of a once-thriving ethnic community, until the powers of apartheid deemed that they should all be moved to a township and removed from this prime real estate. Ironically, despite the massive displacement, the area that was plowed down was never re-developed, and to this day lies rather empty. There is an effort underway to get some former District 6 residents to return, but so far few have done so.
That evening, the ship had arranged a dinner for the people on the full voyage at Buitenverwachting, a well-known fine restaurant on the Constantia wine estate. Groot Constantia is the oldest vineyard on the Cape. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena, he selected their wines as substitutes for his favored French wines. The building where the restaurant is housed is an example of Cape Dutch architecture. The meal was excellent, the wine even better, and the company terrific. A nice evening all around.
The next morning we had arranged tickets to tour Robben Island, Cape Town’s answer to Alcatraz (actually, comparisons to San Francisco are apt in many respects—the two cities have similar feels). However, Robben Island reflects the greatest shame of South Africa’s history—it is where male, non-white political prisoners were held during much of the apartheid era. It is where Nelson Mandela spent the bulk of his 27 years of imprisonment.
The tour is well-organized and very moving and informative. You take a ferry from the pier where the prisoners used to be sent, and arrive on the island for a general overview tour. The island is much larger than expected, and had functioned variously in its history as simply a town, then an insane asylum and leper colony. It eventually came to be used as a prison, but also boasts a settlement of people who, during the prison era, worked in the prison and now work in the museum. There is even a school on the island, though it only goes up to the equivalent of the 7th grade. The children go the mainland for secondary school.
The guides in the prison itself are all former prisoners. Our guide, Wiseman, was himself imprisoned there for 10 years for anti-apartheid activities. It is a reminder of how recent this history is that Wiseman is a fairly young man. I doubt if he is older than 45. In fact, many of the children who attend school on the island are children of these former prisoners. Some of the former warders also work in the museum, in a variety of functions. It is a tribute to the reconciliation of recent years that former prisoners and warders can work side by side, but having read Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” I can understand how that simpatico could have developed.
Wiseman gave us a clear view of the hardships of imprisonment, and the degree to which prisoners of different racial backgrounds were treated differently. Black prisoners received less food (both in quality and quantity) than other races, and were in many respects treated more harshly. Wiseman was in a “group” cell, where some 50 prisoners slept, at first on thin floor mats but eventually on bunks. We saw the cell where Mandela was kept—he was one of the isolated prisoners because he was deemed “dangerous.” That seems ironic today, given the role of reconciler he played upon his release, but then the U.S. only just recently took him off the list of “known terrorists.” Mandela certainly engaged in guerilla warfare in his time, in the long fight for freedom, but the line between those acts of sabotage and the wanton attacks on anonymous civilians that we see today is not a thin one.
After that sobering and educational morning, we spent the afternoon strolling the waterfront and doing a little shopping. We sailed away in late afternoon, with a surprising number of people on the pier waving goodbye. In fact, I was surprised at the number of passersby who took pictures of the ship while she was in port. I gather that, while cruise ships do call at Cape Town, it isn’t often that one is small enough to dock right at the V&A Waterfront. I’m so glad we did.
After a beautiful sail-away, we were bound for two days in Walvis Bay, Namibia, my next entry.
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