Upon initially entering Cape Town, I was struck by the opulence of the area. The wealth of Cape Town in comparison to the rest of the country and the settlements and townships we saw driving into the city from the airport was obvious. The sidewalks were wide and well paved. The buildings looked expensive, but there were very evident signs of structural racism. The first night out, at the first restaurant we went to, the waitresses and people handing out promotions were all white women; the cooks and bartenders were black men. Most of the patrons, too, were white. On Long Street there was expensive artwork and complimentary wine that drew wealthy white denizens to the center city every first Thursday of the month. Yet, that same street was also walked by predominantly black homeless people who, by the large presence of notoriously racist security guards, did not seem like they would be welcome.
The next day did not improve my views of Sea Point and Cape Town as a whole. When we met with Makena Mokeka, a local architect, I had conflicting perceptions of the work he showed us. On the one hand he was trying to do a good thing and subvert expensive projects to be more inclusive. In this case, that simply meant fighting for the Sea Front to remain open for all people to walk around and not walled off for the economically empowered of the city. This is, admittedly, a great first step. Before buildings and private developments can start to become more inclusive, a change in the designation of public space from exclusive to inclusive for all of the city helps to cultivate a feeling of ownership for anyone. However, Makena was also designing a hotel intended for just the wealthy people. Makena Mokeka’s tactic, it seems, is to set up a trap where his designs make so much sense to the developer, and are genuinely more cost effective, that the developer is “forced” to agree to his designs which he hopes will benefit the entire community. However, while the idea is noble, Makena Mokeka did not go far enough in his work. He seemed very proud of his designs, but his design seemed like any other high end luxury building. We saw him implement his own ideas into the space that had no real purpose to his desires of inclusivity, but simply developed a reputation for himself. It seems that either Makena is so subtle in his design that I fell for the same trap that the developers did, or Makena Mokeka himself has accidentally fallen into a trap of affluent design that is gaining him notoriety but subverting his nobler intentions.
Our viewing of Sea Point Days — a film that contains a series of vignettes telling the story of Sea Point in its historic and contemporary context — also did not help my overall impression of Cape Town. There were a lot of powerful motifs in the film and what I was able to gather was a valuable understanding of Sea Point. It showed that despite the exclusionary policies of housing here, the public space is still one of the most successfully inclusive areas in the city. It showed that even though Apartheid has been over for roughly 20 years, it is still a serious wound with only a small effort towards recovery — referencing specifically the City Improvement District (CID) and the blonde-haired, blue-eyed official who was making it his personal mission to rid Sea Point of the majority black homeless population. The film showed the complexity of racism; how it is easy to think that a person who is racist is racist all the time and is always spouting bigoted remarks, but in reality it is a cute old lady who is involved in ministerial work yet longs for the “order” of Apartheid. There seemed to be 100 other topics covered in the film that have become more apparent the longer we have stayed in Sea Point. What I learned from the film, though, was that Sea Point and Cape Town as a whole are extremely exclusionary spaces with complicated contestations claiming rights to the area.
-- Kyle Giamportone
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