Mother City News 31 August 29 September 2021

WARNING: May contain strong language

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31 AUGUST, 2021

Holding power to account

Grand Prix in the city: the good, bad, and ugly

Upgrade is actually a downgrade... The safe cycling lanes, buffered from cars by trees and plants, will be removed to widen streets for a Formula E grand prix. After the event, plastic bollards will be all that will stand between cyclists and powerful motor cars.

• In trying to be ‘world-class’, City may be hoodwinked by slick sales pitch Steve Kretzmann The electric version of the Formula 1 Grand Prix – Formula E – will be racing around the streets of Green Point and Mouille Point in March next year, and the City is ponying up R48m to make it happen.

The budget to support the event and make the streets surrounding the Cape Town stadium suitable for the race through

widening certain sections, levelling intersections, and creating pitstop areas was passed by the city council on Thursday 19 August. The motivation for the City’s support of the event featuring 24 electricallypowered race cars zooming around Green Point was that it will revive the tourism and events industry which has been depressed

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by Covid-19 restrictions, and inject about R1.4bn into the local economy.

The Formula E race will be run by e-Movement, which obtained a partnership with Jaguar South Africa and in 2019 submitted an unsolicited bid to the City of Cape Town to host the event. Following a feasibility study which sets out the track along existing roads around the Cape Town Stadium which will have to undergo alterations, the City has agreed to undertake

the necessary road works.

The good In a press statement released prior to the motion being passed by council, mayor Dan Plato stated the event would identify Cape Town as Africa’s racing destination and “unlock major investment, job creation and tourism potential”.

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From Page 1 Plato believes the event “offers major potential to local business and will be a huge attraction” for residents. The R44m to be spent on making the roads suitable for the race, and R4m toward the event itself, will be offset by an approximate R1.4bn boost to the city economy, as evidenced by Hong Kong’s experience in hosting the race.

Speaking at the council meeting, mayco member Jean-Pierre Smith said the tourism and hospitality sector was devastated by Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, and it was “imperative we get this industry going again and this is the perfect event to do that”.

Smith believed it would attract domestic and international visitors who would spend “a lot of money, a lot more than if we took this meagre amount of money and spent it on jobs in the city”.

He viewed the civil works to be conducted as “upgrades” which would be permanent in a precinct that “has not had a meaningful upgrade since 2009”.

The report to council seeking approval of funds for the event states the race is “a great way to get people excited about the possibilities of engineering and technology”.

The report goes on: “By racing through the streets, the championship acts as a catalyst, helping to refine the design of electric vehicles and improve the driving experience of everyday road users.”

There will also be an e-mobility festival showcasing electric vehicles, an art fair, a celebrity and corporate golf tournament hosted by Ernie Els, a climate change summit, and a concert during the event set to occur over several days.

The bad ACDP councillor Grant Haskin noted the money spent on altering roads in the Green Point precinct is pulled from roads and transport projects in other parts of the city. This includes R4m from Heideveld and R1,15m from the Jakes Gerwel N1 and N2 interchanges.

“Communities that are disconnected from this event elsewhere in the city will have to wait a further year or two or three before the roads they use everyday will be upgraded in preference for an event held for three or four days once a year,” said Haskin.

He noted the City’s chief financial officer states in the report that there is a likelihood of cost escalations, and these should be brought to council before additional expenditure is incurred.

The plan before council shows certain streets to be used for the race, such as Fritz Sonnenberg Boulevard, need to be widened.

The plan shows that after the event, plastic bollards would be used to reinstitute a cycling lane. However, Open Streets Cape Town managing director Kirsten Wilkins said this was a downgrade as at present there was a cycling lane with a landscaped buffer and kerb between cars and cyclists. Removing the plants and replacing them with plastic bollards essentially put cyclists “back in the traffic”.

Wilkins also raised the issue that the money pulled from roads upgrades in other areas involved tampering with the City’s Integrated Development Plan (IDP) which had been through a public participation process, yet there had been no public participation process regarding delaying expenditure in other areas in favour of the Green Point precinct.

Annexure A

Cape Town’s station deck, usually a bustle of minibus activity, was all but abandoned on Tuesday 20 July as minibus taxi services ground to a halt amidst ongoing violence.

Photo: Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp

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The Formula E circuit. Source: Annexure to document placed before council.Figure 14 : Fritz Sonnenberg Road – Legacy Scheme Cross Section

She also questioned whether this was the best way to spend R44m to benefit Capetonians.

“I would like to have seen more investigative work done on what that R44m could do for citizens in terms of mobility,” she said. As an example, a proper study on the benefits of a contiguous cycling lane from the metro south area to the city centre might find benefits comparable to the presumed influx of money the Formula E event would bring.

“What benefits would accrue if investing that R44m for the urban poor, to enable people to cycle from Gugulethu to the city centre, for example? What would the knockon effect be on people saving on the money they spend on taxi fare per month?”

Ross Douglas, who is founder and CEO of Autonomy Paris, the world’s biggest urban mobility event, poured cold water on Plato and Smith’s assertions that the event would underscore Cape Town as a world-class city and invigorate electric vehicle adoption and industry in the city.

Douglas said European cities were eschewing electric vehicles and embracing the concept of the car-free city. They realised electric vehicles were not the solution to global heating. “The end of car ownership is the answer.”

He said there was heavy particle emission from electric car tyres and in South Africa, electricity used to charge the vehicles was largely from coal, which undermined any effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Cities such as Paris, London, Berlin and Helsinki, were moving away from global events, investing in startups, and creating the “15-minute city” in which everything residents needed was within a 15-minute walk.

He said big international event companies such as the FIA which run Formula E were “sneaky” in selling themselves to insecure cities such as Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Cape Town, and figures such as a R1.4bn boost to the local economy were fed by the Formula E sales team. He was doubtful Cape Town would get the returns it hoped for.

The ugly Local company, Cape Town Grand Prix South Africa (CTGPSA), believe the City has shown a “blatant disregard” for a fair and open bidding process when it came to hosting

the Formula E race.

CTGPSA had approached the City about hosting a Formula 1 Grand Prix within the Green Point precinct for the first time in 2007 and official endorsement was turned down in 2010, although a detailed proposal and business plan was invited for consideration, according to CTGPSA spokesperson Esther Henderson.

This included plans for the racetrack, which has been copied in large parts by e-Movement’s submission, raising questions about theft of intellectual property.

Henderson said CTGPSA approached the FIA in 2018 Fritz Sonnenberg Road – Legacy Scheme Cross Section. Source: Feasibility about the rights Appraisal considered by council. to host the event in Cape Town a City official in August 2019 and although in anticipation of their 2021 – 2025 endorsement was not offered, they were led championship season. She said the FIA to believe they would be part of a fair and indicated they would put out a tender transparent bidding process, which never and CTGPSA started preparing their took place. submission and contacted the Western Cape She said CTGPSA were also told the City Government for support, with the next step would not contribute any money to the being to garner support from the City of event, but are now putting R48m behind it Cape Town.

But then they were blind sided by the City’s for e-Movement.

Attempts to contact e-Movement were press conference in June 2019 announcing support for the e-Movement consortium.

“We didn’t realise there was a competitor,” said Henderson.

She said they then secured a meeting with

regretfully unsuccessfully, but in council Smith said CTGPSA had not been considered because they had not submitted an events application.

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Fresh DA mayoral candidate for Cape Town DA mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis kicked off his election campaign in Bonteheuwel where he first signed up as a DA member at a meeting 17 years ago.

Steve Kretzmann The rosy-cheeked, fresh faced young man who is likely to be Cape Town’s next mayor, looked and sounded out of place as he launched his campaign from behind a blue DA-branded lectern set up in the middle of a frayed street in Bonteheuwel on Sunday 29 August.

The street outside DA councilor Theresa Thompson’s home was chosen as Geordin Hill-Lewis’s launchpad as it was where he signed up as a DA member 17 years ago after being brought to a DA meeting by James Vos, who is a current City mayoral committee member.

The 34-year-old Hill-Lewis looked like fresh meat for a group of tough looking young men eyeing proceedings from the sidelines, although they later turned out to be pro-DA. There were no police or law-enforcement protecting the 90-minute affair attended by about 100 people in the notorious suburb, and nor were they needed.

And to be fair, had he launched his campaign in his home suburb of Edgemead, he would be criticised for pandering to the white electorate and sidelining voters of colour. As Daily Maverick’s Rebecca Davis has noted, in South Africa, and Cape Town in particular, you cannot escape the optics of race.

Speaking to Daily Maverick on the pavement after his speech, Hill-Lewis, who is an MP, agreed that the DA’s efforts to transcend identity politics were weighed down by the loss of high profile black leaders such as Musi Maimane, Herman Mashaba, Lindiwe Mazibuko and most recently, Phumzile van Damme. The aspect of race was “a comfortable convenience for opponents” of the DA, he said, but no-one talked about the “dozens” of black DA leaders who continued

working at community level, such as Patrick Nqu in Philippi. These leaders deliver votes, said Hill-Lewis, “that’s what people care about”, adding he aimed to support such leaders to achieve better service delivery in their communities.

Hill-Lewis’s speech, delivered following an introduction by Vos and amusing wordplay

by DA MP Reagan Allen, avoided the racial optics of his mayoral candidacy. Instead, he warned against the cynical use of identity politics to divide voters, which was also an opportunity to point out national government’s failures.

“The DA in Cape Town doesn’t sit on the sidelines to try and divide people on the basis of race or religion, we get delivery done for everyone,” he said, along with the expected promise that as mayor he will “work day and night to bring better service delivery to every resident of Cape Town.”

Populists and “peddlers of hate” will in the coming months “tell you that you are struggling to make ends meet because of the colour of your skin, because of the language you speak, or because of the God you worship,” said Hill-Lewis, who leans of the traditional values of being a Christian and a family man.

He urged people to unite behind the DA and “not allow themselves to be fooled into blaming one another for the failures of the ANC.” Failures included loadshedding, the disintegration of Metrorail, and residents on the Cape Flats being provided the lowest police-to-citizen ratio in the country.

“They (the ANC-led government) do not care about the people of Cape Town,” he said.

This meant the DA had to “take the fight to the national government” and get more done in Cape Town than ever before. This meant training and deploying more law enforcement

officers, using “every tool at our disposal to fight for control over passenger rail services”, and striving to “end loadshedding in Cape Town”, presumably by continuing efforts to secure energy from independent power producers.

With snow visible on the mountains, the metaphor of the DA ushering spring to a city suffering under national government’s winter was threaded throughout his speech.

Part of the means to usher in warmth and prosperity was to “unleash the power of the private sector to meet the enormous demand for housing in our city”. He wants to see Cape Town become “one big construction site” building a prosperous future, with “cranes going up all over vacant pieces of stateowned land in Cape Town”. Asked afterwards if this was not at odds with the City’s own contested auctions of municipal property, he expressed the view that underutilised City-owned plots needed to be pre-packaged and released for development to social housing organisations. However, he noted the largest tracts of state land were held by national government, such as the SANDF’s underutilised Wingfield and Youngsfield military bases, and these needed to be released. He said he may not always agree with housing activist organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi who have consistently challenged the City’s housing delivery, but took note of “some valuable points” they raised. He said he was “in discussion” with them and shared their aim to create more affordable accommodation for Capetonians. He intends looking into the detail of why the housing project at Salt River market has been held up, he said.

Asked whether he would bring imagination and vision back to a City that seems to have returned to a dull bureaucratic approach

following former mayor Patricia de Lille’s abrasive exit, he said Cape Town was the country’s leader in good governance so “let’s use it as a policy laboratory”.

“If we are a world-class city we must do some big, exciting experimental things, and I don’t mind failing.”

However, he said bold vision could only be put in place if the DA held a majority.

A coalition of smaller parties would halt progress.

“If we focus on the message of what Cape Town’s future can be like, I think we can get people behind us.”

Launching his campaign in a ward in which 85% of voters supported the DA in the last local government election, it was not surprising that surrounding residents said they supported him.

At the end of the street, 21-year-old Byron Mackenzie said residents “don’t care about the DA and all that”. What they cared about, he said, was potholes being fixed, street lights working, and the streets being safe enough to kick a soccer ball around at dusk. Mackenzie said he liked the fact Hill-Lewis was young, and believed he would get a lot of votes.

Chestnut Street resident Bradley Comjana, 37, said everyone in the household voted DA, but an elderly lady further down the street, who declined to be named, was sceptical.

Feeling betrayed by politicians, she said there was no-one she felt she could vote for in the upcoming elections.

With the DA having achieved a two-thirds majority in Cape Town at the last local government elections, it is unlikely to lose the city this time around despite being likely to have De Lille’s GOOD party taking a bite out of their lead.

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31 AUGUST, 2021

Steenberg Farm: A rich experience Clean modern lines define the design of Bistro Sixteen82 at Steenberg Farm.

Food review Our efforts to sample the high-end cuisine at Steenberg Farm’s Bistro Sixteen82 were almost stopped in their tracks at the gated entrance to the estate.

Instead of the usual filling out of names and contacts on clipboard, the security guard demanded my driving license. I baulked. My partner, however, proffered hers, whereupon the Steenberg Farm security scanned the barcode. When I asked why, all we got was a vague referral to standard protocol. A driving license barcode contains valuable personal information, and by accessing it without any undertaking to protect it or prevent access by third parties, Steenberg appears to be on the wrong side of the Protection of Personal Information Act. It is also intrusive and arrogant and exclusionary. But perhaps exclusionary is exactly the point.

Steenberg has a rich history, originally owned by matriarch Catharina Usings Ras, the family sold it to Johnnic a few decades ago, and then it was more recently bought by the Beck family. The Beck’s made their fortune in coal mining before dusting off the dirt and going into wine and horse breeding. With coal magnate Graham Beck having died in 2010, his surviving son Antony Beck is in charge.

In any event, the boom gates, intrusive security, and questionable bedrock of the Beck fortune is not executive chef Kerry Kilpin’s fault, and so we proceeded, albeit with jaundiced eye, to our date with a wine tasting and lunch.

Gone is the Cape Dutch architecture you might expect when arriving at the Cape’s oldest farm. How Beck got heritage approval to replace 300-year-old structures with slick black aluminium and glass is a question for another day. Architecturally, Bistro Sixteen82 and its adjacent tasting lounge is little more than a dollied up double volume shed, but the highly polished screed floors, fine art, and oversized lighting fixtures, and

The curried baby calamari reveals Chef Kerry Kilpin’s ability to layer flavours and create a sublime dish.

bottles of expensive wine lining the walls create a sense of airy luxury befitting the kind of place that seems to want to require a stamp in your passport before letting you in.

Power trips of the rich aside, the rectangular pool of water spilling out from the deck, the sculpted lawns and expertly planted verges calm the irritated nerves. The excellent wine also helps. Thus, a jovial mood was restored by the time we were ushered to our table and paid attention to our attentive but unobtrusive waiter explain the specials, from which we chose the smoked fish taco as a starter. The offer of pear and fennel, and soy and saffron syrup was as irresistible to the

imagination as it was to prove to the taste. As was the curried baby calamari off the main menu. Curry may be the test of a chef’s ability to blend spice and herbs to create depth of flavour, and here Kilpin proved her worth, along with calamari soft as butter.

The starters were a hard act to beat but the mains did not lower the bar. The braised lamb neck, stuffed with ricotta, had the tenderness of a caress with a suggestive spiciness born of the accompanying apricot salsa, and citrus and lemon thyme jus.

The roasted pork belly is a simple but delicious piece of meat, and Kilpin served it

resting on a bed of celeriac mash providing a complementary texture to the soft flesh, with a pickled grape and fennel salsa to heighten the taste, and a sauvignon blanc and sultana jus adding an exotic note.

Ending off, the almond and chocolate streusel defied expectation. Looking like an expensive Romany cream with vanille crème, chocolate crémeux, and salted caramel ice cream, we wondered if we had made the wrong decision. A heavy dessert on a full stomach is not recommended. The first tentative spoonful proved us wrong. It was light as a compliment, smooth as a fine wine, rich in taste but soothing our stomachs rather than adding to their weight, rounding the meal off with a sweetness like perfumed air.

Each dish has a recommended wine pairing by the glass, but as we had already had a superb and highly recommended wine tasting, we reined back and just had a favourite glass each, being the Steenberg Black Swan Sauvignon Blanc to go with the curried calamari and pork belly, and Steenberg Nebbiolo for the fish taco and lamb neck.

In all, chef Kilpin served us food for which I’d almost be willing to forfeit my personal information, and made us feel both at home yet fêted as guests, which we were in a sense, as we were invited.

Certainly, unless you are an established member of the mink and manure set, Bistro Sixteen82 is not your fallback restaurant, but as a place to celebrate an achievement, a milestone, or an anniversary with excellent food, fine wine and attentive service, I would highly recommend it. Just remember to bring your driving license.

Mother City News was hosted by Steenberg Farm. Our bill would have come to approximately R1,050, we tipped accordingly.

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Book reviews

Give us more guns: Answers to violence in South Africa Thousands of police issue guns – the madein-South-Africa 9mm Z88 – have been sold to Cape Town gangs since the mid-2000s to early 2015. The flood of guns to gangs saw the murder rate in the city climb from a low of about 41 per 100,000 people in 2009, to about 63 per 100,000 by 2015. With the guns on the streets, the murder rate continued to climb, reaching 70 per 100,000 in 2017.

The source of the guns fuelling the violence in Cape Town was the national police armoury in Vereeniging. Specifically, the man in charge of it, one Colonel Christiaan Lodewyk Prinsloo.

Prinsloo was responsible for ensuring the destruction of these decommissioned police issue weapons. Instead, this middle aged man resentful of being overlooked for promotion, sold them to line his own pockets.

A conservative estimate, based on what available ballistics evidence there is, the guns Prinsloo sold to gangs resulted in 1,066 murders and 1,403 attempted murders. This was just between 2010 and 2016.

“These numbers of killings mean that Prinsloo’s work is, without doubt, the deadliest single crime to have been committed in post-apartheid South Africa,” writes Mark Shaw in his fascinating and horrifying book, Give us more guns.

Shaw details how Prinsloo was arrested in 2015 thanks to the tenacious work of Cape Town cop Jeremy Veary and Pieter Jacobs, but also explains that Prinsloo, as heinous as his individual actions were, is but an indication of the rot that has suppurated within the South African Police Service.

Prinsloo and the Cape gangs may be the

most pertinent and audacious element of the story, but the view of the lawless and violent minibus taxi industry in KZN is perhaps even more frightening. It is such a nexus of corruption between politicians, police, and taxi bosses that even the fearless determination of Veary and Jacobs hit a brick wall. How many guns Prinsloo shipped to fuel KZN’s taxi wars was never determined.

And while Prinsloo may have individually shipped the largest number of guns out of the police armoury, and is singular in that he

was the one person trusted to ensure their destruction – including those guns trustingly handed in by citizens for destruction during the post-apartheid amnesties – the leak of guns from police to criminals is longstanding and continuous, not including the supply of weapons by the state to the IFP for use against the ANC prior to our first democratic election.

To the extent that the weapon of choice among cash-in-transit heist gangs is no longer the AK47, but R4 and R5 assault rifles used

by the police and SANDF. In dry but often compelling prose, which also connects the dots numerous news stories have set out, Shaw provides incontrovertible evidence of how the state institution meant to protect citizens, is the very source of weapons used to murder them.

This is not an uplifting book, but it is an essential read. More so because its very existence should have the power to topple a government, if they cared a jot.

while tantalising your senses with almond, coriander, coconut, lime and myrrh. This is a glass you’ll want to savour, slowly.

Beyond the bubblies which Steenberg have mastered, there’s the Black Swan which is Sauvignon blanc hand harvested from the farm’s oldest vines and adds a soft, elegant herbaceousness to the characteristic grassy flintiness of the grape. And the Semillon, of which we had a 2017 vintage, had notes of honey and apricot, and a silky smoothness brought about by spending 21 months in French oak. Then there are the superb reds in

their range which are highly recommended.

Wine

Fruit from the southern slopes Our wine columnist Sadé Allcock is relocating to Jozi to manage a boutique hotel in Houghton, but don’t worry, this is a brief hiatus, she’ll be back to fill you in on the best plonk to purchase as our world renowned Cape wines are available in the big smoke.

In the meantime, while she’s waltzing along Jozi’s welcome mat, we scored a wine tasting invitation from Steenberg and trundled along for a treat.

Seated on a comfy couch before a coffee table and roaring glass-fronted fire, we were given the royal treatment with a champagne tasting as well as the full flagship range of whites and red, with even a rosè thrown in.

Steenberg, having been established by the legendary Catharina Ras in 1682, has some of the oldest sauvignon blanc vines in the country which, being situated on the cooler east-facing lower slopes of the mountain which become shadowed relatively early in the afternoon, produces all the characteristic sharp grassy notes celebrated in a sauvignon blanc. Turn this into a sparkling wine, as

they’ve been doing for three years with the Steenberg Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, and you get the racy herbal undertones with tropical notes of litchi and guava bursting over it. The contrast may sound strange but it’s much like a kiwifruit, a deliciously tart tropical taste. This is a sparkling wine for all palates.

With its shady slopes, Steenberg is able to grow pinot noir, and has cultivated one hectare of the varietal, producing 1,000 bottles of Pinot Noir Cap Classique that has won awards for good reason, layering the palate with a range of tastes from cherry to toasted brioche. It is a sparkling wine for connoisseurs, but it’s the Lady R Cap Classique, named after the farm’s original matriarch, that is the pinnacle of the range.

The Lady R has almost unfathomable layers on the palate, with an aroma you’d want to dab on your lover’s throat. There is nothing gauche about this sparkling wine, it seems to vibrate with sophistication, combining creaminess and acidity in your mouth

Alcohol only for people over the age of 18, do not drink and drive.

Excepting for some of the sparkling wines such as the Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc being competitive (for a top-notch bubbly) at R145, pretty much everything else was on the pricier end of the spectrum. The Lady R goes for R540 but she is a beauty. The Semillon, as part of the flagship range, goes for R230 and the Black Swan for R240. Wine tastings range from R80 per person for the Express tasting, to R200 per person for the Flagship tasting.

Worth saving for, though.

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New mayco member at the wheel for transport Steve Kretzmann When City of Cape Town Speaker Felicity Purchase congratulated Councilor Roberto Quintas on being appointed as the new mayoral committee member for transport during the full council meeting of 19 August, she commented that he has big shoes to fill.

Whose shoes she was referring to was unclear. Purchase was the previous mayco member for transport until she was appointed speaker in May, so the comment may be viewed as self aggrandising. Perhaps she was referring to Quintas stepping into Executive Mayor Dan Plato’s shoes, as he has been acting mayco member for transport in the intervening three months but whose hand at the wheel seemed conspicuously absent during last month’s transport crisis. She could have been referring to her predecessor in the directorate, Brett Herron, who served as transport mayco member under former mayor Patricia de Lille for seven years until his resignation in November 2018. But seeing as Herron is now a member of De Lille’s new party, GOOD, and the mayoral candidate for the upcoming elections, it is unlikely Purchase was referring to him.

Whatever the inspiration for Purchase’s strange comment, being political head of Cape Town’s transport directorate is undeniably one of the most challenging political positions in the City. Ironically, it is also the one with the least power over public transport. The City is in charge of the MyCiTi service, but it has little to no control over the biggest public transport entities, being the minibus taxi industry, Metrorail, and the Golden Arrow bus service. Yet the city’s very economy is dependent on their smooth and continued functioning in order to transport workers across the diabolic apartheid spatial divides that bedevils our city. With rail having deteriorated to a fraction of its former and potential capacity, as much as 70%¹ of the approximately 35% of Capetonians² using public transport to get to work have to rely on minibus taxis. As last month’s violence revealed, it is not a reliable or safe commuting option.

Which is why Quintas says he will continue to push for the municipality to take over the running of Metrorail’s essential, albeit highly deteriorated, service.

A business plan to this effect was developed under Herron, but a full feasibility study pegged at R71m has recently been stymied by Treasury.

Quintas explains that Treasury’s preliminary finding that paying for a study on a service that does not fall under the City’s constitutional mandate, would be flagged as irregular expenditure. Nonetheless, he says “the conversation about devolving that service to a provincial or local authority is extremely important, so I don’t believe it is one that we’re going to give up on necessarily.”

“The space for possibly moving forward is there, it’s finding the legal and prescribed manner to do so that is where we are currently and it’s certainly something I’d like us to pursue within the ambit of compliance.”

The ultimate aim, mooted under Herron, was to link the rail, bus, MyCiTi, and even the minibus taxi services to a single ticketing system so that commuters could use one card, such as the MyCiTi MyConnect card,

• Roberto Quintas is the new mayoral committee member for transport in the City of Cape Town, we interviewed him as he gets into the hot seat.

for all public transport services.

Asked whether he would build on the foundation laid by his predecessors (Herron, essentially), Quintas was ambiguous, saying: “I think we go back to basics as much as possible.”

However, he added that the directorate would “continue with building what we need to do in terms of finding that partnership working with national government and province, so ultimately it is a working model.

We’ll have to find out what we can and can’t do with an aim to supplementing, assisting, taking over.”

The aim, he says, is for Cape Town commuters to be “spoilt for choice, in terms of how they choose to get to work, or get to play.” An integrated system with a variety of options would mean shocks such as last month’s commuter crisis brought on by taxi violence, or something like a rail failure, would be cushioned.

Quintas agrees that the legacy of apartheid spatial planning that has workers travelling scores of kilometres to get to and from work, is a significant contributor to Cape Town’s transport woes. Dealing with this problem requires working closely

with other directorates such as spatial planning and environment, and human settlements. Quintas believes industry and commerce should be developed within or near communities which need it the most.

Creating jobs where jobs are needed not only reduces travel distance but also reduces the city’s carbon footprint.

Quintas lights up when it comes to carbon emission reduction and combating pollution.

As Hout Bay ward councillor he’s been very involved in combating pollution of the Disa River and he is “100 percent” committed to reducing pollution within the stormwater systems within his new directorate’s control, and keeping retention ponds clean. For this he has to work closely with the water and waste department but he’s careful to point out that residents also have to stop using stormwater drains as garbage disposal or as illegal sewage conduits.

He also wants to play his part in bringing the city’s carbon emissions down in line with global best practice as spelt out in the Council of Parties (COP) Convention. At the same time, he hedges that Cape Town is situated in a developing (exploited) country so may not be able to meet developed

(exploitative) country emission targets.

“It is not always easy to meet that middle ground but I certainly hope that we can exceed the middle ground at the very least.”

Significantly reducing carbon emissions and establishing safe, reliable, efficient, and sustainable public transport options and reducing private vehicle use requires vision, persistence, and years of effort, but the near-term priority for Quintas is getting the MyCiTi N2 Express route back on track.

Out of operation since a dispute among the route’s taxi industry shareholders when their contracts ended in the first half of 2019, he believes it can be operating again within the first quarter of next year.

He said “meaningful strides have been made” prior to his taking office and he believes “we are at a point where we are ready to sit around a table and take the necessary meaningful steps that we need to have this service back online.”

“It is my greatest wish and hope to see that commuters from those communities in Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha have access to the CBD and surrounds via the MyCiti network on the N2 Express from the beginning of next year.”

Breaking the echo chamber in the city bowl and beyond

Our artists need us, and, honestly, we need them more. They are capable of doing something else to survive if needs be, but we aren’t capable of distilling our society through a creative lens and communicating our shared humanity like they can. So quit fighting about bullshit, get inoculated, and go to the theatre or exhibition or music gig. Ok? Ok!

Theatre One of our most precious gems, Jennie Reznek, has written another play, called Snapped, which is to be staged at the Baxter Theatre from 16 September to 2 October. This is wonderful news and the first chance at watching live theatre in 18 months. We’re starving here, and Reznek, directed by her brilliant husband Mark Fleishman, is about to give us a banquet. The blurb on the Baxter site is intriguing: the play involves an unknown WWII stretcher bearer from the Cape Corps stuck in a grave in Italy, and a woman stuck in grief for her father. There’s elements of Dante’s Inferno and the journey into hell as evinced by WWII, which starts to make sense in relation to it being a companion piece to Reznek’s 2015 work, I

FREE COPY

31 AUGUST, 2021

Film You may be familiar with the phrases ‘white monopoly capital’ and ‘radical economic transformation’ which started doing the rounds amidst heated racially charged social media wars that spilled onto the streets in violent protests. This was circa 2015/16 along with #FeesMustFall and a backing track of Zuma chuckling. A lot of that, particularly the ‘white monopoly capital’ bit, was dreamt up by an amoral, if not immoral, British public relations firm called Bell Pottinger. The same public relations firm that was behind Maggie Thatcher winning three elections for the Tories in England and getting the bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s chosen successor to take the reins in that country. Their real business is not public relations, its disinformation for whoever pays the bills. This disturbing manipulation and control of what are supposed to be democratic processes is exposed in the masterfully shot documentary Influence. While the film is likely to destroy any hope for humanity you may have still harboured against all odds, the good news is that we here in SA didn’t take Bell Pottinger’s shit. It was us – more specifically former DA MP Phumzile van Damme – who took them down.

The doccie is free to view at www.influence.film.

turned away and she was gone, which delved into the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades and a mother’s grief at losing her daughter. Clearly this is a layered work and it is bound to be beautiful. Tickets are R150, book through baxter.co.za.

The four winning productions from the Baxter’s Zabalaza Festival, will be showcased in the Baxter’s Golden Arrow Studio from 7 to 18 September. Watch Heads or Tail(s)?, Thank You for Your Service, Blood on the Road, or Ganga Nyoko! Inzima nyoko! Or all four of them and witness the best emerging theatre talent in our city. There are double bills for R85 and single shows for R45. Book through baxter.co.za.

The Baxter is where it’s at for live shows in deadly times (but no fear there are strict measures to ensure you stay on the live side). Ever thought about Berlin in the ‘30s? Well the best antidote is cabaret, and there are four such shows in a little cabaret season running from 22 September to 9 October, brought to us from East London after garnering awards from the National Arts Festival Fringe.

There’s Mad about the Boys which is much as it sounds, like Cole Porter and whatnot, in which you will see the urbane Daniel Anderson provide what the Daily Dispatch called “sheer entertainment” which “might be just what we all need right now” from 22 – 25 September, and 9 October.

Alison Hillstead, fresh from winning an ovation award at the National Arts Festival, performs as a librarian in DAMSELL IN DISTRESS, and so enters a plot to journey through the heyday shows of New York and Berlin from 24 to 29 September.

Another ovation award winner, A Star is Born gives us Kerry Hiles who has “a smile that lights up the room and a gorgeous singing voice” according to critic Keith Millar, giving us Judy Garland. Hiles may well have you in the palm of her hand from 30 September to 2 October.

Kerry also promises to hold you spellbound in The Story of Eva Cassidy who, if you are unfamiliar, died of cancer aged 33 but only became famous four years after her death when some dozy doos at the record company woke up to just how beautifully delicate her countrytinges voice was. You’ll have to wait until next month for this one, it’s on from 6 – 8 October.

Kerry also promises to hold you spellbound in The Story of Eva Cassidy who, if you are unfamiliar, died of cancer aged 33 but only became famous four years after her death when some dozy doos at the record company woke up to just how beautifully delicate her countrytinges voice was. You’ll have to wait until next month for this one, it’s on from 6 – 8 October.

All the shows are directed by Amanda Bothma, who also had a hand in writing them.

Exhibitions Everybody knows about District Six, but the story less told is the apartheid state’s equally traumatic forced removal of coloured families from places such as Simonstown and Constantia. This is where the Constantia heritage and education project comes in.

They normally host a popular annual heritage walk every year to make people aware that Constantia wasn’t always a larny enclave. The walk wasn’t possible last year due to lockdown and this year they’re hosting an exhibition, Hidden Rivers, which tells the little-known story of ‘Konstansie’. It is in collaboration with Iziko Museum, Christ Church Constantia, Centre for Curating the Archive, and photographer Kent Andreasen. It opens on 1 September for the month at Groot Constantia.

When it comes to series and whatnot, we can recommend Watchmen on Showmax, a thrilling and fantastical take on the graphic novel series which uses the Tulsa massacre of 1931 to drive its terrific plot. Although made shortly before Covid, it could not be more timely. It also has a refreshingly diverse cast with sympathetic black protagonists, which are not as easy to find as you might think. One season with episodes of about an hour each, it stars Regina King and Jeremy Irons.

Although all white, The Kominsky Method on Netflix features great acting by Michael Douglas as an aging and somewhat renowned acting teacher. It is funny and endearing and surprisingly philosophical, just ignore the weird writing glitch of the first episode of the second season. Alongside Douglas is Alan Arkin and Kathleen Turner. Three seasons with episodes about 30mins long.

Literature For an engaging and funny and insightful conversation between writers Rémy Ngamije from Windhoek and Adam Smyer from Oakland in California, go to https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wqLOSDWqtMQ or search their names along with tatteredcover, the bookshop that hosted the event. This is especially recommended if you are desperate for some intelligence in your life.