This past weekend, I tried to see
the Southern Suburbs by walking through them along Main Road from Rosebank to
downtown. It’s crazy to me that with all of the time I’ve been here, I hadn’t
really explored Observatory, Mowbray, Woodstock or Salt River. I had previously
only seen the up-scale part of Mowbray that connects Liesbeek Parkway to
Campground Road, the trendy shops on Lower Main in Observatory, and the hipster
part of Woodstock filled with vintage shops and Old Biscuit Mill. I had
previously assumed that the Southern Suburbs were more or less carbon copies of
each other, and walking along Main Road was nice because even with just a small
glimpse it showed me that between the hipster markets and vegan cafés, the
Southern Suburbs are not all white and upper-middle class. I learned that
Mowbray has an abundance of tiny storefront shops with amazing cheap Malay and
Indian food, and that there are bars that exist for non-white,
non-twenty-something population. I saw that there are used clothing markets for
people who buy used clothes because they need something affordable, not because
they need something chic. When I finally got to Cape Town, I went to a meeting
in the Slave Church on long street hosted by a group called Reclaim the City,
which is fighting for affordable housing and the protection of tenants in and
around downtown Cape Town. At this meeting, the focal point was residents who
have lived near the Old Biscuit Mill for decades and are now being evicted
because the market, and upscale developments like it, have caused rent to
skyrocket. I didn’t even realize until that day that there was a lower- or
working-class population in Woodstock, because I had only been to Old Biscuit
Mill which is quite pricy by Cape Town standards and therefore largely caters
only to wealthier white people. I need to learn more about the history of the
Southern Suburbs; I need to learn who lived in them before Apartheid, and what
efforts (if any) have been made to diversify them since Apartheid officially
ended. The day after I attended that meeting, I went to Simon’s Town where I
wandered around some vintage shops where the shopkeepers complained about the
#RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns, and where National Party banners
and flags were sold for thousands of Rand. Simon’s Town is undeniably white and
upper class, but at least explains some of its history to tourists through a
small set of pictures on a brick wall along the main road. This photo set
touches on the rich Muslim history and culture that existed in Simon’s Town,
and the forced removals in 1968 that tore vibrant communities apart, but I know
that there is so much more to learn.
The other day while I was on campus,
I took a hike up to Rhodes Memorial. Rhodes Memorial is kind of gross in that
it honors a man who colonized and ruined so much of southern Africa, but it
offers the most beautiful view of the city. One thing that really stood out to
me from that view was just how huge Rondebosch Commons are. There are so many
parts of Cape Town where people live on top of each other in shacks because
there aren’t enough physical spaces where they can live affordable, and I had
just learned the week before about a movement of people in the past several
years who have tried to construct informal housing on the Commons. The Commons
are unnecessarily huge and contain nothing but brown grass and sand, and I
wonder why that land hasn’t been snatched up by the city for any type of
prosocial development, or even for corporate development. There are so many
questions that are just popping up now and I’m looking forward to finding
answers in the next two weeks!
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