I’m not a fan of large hotels. They’re sterile and completely lack any welcoming aura. When traveling to a medical conference, it is customary to book the conference hotel, because it’s far more convenient to wake up and be right where you need to be for the event, as well as being able to easily pop back to your room in between lectures or meetings. I much prefer small B&Bs, lodging houses or vacation rentals by owner when I travel. And so instead of booking the $100/night conference hotel in Cape Town’s Century City, I had booked a small nearby lodging house for $30/night which would be approximately a 20 minute walk to the conference center. As usual, this worked out quite well for me, since the owner of the place picked me up at the airport for a small additional fee and essentially gave me a tour of town as we drove back towards the lodging house. This tour was complemented by his take on Cape Town politics.
The proprietor is not the first Afrikaaner I met who was unendingly pleasant to me as a white person, but who harbored some disturbing views of nonwhite people. As we drove through Cape Town, he pointed out the shanty towns we passed, each one compact and lined from top to bottom in colored corrugated steel, and exclaimed “they’re stealing electricity! They’re stealing water! And we the taxpayers have to pay more and more to subsidize them.” He railed against the corruption in the government, which to be fair, appears to be rampant. He told me “Apartheid government ended in 1994… it’s all been downhill since then.” On one hand I could see the logic of being angry as a wave of penniless illegal immigrants arrived at a high cost to current residents. On the other hand, I could also see that Cape Town would look like the promised land to people fleeing violence, failed states, and crushing poverty. I don’t think anyone should have to live without water because they can’t afford to pay for it. And it seemed the local government had made some significant efforts to build row houses in place of the shanty towns, only the shanty towns were expanding too quickly for them to keep up. Regardless, I only had a few minutes to ponder the political and racial challenges of this situation, because my host had moved on to criticism of Chinese immigrants. “They’re modern day slave drivers, these Chinese!” He told me about how “China Towns” had been popping up all over the Cape Town area, which made me picture quaint little side streets filled with little dim sum restaurants. It turns out that China Towns are a chain of stores that sell a variety of super cheap products. My host was angry because he felt that the China Towns were undercutting local businesses by selling cheaper but low quality goods, and hiring only illegal immigrants who they could work long hours 7 days a week. South Africa apparently has strict labor laws for its citizens that do not allow a weekly work schedule with no days off. Now I was pondering the paradoxical fact that my host, who had just finished ranting about the crimes of illegal immigrants, was now ranting about the crimes that were being committed against illegal immigrants and how unfair it all was.
We arrived at the small lodging house, and I was quite charmed. Inside its gates, there were cages of twittering birds lining a garden path, flanked with a variety of tropical looking shrubs and succulents. A traditional “braai,” which is a small outdoor barbecue area, was next to my room. Although the next dawn would find me cursing those little twittering birds, I felt peaceful and relaxed, and headed off towards a dinner with friends at a well known place called The Africa Café.
At the Africa Café, I was served a literal feast, with each dish representing a different African nation’s cooking. As we ate, we were serenaded by a group of dancers and drummers. Was it touristy? Yes. Did I love it anyway? Yes yes yes.
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