This past week there was a lot of political tension between
the government of the Western Cape and the ANCYL (African National Congress
Youth League) as the Western Cape is the one province that does not have the
ANC in power. The Democratic Alliance
(DA) rules here, which marks the first time since the end of Apartheid that the
ANC is not in power. The people in the
townships were upset over the lack of public transport and government services
to the townships, thinking that they deserved more than they already receive. They participated in a service delivery
protest to show their discontent. In
anger they burned a Golden Arrow bus. They
also stoned a bus in the Khayelitsha Township.
This led to the bus driver crashing into 4 shacks on the side of the
road, injuring many people. The driver
died on the scene and one of the victims has since died in the hospital. To me stoning a public transport service in
the area you want more transport to reach is not the way to go about getting
more services.
With tensions escalating demands were made to the government
by the ANCYL that needed to be met by Tuesday night or they were going to lead
a mass protest on Wednesday focusing on preventing public transportation. Politically both sides were arguing that they
were not behind the bus stoning, especially since the ANCYL has been diverting
from the regular ANC philosophy with more violence. The city was unsure what would happen on
Wednesday or if a protest would take place at all. Considering I take Golden
Arrow buses to work every morning, and I live roughly 50 meters from Parliament
where they would lead the protests to, I was advised to stay home from work
Wednesday just to be on the safe side.
Fortunately, absolutely nothing happened on Wednesday so I
just got an extra day off of work!
Supposedly the protests have been moved to August 27 to represent the
recent closing of 27 schools in the area, but you can’t be sure what will
happen or not. Elections occur every 5
years.
With my day off, I finally made it to Bread Milk &
Honey, a delicious breakfast/lunch place.
I realized that it will be well worth my time to leave for work 10
minutes earlier so that I can grab breakfast here; it was that wonderful. The weather was gorgeous so in the afternoon,
I hiked up Lion’s Head. It took roughly
40 minutes to reach the top, which has sweeping views of the city bowl, the
waterfront, Atlantic seaboard, Camps Bay, and Table Mountain. The mountain is 669 meters high. The path
winds around the base so you walk a complete circle around the mountain on your
way up to the top, before climbing up the rocky part to reach the summit. On the way back down the clouds were forming
on top of Table Mountain making the tablecloth.
They were literally pouring off of the front of the mountain exactly
like a waterfall. I have never seen it
do that before. While Liz and I were
taking in this moment, an airplane flew by with a banner trailing behind
it. The banner said “Mavericks” which is
a strip club in the city. It was so funny that this happened to fly by while we
were so impressed with the view. Then some passing hikers heard us say “Mavericks”
but they didn’t see the plane with the sign, so they started laughing and
thought we were going there later that night.
Thursday, August 9, was a national public holiday, Women’s
Day. On August 9, 1956, 20,000 women
marched to petition against legislation that required African persons to carry
the special identification documents that banned the freedom of movement during
the Apartheid era. They left over
100,000 signatures outside the prime minister’s office in Pretoria. Outside the
building they stood in silence for 30 minutes. This was another day off work, giving me a 3
day workweek.
Sarah, Liz, and I decided to hike Devil’s Peak, which is 1000
meters tall (only a little shorter than Table Mountain) but does not have a
cable car so you have to hike both up and down.
Devil’s Peak was named after a folk tale about a pipe smoker who was
forced to smoke outside by his wife instead of in the house. He would smoke on the slopes and one day he
met a mysterious smoking stranger. They competed
to see who could smoke the most. The
stranger turned out to be the devil, but the man won the contest and all of
their smoke formed the table cloth of cloud on Table Mountain.
We took the Platteklip Gorge start off of Tafelberg Road that
also has the path up to Table Mountain.
There is a fork in the path at one point, with the second path heading sideways
and toward Devil’s Peak. The path
meanders past Table Mountain and up into the saddle where it meets up with the
path starting at Newlands Ravine on the other side of the mountain. Then it climbs up the side of Devil’s Peak
until you reach the top. It kept
tricking us where you think you are so close to the top, but once you climb the
ridge there was another hill and another until finally we made it. Overall the hike only took 1 hour and 40
minutes which was much faster than I anticipated. At the very top you can see both False Bay
and the Atlantic Seaboard with Cape Point and the Hottentot Mountains in the
middle. The other way has Table
Mountain, Lion’s Head, Signal Hill, waterfront, city center, and the cape
flats.
The wind on top of the hill was very strong and chilly. We hiked back down the path we came up, but
instead of climbing down Platteklip Gorge, we hiked along the face of Table
Mountain where the hill ends and the rock starts 3 km to the area above the
lower cable station and down to the station.
It turns out there was a huge line at the station to go up the mountain
with a wait time of over 2 hours. It
would take less time to physically climb the mountain than to wait in that
line. Overall we spent 5 hours out on the mountains.
I had to go back to work Friday, for just that one day
before the weekend. Things are picking
up with 4 local forums occurring in Tanzania, Malawi, and Swaziland before
November starts. I feel like a real
employee now since I officially received my first phone call at work on
Tuesday. The secretary answered the
phone and the person asked for Michele!
I also have my own work e-mail address that I now receive quite a bit of
correspondence on which is exciting.
Friday night I finally watched some more Olympics at the
Kimberly. I got to see the USA women’s
relay break the world record. It was
really entertaining for me because I was practically the only one rooting for
the USA in the bar, as everyone else favored Jamaica. I was out with someone from Sweden, South
Africa, and Singapore which meant we all were from different continents
(Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America).
We went to Evol a hipster bar afterward (it is love spelled backward).
There were storms this weekend with snow hitting lots of
other regions in South Africa. Pretoria
hadn’t seen snow since 1968. Cape Town
did not have snow, but it is apparently never this cold during a cape
winter. This is unfortunately one of the
side effects of global warming. Hilary
Clinton however made a stop in South Africa during the snow and was named
“Nimkita” or “one who brought the snow.”
She went dancing in Pretoria with the video going viral.
I did make it to the Planetarium and S. A. Museum this
weekend during a break in the rain. Liz
and I wandered around the displays which were rather disjointed and not
sequential in any way. One floor had minerals and mammals. There was a whole section on Charles
Darwin. The coolest part was the wonders
of nature section that was up a rickety staircase at the top. There were large
shark jaws (similar to the sharks I swam with) and fossils found of ancient
fish. Liz and I went to the Oceans in
Space show in the planetarium. When
sitting down the seats recline and you are practically laying down in the
dark. We both knew that this would be a
problem. About 10 minutes in to the 30
minute show, I fell asleep only to wake up to the closing scenes of the
program. Unfortunately I didn’t get to
learn the main concept of the show and whether we will find water on other
planets. I do recall them talking about Mars previously having water and it
vanishing as well as Jupiter’s moon Europa being a frozen tundra with slushy
water under the icy surface. Other than
that I was unfortunately sound asleep. Both of us found it hysterical that we
took a 25R nap, but at least we saw the museum.
More pictures stolen from the web:
1) Lion's Head
2) Devil's Peak with city hall (The Grand Parade is the parking lot in front of City Hall and just across the street from that is where I get on the bus for work every morning)
3) Map of the path we took hiking up and down Devil's Peak
For camera news: FedEx called me today and said it has arrived, but I have to find a way to go pay international customs fees before they will get me the package. The only problem with that is I work during all business hours and can't make any of the opening times to actually pay this fee. No worries, I will figure it out somehow and have a camera again (hopefully). TIA. This is Africa.
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