A Seed is Blown: Cape Town to Cintsa

Cape Town with Table Mountain shrouded in mist. Dec 2005

My journey to Cape Town was inspired by some romantic notions: being on the tip of Africa at the cusp of two great oceans, the legend of Nelson Mandela, and the up beat, brass driven sounds of Cape Town funk.

Shortly before going there I became friendly with Deborah, a South African woman who was studying photography at City of Westminster College, London, where I was lecturing in Art & Design. By coincidence, Deborah’s ex-husband was living in an artist’s community in a suburb of Cape Town. Intrigued by the possibility of meeting some South African artists, I decided to visit the community and spend a few days there.

Ode Molen Village - as the compound housing the artist's community was called - was a huddle of buildings on a bare patch of ground near a motorway. The high security fencing gave an appearance, more of a prison than a village. Cape Town wasn’t how I imagined it either. There was the worry of violent crime and, since I had to rely on the local train service, which wasn’t recommended, to get around, I wasn’t tempted to do much sightseeing. The city centre, well known for its party culture, seemed largely dominated by white people. As hopes of immersing myself in some of South Africa’s wonderful music began to fade, feeling a bit deflated I took a trip up Table Mountain. From the rocky heights, buffeted by a chill wind I looked out on to a view of sprawling docks and sixties concrete office blocks, only adding to my disappointment, because it seemed that, except for the clear blue sky it was a view reminiscent of Swansea in Wales, and not worth travelling 6000 miles. Why did everybody rave about this town? Surely I was missing something. Anyway, it was time to move on, and I was thinking about where to go, when Bruno, Deborah’s ex-husband suggested the Transkei. Even though it was a long way to travel from Cape Town by road, and I knew nothing about the place, the attraction was irresistible. Later I discovered that "trans" means across, and the Kei River is a natural tribal border, so in Afrikaans, Transkei simply meant across the Kei. I would also discover that the Transkei was home to the Xhosa people, birthplace of Nelson Mandela, and one of the original “homelands".

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The “homelands”- such a quaint name for a travesty - were reservations for black Africans. They supposedly functioned as independent states under autonomous democratic rule, but were ruled instead by those chiefs who were prepared to compromise on principles and ignore the wishes of the people they ruled. Being dependent on the South African economy, but without having a stake in it, and therefore not reaping any rewards from it, they acted as pools of labor, form which white South Africa extracted the low skilled workers it needed to service its economy. The land of the “homelands” were often not of a quality sufficient to support the populations that lived there, and with the young men and women away working in the cities, agriculture suffered and malnutrition and famine were not unheard of. Clearly guided by the principle of divide and rule, the effect of the “homelands” policy was to emphasise the distinction between the different indigenous peoples by allotting them different territories to live in. Along with this, the loss of South African citizenship made travel outside of the “homelands” impossible without a passport. Furthermore, the South African Parliament maintained absolute authority over the “homelands”. It was a system ingenious in its wickedness, and sadly to this day, in spite of the dismantling of Apartheid they remain ghettos of poverty and neglect.