Musings on Urban South Africa
cross-posted at Urban Impressions
From a post-Mozambique perspective, South Africa has been quite a show. First and foremost, arriving in suburban Pretoria a month ago was a jarring return to our dear industrial world where everything you could possibly want- but don’t really need – is neatly arranged on a bright, quasi-sterilized supermarket shelf. Far from the endearing, overgrown decay of Pemba, I was now surrounded by well-manicured laws, tidy suburban homes, regularly cleaned surfaces, plastic-looking late-model cars, faux-stucco strip malls, theme restaurants and shopping centres of such scale and garish lighting that they could easily double as space stations. The arid hills here flow with wide freeways and give off a hazy orange hue from their coverage of neatly packed Mediterranean tile rooftops. Far from the elite lifestyle on offer in some other such ‘developing’ countries, where the illusion of hermetic affluence is easily shattered by shoddy construction, poor maintenance and often farcical attempts at cultural imitation, this was the real deal in all its mundane, mall-hopping, pudgy middle-class glory. Suburban Pretoria is clean, polished, well paved and surprisingly designed. Surrounded by moneyed, post-modern office parks and an environment engineered into the oblivion of sprinkler systems and planted trees, I could be forgiven for believing I was relishing in the urban vistas of one of the warmer, more arid corners of a certain Anglo-Saxon country with a heavy penchant for car-dependent sprawl.
Well, at least at first glance.
The more I paid attention, however, the more I lost those superficial cultural bearings so effortlessly provided by conspicuous drive-in consumption. Soon enough, glitches in the program started to appear. Like rebellious single frames spliced into a film reel, apparitions conflicting with my perception of this neat suburban setting would wander into view. A truck would rumble by belching smoke, its flatbed a pile of worn out black workers in tattered clothing lying on disorganized construction materials. At every red light, black men would wander the lanes of vehicles filled with white faces, hawking their random assortment of wares. Alongside the car traffic of soccer moms and commute-weary office workers, white minibuses packed with black people careened in and out of road shoulders to drop off and pick up passengers. People would speak to me in Afrikaans before my look of confusion informed them it wouldn’t take the conversation very far.
I soon noticed that everyone on foot was black, while almost everyone speeding by in a car was white. And pedestrian traffic was hardly bustling: in this automobile haven mostly devoid of sidewalks, people on foot wandered in isolation on dusty road shoulders and through parking lots. It is likely they were somewhere on their journey between a minibus and a job as a cashier, waiter, gas station attendant or housekeeper; needless to say, pretty much everyone in any sort of service job is black. I know emphasizing the race issue vis-à-vis South Africa is treading some very tired and clichéd waters, but nevertheless it really struck me as to how visible a divide there is in suburban Pretoria.
It’s also not very hard to notice that absolutely everything is walled, fenced, gated and guarded. “Armed Response” signs seem to be one of the more popular posters in these parts, doors need to be double-locked and windows mostly barred. Security complexes are an obvious lifestyle trend, with razor wire and electrified fencing adding a subtle decorative touch to any nice, upstanding home. The suburban dream isn’t quite the same when your veranda door is doubled by an iron gate and your garden wall topped with deadly wire. The newspapers are full of reports on crime, public outrage about crime, political response to crime, debate over the real extent of crime and…well, I’m sure you get the idea. Apart from any hasty and uninformed opinion I have made for myself, it is clear this country suffers both from a serious crime problem and an obsession with security bordering on the ludicrous, to the point when a guard at the exit of a parking lot will make drivers turn their cars off and back on in front of him to demonstrate they haven’t hotwired it.
After some observation, Pretoria in my eyes has thus changed from a prosperous manifestation of the suburban dream into something slightly more disconcerting. Interaction with public space for white faces (mine included) revolves around driving between walled compounds and sheltered malls, security concerns logically translated into a fear of walking. It’s a place where enjoyment is a largely private endeavour relegated to backyards and restaurants, and where picnics in gorgeous botanical gardens are witness to the regular rounds of security guards. The spaces outside doors and walls are left somewhat derelict, the domain of a black population which quietly and separately navigates this tidy automobile world on foot or by minibus. And it is this disconnect which is perhaps most jarring to me: the multitude of people wandering about are very obviously of an income-level far below the prosperity of their surroundings, leaving my mind at odds on how exactly to read these neighbourhoods. Perhaps this is one of the enduring legacies of apartheid planning: the less-than-stellar living conditions into which a large percentage of the population are crammed lie far out of sight of these leafy suburbs, where the black townships are acknowledged but not experienced as a reality just down the highway.
And then, lest I thought I was getting even a bit of a handle on what Pretoria was about, I ventured into the city centre to pick up a friend at the bus terminal. As her arrival from Mozambique was delayed for an hour, I left my car under the somewhat watchful eye of parking lot security and ventured off in search of a newspaper and a cold drink. As it was rush hour and there were throngs of people moving about, I feared little for my safety and felt relieved to be going for an actual walk in an urban area. It only took a few moments to dawn on me that I was the only white person around, a sharp contrast from the prevalence of pasty faces such as my own in the air-conditioned consumer environment of the suburbs. Here was a wholly different urban world, one where the bustle of informal street vendors was steadily creeping in on the landscape of stark, late 20th century concrete towers left behind by the flight of wealth to greener pastures. Traffic was erratic as minibuses and markedly more worn cars weaved across lanes with both ease and reckless abandon. It was like unfettered street life had sprung up again amidst the ruins of a once rigid central business district. I guess in this sense Pretoria is not unlike many other urban areas the world over where suburban flight has been the name of the game, only here the whole process seems heavily accentuated by the loaded history of skin colour, with two rather distinct realities living beside each other much more than they really intermingle. As a very wise woman once said, “South Africa truly is the rainbow nation: it has lots of colours, but they don’t mix.” I should say, though, that I was warned Pretoria would have this sort of impression on me. I was told it the most staid, conservative and, well, white corner of the country, and that I should not base my opinion of urban South Africa solely on impressions gained in its suburban enclaves. It was in this spirit that I was excited to embark upon my weeklong trip to Cape Town, which received glowing praise and recommendation from pretty much anyone questioned.
And Cape Town did its very best not to disappoint. Found in what must be one of the more naturally beautiful urban locations in the world, here was an actual city. Forget comparison merely with other urban South African centers, this place could hold its own in any international competition. Nestled in between the Atlantic Ocean and the stunning heights of Table Mountain, I found the city reminiscent of Vancouver in its rugged beauty and San Francisco in its hilly bohemia, topped off by a bright dash of Mediterranean sensibilities (think stubby palm trees and flashy sports cars) and British colonial architecture. Accordingly, as would fit the environment, the place basked in a liberal, laidback feel paying homage to the hippy era with lots of dreadlocks, funky shops and cafes, VW Beetles and some main urban drags which manage to be bright and clean yet still enticingly unkept around the edges. People crowded the major streets and, at least in the centre, there was little divide according to skin colour. Unlike Pretoria, this felt like much more of an organic urban centre, one where unspoken lines weren’t so clearly defined to a relatively uninformed outsider such as myself.
Beautiful neighbourhoods replete with quirky bungalows and coffee shops just begged to be explored, as did the many mountain paths and peaks which offered stunning views of the city, the ocean and beyond. Bo-Kaap, the traditionally Malay district, was a quiet explosion of brightly coloured homes perfectly contrasted against the deep blue sky. The V&A Waterfront was typical of that popular collision between old docklands and private-led development so popular the world over: it’s a sanitized marine-themed consumer bonanza inhabiting the shell of old industry, packed with tourists and relishing in the authenticity of some functioning docks, seagulls and the salty Atlantic air.
Given the city’s location and natural beauty, Cape Town is also inevitably home to some spectacularly moneyed real estate. The Cape Peninsula sports some majestic homes saddling what little space there is between ocean and mountains, many quite oddly designed to provide maximum value in terms of views. Similarly, post-modern condominium towers of brick and glass add to the city’s polished, well-kept image. Like any self-respecting ‘happening’ urban area, large windows of strange logos and carefully designed minimalist furniture are framed in the rough exterior of old industrial structures. It’s a place that very evidently relishes in its hip sophistication, where you can feel you are part of something trendy just by being there.
But, as happened with Pretoria, when I paid closer attention some things didn’t quite click- some of the picture-perfect frames started to skip a beat. Outside of the cluster of central streets, the pedestrian bustle gave way to slightly eerie quiet. Amidst the nice homes and industry-to-condo conversions wandered a small but steady mass of people visibly down on their luck, wearing tattered clothing or huffing on bags of glue. Turn a random corner, and the street life that makes Cape Town so refreshing after Pretoria gives way to an uncomfortable urban emptiness in which public spaces are once again somewhat unsettling to the visitor. And tucked somewhat more tastefully into the bright and cheery surroundings is the same omnipresence of CCTV cameras, wired fencing and promises of armed response. While substantially more welcoming and walkable than Pretoria, Cape Town nevertheless appears similarly hostage to crime and security, although admittedly in a more palatable and visually attractive manner. It is perhaps telling that the areas which are bustling and lively seem to have fluorescent-vested security guards on every second corner.
The pieces of the strange puzzle that urban South Africa presented to me started fitting together more clearly when I visited some of the townships in the Cape Flats, to be found quite far east of the city centre. The transition is sudden and unexpected: from the humming lanes of a smooth expressway pouring down the gorgeous lower slope of Table Mountain, a routine off-ramp drops you into a landscape of overcrowded corrugated iron and a tangled sea of haphazard electrical wires, potholed roads and decrepit old public housing blocks. If I didn’t despise the terminology so much, I would probably echo the chorus that describes this transition as a stark shift between the upper-class “First World” and the scruffy street reality of the urban “Third World”. Streets are crowded and busy, with informal shops cramping the roadside and its denizens. These were chaotic urban hubs in their own right complete with services, supermarkets and buzzing bus stops, kicking up a dusty haze that relegated Table Mountain to the horizon of some other reality. After the vacuous and manicured suburban automobile worlds I had become somewhat accustomed to, I was hit by the sensory bustle of an overcrowded place where life and commerce happen largely in public, on the dirty streets and built into the cluttered sidewalks. Coming from Mozambique, this was an urbanized, industrialized and much denser version of what I had come to accept as reality over the past eight months. I would have felt like I was back in the normal swing of things- if I didn’t feel so uncomfortably like a complete and gawking outsider, that is. Despite well-publicized and serious social problems like rampant crime, these places nevertheless seemed full of life to me, for better or worse the result of people being largely left to their own devices outside the rigid formalized world of good infrastructure and strong state regulation.
To my non-South African sensibilities, the mere fact that these places existed in such mundane, daily proximity to the Cape Town of wine bars, bright streets and polished condos is slightly mind-boggling. But I guess that is, ultimately, one of the joys of traveling for me: to assault my sensibilities, to mess up my bearings and challenge my culturally embedded notions of what is true, normal or ‘natural’. To me, the night and day difference between wealthy suburb and township that I have briefly seen here borders on the insane, while to many South Africans I’m sure it is quite simply that thing called reality.
Another, related joy of traveling for me is trying to figure out why the particulars of a place might enthrall, confuse or shock me. While I’ve only been in South Africa for a month now, and can hardly claim any intelligent conclusions on its state of affairs, I’ve certainly begun to realize why it makes me often feel so out of place and disjointed. And strangely enough, it donned on me looking down on the vast urban masses of Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg from an airplane window: the landscapes of urban South Africa are somewhat the reverse of what I would expect from a place where such a large majority of inhabitants are considered ‘poor’. Instead of elite enclaves of wealth surrounded by a sea of shantytowns, these cities instead appear to me as large expanses of suburban wealth patched together with township enclaves of highly dense urbanized poverty. Because, in the end, suburbanized wealth takes up a lot of space: big homes, lots of tress, big lawns, huge shopping malls, swimming pools, golf courses, expansive gated communities, tidy farmland and gorgeous vineyards. So from a purely spatial perspective, in this way it’s quite easy for the large majority of an urban area to look well off even if the numerical majority of its inhabitants are anything but. It’s not very hard for a few million relatively well-off people to take up a large expanse of space. Following this, you can have a large, poor majority crammed into intensely overcrowded conditions which take up much less space, confined to more marginal areas easily avoidable by those living on the other side. The trick behind the illusion is thus quite simple: have the large, unfortunate majority of the population crammed into a very small percentage of the total land area, and the rest of the place can wallow in the well-trimmed green of quiet suburban contentment. Well, gated contentment that is.
And in a way this all explains why I experience such uneasy collisions of realities in this place, realities that to me belong in quite separate countries and on different continents rather than adjacent to and even on top of each other. While the large majority of the population might still live crammed into overcrowded and rather desperate urban conditions, they can go wherever they want to work, walk or loiter about. And so you have two realities that seem to be grudgingly moving along beside each other but not necessarily together, with one of them retreating behind gates and guards, away from public spaces and their real or perceived threat of crime and the unknown other. With apartheid being such a ludicrous attempt at controlled environments and social engineering, a nice example of modernist planning gone horribly wrong, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that its gradual and continuing unraveling produces such strange and slightly unsettling landscapes.