Day 43--Cape Town

5 October. Impodimo Game Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve, North-West Province, South Africa

I’m sitting on the deck of my . . . I’m embarrassed to use the word, but it’s the only word that fits . . . chalet on the grounds of the Impodimo Game Lodge. We (Jim, Shamim, Bob, Maria, Betsy, and I) arrived here about 11:30am after an early morning flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and a charter flight on a 15-passenger Cessna Caravan from Jo-burg (as they call it) to East Madikwe International Airport, which is a stretch of the dirt road running through the east section of the reserve, widened slightly to accommodate a small aircraft. No terminal, only a jeep waiting to take us to the Lodge. Before landing, the pilot had to buzz the runway to scare away the wildebeests and giraffes grazing near the approach end. Already we’ve seen impala, many zebras, and more giraffes—and that was only on our 20-minute ride to the lodge. I’m relaxing now before high tea at 5:00pm followed by an evening safari. But I’ll come back to that.

The V&A Waterfront and Khayelitsha
Saturday morning, I left the ship around 10am and spent the next 2 hours walking around the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, an area of shops, hotels, and restaurants that reminds me very much of the Rocks area of Sydney, minus, of course, the opera house and bridge. It’s anchored by the V&A Mall, a crisscross of aisles and stores, mostly upscale, that wind from where the MV Explorer is docked about ¼ mile inland along the piers.

I walked along the waterfront, then turned toward downtown Cape Town, reaching the boundary of the adjacent drydock area before turning back toward the ship. I passed the Nelson Mandela Pier, from which the boat to Robbin Island departs 4 times a day. Robbin Island is now a museum, but until 1994, it housed a maximum security prison where The Afrikaans government sent political prisoners, including Mandela.

By the time I got back close to the ship, I was very hungry, so I stopped for a plate of hake and chips, deep fried, accompanied by fried calamari. I could hear my arteries cracking as I ate every bite. Delicious!

After seeing the wealth of the waterfront, representing the lifestyle of the top 10% of the South African population, I decided I had to see the other side of South African life: the townships. “Township” is a euphemism for the areas surrounding South African cities where, under apartheid, Black families congregated, built their homes, and commuted into the all-white cities to serve as housemaids, gardeners, and the other menial but necessary jobs required to maintain the white lifestyle. I decided to take the trip to Khayelitsha (kile-YEET-shah) because it had been organized as a faculty-directed practicum by Andi Mitnick, my fellow Communication Studies professor and, based on her many years on the faculty at Kutztown State U. in Philadelphia, the nominal head of our 2-person department.

We left the ship around 1330 (1:30pm) along with about 30 students and a few lifelong learners, heading for the township, which sits about 25 miles east of the city, on the other side of Table Mountain. On the way, we passed downtown Cape Town, a city that could be mistaken for Dallas, Denver, or any other city that has enjoyed a recent boom in downtown construction. We took the N2 motorway, the primary east-west highway in South Africa, driving past the hospital where Dr. Christian Bernard performed the first heart transplant, past the old football stadium where the Cape Town team (The Blacks?) play their matches, past the exit to the Stellenbosch wine country, past small sections of makeshift housing intermingled with newer brick homes, and finally turning off on the Khayelitsha exit.

As we crossed over the motorway and crested over a hill that eventually runs down to the Indian Ocean, about 2 miles in front of the bus, I could see on the right side the township: a mass of shacks built from corregated sheeting, reclaimed wood, makeshift doors, windows salvaged from demolished homes and buildings. The township stretched as far as we could see, from almost the water’s edge north to the motorway we had just exited, and from the road we were on almost to the eastern base of Table Mountain—a total of what looked like 10 to 15 square miles, maybe more.

Khayelitsha might have been mistaken for one of the many villages we passed through on the way from Ghana to Benin, except here there was no red clay and accompanying dust. Instead, the roads are paved and in fine condition. Here, too, electrical wires spread in all directions across the township, and we saw men and women walking back from government-built water supplies carrying large buckets of fresh water to their homes. As we drove back and forth through the streets, many scenes were reminiscent of West Africa—makeshift store fronts, children playing on or close to the streets, hawkers selling wares in temporary-not-temporary stands, certainly pervasive poverty. But there were no large piles of trash in the few empty spaces, no fires burning. And here and there we saw brick homes either under construction or completed and occupied by families who formerly lived in one of the shacks.

Khayelitsha certainly is no paradise. You couldn’t even call it a poor man’s alternative to Cape Town—it’s a different world. But it has a sense of pride that I think we all found very surprising. We made several stops in the township, first at a church, where local artisans peddled homemade jewelry and knickknacks while a marimba band played. Then we went to a school, where women dressed in colorful ethnic clothing showed us how they make tapestries and wall hangings, all of which are for sale, of course. Finally, we went to a run-down looking, 2-story building, also made from gathered cast-off material. On top of the building was a sign reading “Vicki’s B&B.” Inside, we found a very neat, tidy hotel, including 4 bedrooms furnished with queen-size beds, dressers, curtains, everything you’d expect to find in a B&B anywhere in the world. No en suite—common, very clean bath—but a place where I’d spend the night without hesitating for a moment.

The owner, Vicki, is an ample woman. Dressed in traditional clothing, she shared her story with us: starting as a tiny place, eventually adding space, better furnishings, clientele. Today she has a thriving business and is, justifiably, very proud. She talked to the group for a few minutes about her history and motivation. But the story that stuck with me was hearing her explain why they tell visitors never to give the small children in the township money. “Because,” she said, “if you give them money, the next time visitors come here, the children will ask—beg—for money. That would make us ashamed.”

Khayelitsha, like, I’m sure, the people of the other townships, has a very long way to go. Forty percent are still unemployed. And the average annual income, according to our tour guide, is roughly $1,200. The people are starting to grow impatient with the government for not moving fast enough to build the brick houses, construct sanitary facilities, and provide electricity to all the houses.

As in Ghana, the people in the makeshift homes are friendly, outgoing, welcoming. But, unlike what we saw in Ghana, I had the feeling that the people of the township have a clear goal: they seem to know where they’re heading and what they want.

The tour took longer than planned, and we didn’t return to the ship until almost 7pm, so I missed the wine-country dinner. But I had a fine glass of wine, a salad, and a wonderful pizza (first one since leaving Libertyville) at a restaurant overlooking the waterfront. And I felt very gratified that I had taken the time to see a slice of South Africa as 80% of the population know it.

Green Market and Robbin Island
Sunday morning after breakfast on the ship, I joined Bob, Maria, and Betsy on a trip to the Green Market, a weekly farmer’s market that happens every Sunday in the Green Point area of Cape Town. The market used to cover several acres of Green Point, an open park bordering Cape Town’s version of Chicago’s Gold Coast: several miles of very expensive apartment and condo buildings overlooking the Atlantic shoreline. But now they’re building a new football stadium in Green Point in preparation for South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup. So the Green Market has shrunk to a narrow strip of stalls barely 100 yards long.

The government of South Africa had wanted to build the new stadium closer to the townships, from where most of the local football (soccer) fans will come to see the matches next year. But FIFA, governing body of world soccer, insisted on its being built close to the waterfront so that television coverage would be able to show Table Mountain in the background. No sense in showing the shacks of Khayelitsha and spoiling the big-screen HD view of the match between two quarter-finalists!

At any rate, we spent an hour or so prowling the stands of the market, and I bought a few items to remind me of my visit to South Africa. “You got this where?! Wow! Africa, huh? What’s that like?” About 11am, Bob and I decided to head back to the ship, and the ladies headed off to the botanical gardens.
I joined Bob for lunch at a waterfront sandwich place, then he went shopping for safari clothes, and I went to the Nelson Mandela pier, from where the boat to Robbing Island departs. The 30-minute ride to the Island took us away from the waterfront and out into Table Bay. The island sits about 8 miles offshore, surrounded by the very cold and very shark infested waters of the bay. Table Bay and the waters off the Cape of Good Hope are where naturalists, documentary filmmakers, and the Cousteau Society people go to view great whites up close and personal. Many students from the ship, in fact, signed up for cage dives in order to have intimate encounters with the beasts. Initial reports are that the dives lived up to the hype. At any rate, the sharks and frigid waters combine to make Robbin Island South Africa’s Alcatraz—a very secure place to throw criminals and political prisoners.

After stepping off the hydrofoil, the 200-or-so of us who made the trip were hustled onto waiting busses for a drive around the island, culminating in a walking tour of the maximum security prison where Mandela spent 18 his 28 years as a prisoner of the government. Our tour guide on the bus was Yassim Mohammad, who lives permanently on the island and may have been a prisoner himself at one time—he was circumspect about the exact circumstances that led him there. But regardless of his background, Yassim, a man in his late 60s or early 70s, neatly dressed in sweater, white shirt, and pressed slacks, and sporting a tiny white goatee on his tan chin, treated us to almost 2 hours of stories and wisecracks as we circled the island. He reminded me of a gentle, though very dramatic, Don Rickles, with endless cracks about the nationalities of the passengers. From Yassim’s stand-up act: “We have the Australians to thank for all the rabbits on the island. The first rabbit came here to help control the spread of eucalyptus, but once here all they did was breed. And you know what they say about rabbits: they breed like Australians.” And “You all know how Indians play football [soccer]: you give them a corner, and they set up a stand.” Folks, he had a million of ‘em.

But Yassim was also a wealth of knowledge about the island and the history of political prisoners who were sent there during the harshest years of apartheid. We spent several minutes at the limestone quarry, for instance, where he told of how Nelson Mandela and hundreds of others moved tons of limestone from one end of the quarry to another day after day in the blazing sun, which, when reflected off the brilliant whiteness of the limestone, burns one’s eyes into blindness. Today, photographers aren’t permitted to take flash photos of Mandela because of the sensitivity of his eyes to light following many years in the quarry.

The quarry also become a sort of university, where the political prisoners, many of whom were doctors, professors, and other well educated South Africans, would teach each other various subjects as they passed hauling limestone in the quarry. As Yassim told us the story of the “quarry degrees,” I thought about the US POWs held in Hanoi prisons during the war. They, too, held classes during the years in the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps around the city, often tapping out lessons to other POWs in code. It was in the quarry, according to Yassim, that Mandela developed and taught his policy of reconciliation—basically forgive-but-don’t-forget—to fellow resistance leaders. That policy, based on the teachings of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, became the foundation of Mandela’s government after he was elected president in ’93. Yassim referred to it as the 3-M principle—Mandela, Martin, and Mahatma—mined from the limestone quarry.

Yassim also told of escorting dignitaries around the island, including Hillary Clinton (“Her husband couldn’t join her. He was working in the White House. [wry smile]”) and then-Senator Barack Obama (“I asked him not to tell President Bush about the WWII guns still in place on the island. Bush might invade here claiming we have weapons of mass destruction.”)

Finally, we arrived at the maximum-security prison, said goodbye to Yassim as we stepped off the bus, and were greeted by another guide who had, indeed, spent several years as a political prisoner on the island. I didn’t get his name, but I did get his history, including years of underground fighting against the apartheid government. In June, 1976, he had been present in Soweto when the grade-school students demonstrated against the Afrikaans language they were being taught in their classrooms. In the ensuing encounter with police, hundreds of the unarmed students where shot, most of them in the back while trying to run away from the police.

The prison has been tidied up considerably from the way it must have looked during its active years. Still, it’s a stark place: long barracks that held 60 to 70 prisoners in rooms slightly larger than the family room in my house; guard towers sticking up around the perimeter; high walls topped by razor-edged concertina wire; every building a steel gray.

We walked into one of the prisoner barracks and sat around the perimeter as the guide told us about a typical day for most of the former population: early rise, small meal, out to the quarry or around the prison for maintenance, some exercise, another meal, back to the barracks. Every day was the same for, in many cases, a life term.

Then we went to a complex where the political prisoners were held. Here, two buildings and a high wall surrounded a courtyard where Mandela and the others were allowed outside their cells for 20 minutes of recreation each day. Otherwise, these “special cases” remained in their cells or in the quarry all day. And political prisoners weren’t allowed to mingle with the murderers, thieves, and rapists for fear the former might contaminate the latter.

Finally, we were led into one of the buildings, and halfway down the cell-lined corridor, we passed a single cell, about 8’X8’, furnished with a think mat and pillow along one wall and a 1-foot-square table under a window lined with thick bars. This is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. Seeing these conditions, it’s remarkable that he didn’t develop absolute rage at the government that was imprisoning him. But he didn’t, becoming, instead, a very wise and, from all reports, a very gentle and forgiving leader. Based on what I’ve seen, that attitude seems pervasive in South Africa.

At 6pm, we reboarded the hydrofoil and returned to the V&A waterfront. I went to the ship for a quick dinner. Then I packed a few things in my roll-aboard suitcase and was about to go to bed when Jim Cooper called to remind me of our 4:30am pickup time for the trip to the airport. He also said that, according to the trip instructions, we were allowed no more than 18 pounds of carry-on luggage and that we “have to” carry on because of the tight connection in Johannesburg. I went to Jim & Shamim’s room, weighed my bag on their hand-held scale, and discovered that, without my backpack, I already was toting 29 pounds. Jim and Shamim strongly encouraged me to unpack all but, essentially, a pair of clean underwear and a toothbrush. But I decided to chance it. Monday morning, I showed up with my roll-aboard—all 29 pounds—and a backpack loaded with cameras and my laptop.

I had no problems. Security for the domestic flight was similar to US pre-flight security except we didn’t have to remove our shoes, they didn’t require liquids in a zip-lock bag, and, despite my metal knee, I wasn’t subjected to a wanding, only a cursory pat-down. I’m sure security for international flights in more rigorous, but checking in for the Cape Town-to-Johannesburg was no more difficult—easier, in fact—than checking in for a flight from Chicago to Cleveland.

After a 90-minute flight to Jo-Burg, we were carted to the charter side of the airport for the Federal Air flight to West Madikwe. By 11:45am, we were sitting in Impodimo Lodge enjoying a welcome drink and waiting for our rooms to be readied.