WARNING: May contain strong language
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31 MAY TO 24 JUNE, 2021
Breaking the echo chamber in the city bowl and beyond.
Trying to engage
Putting in the work... Shayne Taliona is one of a group of people trying to engage the City in creative solutions to develop a plot of land in Observatory, but have instead been shunned and taken to court.
City chooses to evict Observatory arts collective rather than engage with their proposal to lease municipal land. Steve Kretzmann
Using a custom-made pedal-powered trailer, Shayne Taliona collects kitchen waste from a handful of coffee shops and restaurants in Observatory and cycles back to a parcel of municipal land situated between the Hartleyvale Stadium and the Observatory municipal swimming pool. On this site, which used to be leased by the South African National Circus School, he empties the containers of
their vegetable peels, fruit rinds, and coffee grinds which he will use to make compost to enrich the soil and grow vegetables. Using the only working water tap on the property, he then rinses and cleans the containers before returning them to the businesses. Taliona is one of about 30 people who now live on the property at 2 Willow Road, having divided rooms in the dilapidated circus school building. Calling themselves the Willow Arts Collective, they grow vegetables
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to feed themselves and contribute to surrounding Community Action Networks (CANs) which run soup kitchens to feed homeless and indigent people. Taliona has completed a permaculture course on organic farming and in summer runs free composting workshops every Saturday in which participants exchange labour for knowledge. The Willow Arts Collective was founded when the City kicked the circus school off the land in late 2018 after discovering the circus school
was violating its lease agreement by subletting the clubhouse to tenants. The tenants, including Taliona who used to pay R500 a week for a room in the clubhouse, formed the collective and drew up a proposal to lease the land from the City and use it to grow vegetables, host workshops, a craft and farmers market, and arts events.
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31 MAY TO 24 JUNE, 2021
From Page 1 Permanent residency was not part of the proposal. Rather, some people would stay on the property in a caretaker role, and to act as security. The proposal was endorsed by 16 community and non-profit organisations including the Development Action Group, Open Streets Cape Town, and the Woodstock Residents’ Association. But rather than working with the collective to create a working relationship and upgrade the premises and benefit the broader community, City authorities decided to approach the Magistrate’s Court for an eviction order, with the original application filed in September 2019. Since then, the number of people seeking refuge on the land has doubled, partly due to the collective being unable to formalise their tenancy. City contradicts itself In a press release of 12 August 2020, City mayco member for community services and health, Zahid Badroodien, stated the land “is located next to the Liesbeeck River and because it is situated within a floodplain it is not suitable for residential purposes, and it would be irresponsible of the City to condone the building of homes on this site”. However, the City in March this year gave the final go-ahead for a highly contested R4.5bn residential, retail, and office development at the River Club across the road from the land occupied by the Willow Arts Collective. Not only is the River Club site in the same flood plain, it is in an even more compromising position as it is closer to the Liesbeek and Black Rivers. Argument in front of the court Jared Sacks, who has been providing paralegal assistance to attorney Tim Dunn and advocates Zeynab Titus and Zia Haffejee who are representing the Willow Arts Collective pro bono, said there have been “about ten or 11” court proceedings since then. The latest was on Wednesday 26 May when the Willow Arts Collective sought to strike the Housing Report the City is using in its eviction proceedings. Sacks explained that the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act requires the City to survey the tenants to obtain details of their personal circumstances, and to engage with them to find alternatives to eviction, or determine how to minimise the impact on their lives should they be evicted. The details of the tenants’ personal circumstances and alternative housing options should eviction cause them to become homeless, would be contained in a housing report, which should be put before the court in the City’s founding affidavit. However, in this case the City submitted the Housing Report with its replying affidavit. Appearing before Magistrate Reaz Khan on behalf of the Willow Arts Collective respondents, advocates Titus and Haffejee argued it is required that the founding papers (those initially put before court) should contain the facts and the argument upon which the court will decide, and that was where the City should have introduced their housing report. “Unaccompanied by a comprehensive housing report, the allegation contained in the City’s founding papers that an eviction order would be just and equitable in the circumstances stands bald, unsubstantiated and thus inadequate,” state Titus and Haffejee. They further cite judgements which state an applicant may not bring new material to court in replying affidavits, except in exceptional circumstances,
Fruit of the land... Shayne Taliona, an occupant of 2 Willow Road in Observatory, harvests butternut from the vegetable garden he has been instrumental in establishing.
which do not apply here. Additionally, Titus and Haffejee argued the information in the housing report was obtained by City officials who visited the property on 22 March 2018 but did not tell the residents why they were gathering information and “teetered on deception”. Information was obtained from only four residents and the information was “of little substance”. The advocates argued the residents could have challenged the deficiencies in the housing report if it had been submitted in the founding affidavit, but would not have a chance to do so if they were admitted in the City’s replying affidavit. Additionally, they argued that because they City had not conducted a proper survey, it was possible the City’s housing report relied on supporting affidavits presented to the court by residents proving their precarious living situations. They had done so because the City had not provided this information. The possibility the City was using this information to compile its own report was “untenable”. In papers littered with spelling errors, the City argued the housing report is only required if the eviction application is contested – which it seems they did not expect it to be – and that the court could provide the Willow Arts Collective the opportunity to respond to the contents of the Housing Report. The City also contends the members of the Willow Arts Collective did not engage with the City attorneys when they tried to get information on their personal circumstances before launching the main eviction application. The City states it believes its eviction application would have been successful if it had not been challenged. Magistrate Khan said he would announce his decision on the housing report on June 28. Sacks said the City knows the required legal process for evictions and it seemed they thought they “could get away with a quick eviction here” as they thought the Willow Arts Collective would not have proper legal representation. Lack of engagement Glynnis Bentham, who is an activist for
Making soil... Using a custom pedal-powered trailer donated by Nourished in Observatory, Shayne Taliona, who is a member of the Willow Arts Collective, collects kitchen waste from a handful of restaurants and coffee shops in the suburb and turns it into compost. Nourished, Ground Zero, Ferdinando’s Pizza and others pay Taliona to cart their organic waste away, saving it from being added to the City’s landfill. Although this works in the City’s favour, as they are running out of landfill space, they have failed to engage with the Willow Arts Collective despite the courts having ordered them to do so.
Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce and one of the original 12 people who sublet a room from the South African National Circus School and found themselves becoming illegal occupiers when the City annulled the circus school’ lease, said after the City approached the court for an eviction order, they were in March last year ordered to engage with the residents. However, Bentham said she and fellow residents had had only one interaction with City officials. “They said they found a place for us in Kampies (Philippi). We went there and looked around but said we can’t live here,” said Bentham, describing the interaction. Taliona, who worked as a banker in Zimbabwe until his home country’s economy crashed, said the City had come once before that to survey who was on the property, but since court proceedings began, the only engagement was to show them Kampies. “It’s a squatter camp. I’d rather be
on the streets than in Kampies,” said Taliona. He said despite the court order, the City had not initiated any engagement and had ignored invitations to do so from the Willow Arts Collective. There was one meeting eventually arranged, he said, but the City officials cancelled just two hours beforehand. The Willow Arts Collective’s 23-page proposal to lease and upgrade the property had also been ignored, he said. He said the inability to set up a proper structure meant it was difficult to ensure those on the property contributed to the garden and communal maintenance, with the result that most of the work was done by four or five people. In its response to questions posed by Mother City News, the City Media Office stated: “The matter is before the court and the City of Cape Town is guided by the court proceedings and outcomes, and therefore cannot comment on the allegations.”
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River Club opposition attacked UCT comes out in support of Professor leading civic opposition against Amazon’s new African headquarters Professor Leslie London, seen here wearing purple mask, with a group of civic and traditional leaders opposing the R4,5bn River Club development, was attacked in a defamatory email which appeared to have been distributed by the First Nation’s Collective which supports the development.
Steve Kretzmann A slanderous attack on a professor by Khoi supporters of the controversial River Club development has resulted in the University of Cape Town issuing a statement attesting to his integrity and supporting his freedom to be involved in civic action in the interests of social justice. The statement of support issued by UCT and the Faculty of Health Sciences on Thursday 27 May came after Professor Leslie London, who is the chair of the Observatory Civic Association, was targeted in an email apparently distributed by the First Nations Collective which support the R4,5bn complex to be built on the River Club site at the confluence of the Liesbeek and Black River in Observatory. The River Club development is to include Amazon’s new African headquarters. The Observatory Civic Association has stood with a number of other civic organisations and Khoi traditional houses and leadership structures in opposition to the River Club development, which is to be built on an environmentally sensitive floodplain. The River Club is also a site of original dispossession of land by the Dutch settlers and is sacred to the Khoi and San nations. However, a number of Khoi leaders have
in the last 18 months coalesced as the First Nations Collective and come out in support of the development. The land owner and developer has altered the plans to include a first nations media centre, indigenous garden, symbols and road names within the precinct memorialising Khoi heritage. The email from firstnationscollective@ gmail.com, was sent on 15 May to at least 37 of London’s academic colleagues, including colleagues in the United Kingdom, Stellenbosch University and the University of Kwazulu-Natal. The email, which broadcast his cellphone number and home address, accused London of “usurping indigenous First Nations narratives for his own personal, racist and egotistical agendas and vendettas”. The unsigned email states London “continues with his white colonial ways of wanting to determine for the descendants of the Khoi and San what is best for them”. It then went on to “demand” UCT suspend him from his position as head of public health medicine in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine, and investigate his activities related to the River Club. The First Nation Collective have not denied they initiated the email, nor have they distanced themselves from it. The School of Public Health and Family
Medicine responded on 24 May, stating that while London’s activities with the Observatory Civic Association were not linked to the university, London had the school’s “full support”. “No element of Professor London’s activities with the OCA related to the River Club development have involved unprofessional conduct in any manner whatsoever,” stated the school. It went on to state they were also “deeply concerned about any practice of anonymous, broadcast emails being sent to attack an academic (or any citizen) without substantiation”. London was also supported by the A|XARRA Restorative Justice Forum together with the Khoi and San Kingdom Council of Southern Africa, the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Traditional and Indigenous Council, the Cochoqua Royal Council, the Kai Korana Transfrontier, the !Aman Royal Council, First Indigenous Nation of Southern Africa, Democratic Federation of Indigenous People of South Africa, !khoraIIgauIIaes Council and Khowese NamaTraditional Council. Developer forges ahead while City contradicts itself Following the City of Cape Town tribunal in
April dismissing an appeal against its decision to grant rezoning of the land and departures from city spatial development frameworks, the land owner and developer – Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust – announced they would be putting their plans into action in mid-June. This is despite the City’s own Environmental Management Department objecting to the development which entails filling in a floodplain. The provincial Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning also granted a required Environmental Authorisation in September last year despite the Heritage Impact Assessment not being accepted by Heritage Western Cape. While allowing an office, retail, and residential complex to be built on a floodplain, the City of Cape Town has stated it needs to evict the Willow Arts Collective from a parcel of municipal land a few hundered metres from the River Club, because the land is on a floodplain and thus unsuitable for habitation. Similarly, the City has rejected calls from housing activists to build affordable housing on land they lease to the Rondebosch Golf Club, because much of the land is a floodplain.
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Festival: annual heart of the arts keeps beating Steve Kretzmann In a time of pandemic uncertainty and altered realities, the National Arts Festival is forging ahead and re-establishing the arts where it needs to be: front and centre and live before our eyes. The riotous celebration of creative expression in the City of Saints has not skipped an annual heartbeat since its 1974 beginnings. Covid’s 2020 surprise put the brakes on the physical pilgrimage but the festival just reinvented itself (thanks to the incredible work of the NAF team) and delivered itself into our homes. Even as Cyril Ramaphosa announces a cautionary step back to lockdown level II, the multi-dimensional creative South African outburst which has spread its influence across the world is preparing to welcome artists and audiences back to Makhanda, the old Grahamstown. This year, the Festival’s 47th, will offer a unique composite of events, a culmination of the years of cultural exploration and artistic adventure. The new National Arts Festival Experience will have three parts: Makhanda Live from 8-18 July, Standard Bank Presents from 17 June-4 July, and National Arts Festival Online for the month of July. Festival CEO Monica Newton says they are offering a strong programme of theatre, dance, music, visual art, film, comedy, street theatre, crafts, exhibitions, and newly emerging hybrid art forms. In announcing the new Festival strategy, Newton said the pandemic had created travel restraint which the Festival had countered by partnering with Standard Bank SA to present work in other SA cities. “Our new showcase, Standard Bank Presents, will give people a taste of the National Arts Festival and a window into what our artists are thinking and doing. As we
Live performance magic... Elton Landrews and Iman Isaacs create new worlds in Amy Jephta’s play All Who Pass performed at the National Arts Festival before Covid sent us scuttling into our shells.
adapt to our ever-shifting Covid reality, we need to try new things and imagine new ways for the arts to speak to audiences. “This was founded on the realisation that some audiences may not be willing or able to travel far and that many artists would struggle to afford the costs of travel to Makhanda as a result of the impact of the pandemic. As we adapt to our ever-shifting Covid reality, we need to try new things and imagine new ways for the arts to speak to audiences.” She said the live festival in Makhanda would be “tighter, more intimate”, and have
to “work very carefully around the Covid protocols”. But it would be “an opportunity to feel the pulse of a Covid-impacted arts world and to hear artists speak from live stages”. Audiences are invited to come and share this moment. In 2020, the NAF successfully transitioned into an online festival drawing a global audience of over 83,000 visitors and breaking new ground for the South African arts sector. “Online experiences are here to stay and we are excited about further integrating this
element into our offering,” says Newton. She said: “The gathering of artists is an important catalyst to reignite the industry and the Festival remains committed to presenting the best and safest possible space for artists and audiences to come together, experience and appreciate the arts.
2012 shiraz is supposed to be a magnificent wine with a rating of 4.0 out of 5 on the Vivino wine app. It is a bold, dry red with the spicy aromas of peppercorns and cloves that the name alludes to. Sadly, while it was doubtless enjoyable, it did not deliver to the standard that was promised. It is sold out and therefore cannot be purchased, but if you do come across a bottle, I hope you are more wowed than I was. Lastly, the Villiera Merlot 2018. This is a very pleasant and easy drinking wine that I
would certainly repurchase, especially given it was only R85 from Woolworths. Vibrant red in the glass with a slightly smoky taste and notes of vanilla on the palate. You might also recognise hints of cherries or plums and tobacco, which is typical of a Merlot. Honestly, it is hard to find a fault at this price, and I suggest you get out there and buy it for yourself. I hope my anecdotes help on your next trip to the bottle store and in the meantime stay inside and try to stay warm.
Those dates again: Standard Bank Presents in Cape Town 19-20 June Makhanda Live 8-18 July Online National Arts Festival 1-31 July
Wine
Winter reds to help keep out the cold Sadé Allcock I’m huddled on the couch on a freezing morning at the end of May, with Roland Garros on the television. The beautiful sunny weather at the beginning of the French summer is taunting me while I attempt to insulate against the cold. My task for the morning is to put together a wine column. Usually this is a quick and easy feat. I scroll through my notes, select my favourite wines from the last month, do a little write up and have done with it. But this last month the wine pickings have been slim. I simply haven’t mustered the courage to face the chill and get to the bottle store. And so, I find myself procrastinating by watching the tennis and trying to keep warm. However, since this is a
wine column and I have to at least mention wine, I might as well share those that weren’t all bad. Blake’s Family Wines are a boutique winery situated in the Swartland region of the Western Cape. Their grapes are sourced from selected vineyards across the Swartland and processed by winemaker Andries Blake. I sampled the Blake’s Family Wine Malbec 2018. This is a medium bodied wine with good mouth feel. The aromas and flavours were overwhelmingly of red fruits, particularly plums. While not particularly special, I would repurchase this as an easy drinking cold weather wine. I have also recently tried the Catchpole & Co. Tresor Epice 2012. I had never heard of this label before, but I discovered that it is produced and bottled in Stellenbosch. This
31 MAY TO 24 JUNE, 2021
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Book review
We are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins Conspiracy theorists have at least two positive qualities: They are sceptical of authority, and they are willing to challenge the status quo. Unfortunately they stop there and don’t apply the same scepticism to the information that affirms their world view. Information is not subjected to rigorous analysis and instead they revert to lazily accepting generalised theories that often emerge from highly compromised sources. To move from conspiracy theory to informed knowledge requires effort, and the ability to acknowledge that until we are able to gather the facts, and check them, we simply do not know. Living with ambiguity requires intellectual flexibility, which again, is hard work. We Are Bellingcat makes this clear without having to draw such distinctions. The story of how this fact-checking site came into being, and how it developed into a publication that has exposed the lies and
disinformation peddled by state authorities, reveals just how important it is to apply detailed analysis to every single claimed fact in order to build a watertight case. The book by Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins is a masterclass in fact checking and the use of free digital tools. While the internet has enabled state (and corporate) authorities to spread disinformation around the world at the speed of light, it also provides the tools for any concerned citizen to hold them up to the light. Having its genesis in Higgins’s desire to understand the Libyan civil war that erupted following the Arab Spring, he found himself threading through the disinformation peddled by propagandists on both sides. In doing so he refined the use of free tools such as Google Earth, reverse image searching, weather recording apps, and the like in order to ascertain what was really happening in social media photos and
videos broadcast by keyboard warriors. Joined by online volunteers equally obsessed with discovering the truth, Bellingcat is now an organisation that pulls the wool from our eyes. It’s dedication to proving, in exhaustive detail, what actually happened in conflicts such as Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and incidents such as the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 in January last year, is astounding. Using nothing but freely available tools on the internet, rigour, creative thinking, and an unsatiable desire for the truth, they have embarrassed states and secret services around the world. This is not only a fascinating story, it is a must-read for anyone who wants to try understand modern geo-politics and journalism in the internet age.
Foreign Native by RW Johnson Another memoir about a white man’s adventures in Africa is the last thing we need, and the title, Foreign Native, doesn’t do it any favours in a post Rhodes Must Fall world. But despite all the warning signs of a barely veiled white liberal nostalgia for an Africa that never was, or never should have been, RW Johnson surprises. A libertarian, yes, but keenly honed and refreshingly without sentiment. He was both an observer of, and participant in, elements of the liberation movement during the dying years of apartheid, and the celebratory early years of South Africa’s new democracy. He tells
first hand tales of characters such as Ronnie Kasrils, offhandedly providing anecdotes that reveal just how crooked the ANC was even then, as well as of incredible and almost forgotten people such as Rowley Arenstein, who at 33 years suffered the longest banning of any South African by the apartheid goons. There is also passages of his friendship with Rob Amato, who spent his family’s wealth on his love and support for theatre and comes across a bit like the character Toad of Toad Hall in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Albeit white and British, his observations
of South Africa are astute, with his position
She Would be King by Wayétu Moore
Luster by Raven Leilani
The Abstainer by Ian Mcguire
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
If you’ve read it, you know, and if you haven’t, well, yes, it is that good. An unflinchingly honest portrayal of the grinding exhaustion of trying to survive in a society constructed to harm you should not be this enjoyable and effortless to read, but there you have it. This is one of those rare cases where no explicit gay is just the right amount of gay.
Written by the author of The North Water, which I loved, this mostly takes place in amongst the Irish revolts in Manchester in the 1860s - but is ultimately not really about that. An Irish policeman has been hired to investigate the Irish rebels, but they, in turn have brought in an American soldier to get rid of spies. The book is the story of their struggle against one another, and the many demons they carry from their past. It’s Gangs of New York meets Retribution Road with a bit of Cormac McCarthy thrown in. I enjoyed it very much, but found the ending a bit of a curve ball.
This is an absolute delight. It is set in a retirement home, around a group of septegenarians who try to solve cold case crimes, and are unreasonably chuffed when a real murder takes place nearby. As expected, they set about trying to solve it. Funny, cheeky and thrilling, this is Agatha Christie on steroids, with wonderfully written characters. Great fun.
An entertaining action adventure tale of redemption and liberation, as well as a fascinating insight into the unique history of Liberia. Rather than getting too bogged down in the black vs white aspect of settlercolonialism, the setting allows the narrative to focus instead on the tension between different iterations of “African-ness” across the diaspora. The three main characters’ supernatural abilities not only serve a clear narrative purpose, but function as deceptively insightful allegories for each character’s specific iteration of “blackness”. On the con side, the end felt somehow both abrupt and drawn out (can’t explain it) and the book could have definitely used more gay, but I enjoyed it anyway.
straddling academia, journalism, and advocacy providing him unique access to a plethora of individuals who played significant roles in our country’s journey into the new millennium. He also has the grace to rarely write about himself, writing instead about people in his life, but without ever stooping to gossip. Revelations, perhaps, gossip, no. Rather than going tabloid, he provides a well-informed anecdotal view of politics and personalities in this complex country, running the gauntlet of decades with pace and wit.
Short reviews by staff at The Book Lounge, the best indi bookstore in CapeTown
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31 MAY TO 24 JUNE, 2021
31 MAY TO 24 JUNE, 2021
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City of Cape Town slammed for asking public for complaints against homeless people Counter campaign to City’s appeal launched by activists Marecia Damons and James Stent
Housing activist organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) has condemned the City of Cape Town for attempting to compile complaints from the public against people experiencing homeless. A document that recently surfaced on social platforms, urges members of the public to “add their voice” about how homeless people (“street people” in the document) impact them, and to send these to JP Smith, Mayco Member for Safety and Security. City councillors that have shared the form include Elizabeth Brunette (DA, Ward 62, which includes Constantia, Bishopscourt, Fernwood, Wynberg west, and Plumstead west) via a mass email, as well as Brandon Golding (DA, Ward 77, which includes a number of City Bowl and adjacent suburbs) and Nicola Jowell (DA, Ward 54, which includes Sea Point and Camps Bay) in Facebook posts. Golding and Jowell later removed their Facebook posts calling for submissions. People are asked to provide information on when and where they first saw “street people” and what happened when they had encountered them. Examples suggested include “urinating in public road, robbing people, increase in crime, effect on customers, damage caused to infrastructure etc”. But this call for comments has provoked a backlash, with members of the public making protest submissions counter to the intentions of the call. One organisation, the Strandfontein Homeless Action Committee (SHAC), a Cape Town group that advocates for the rights of homeless people, have created a parallel submission. This document, also available in Afrikaans and isiXhosa, asks street-based Capetonians to document their experiences with City officials. The examples that SHAC provides include, “I / my neighbour was displaced by Law Enforcement Officers, CID employees, Private Security and my / their personal belongings (money, ID, medication, personal belongings, tent / dwelling material) were seized”. The SHAC is asking that people submit these accounts to the City, and to copy the SHAC, at homelessactioncommitteecpt@gmail. com. Carlos Mesquita, a founder of SHAC, told GroundUp that the SHAC was “shocked by this attempt by the City to further criminalise and isolate homeless people and their needs”, and noted that there is no “possibility for positive feedback and experienced or even for just the homeless to respond”. “Our version of the document serves to give civil society a more humane way to respond, and show how wrong and abusive the document issued by the City is. We urge all homeless and homed people in Cape Town in the next two days to flood their email address with responses to our document and show their revulsion at the City’s obvious anti-
Last year GroundUp photographed “Auntie Kar”, a car guard at the Buitenkant Street Fruit & Veg City. Nearly 60, she has spent her entire adult life on the street. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks
homeless stance,” said Mesquita. The City sent a short response to GroundUp’s questions about the document, saying that it “serves the whole of Cape Town and its constituents. The City is entitled to request information from all of its citizens in order to assess the effect of homeless street people on its broader population.” In response to the document, NU said, “This solicitation of complaints is tantamount to inciting hatred against those experiencing homelessness and will only exacerbate their vulnerability and marginalisation.” Earlier this year eleven homeless people in Cape Town went to court to have several municipal by-laws declared unconstitutional and discriminatory. On 31 March, applications were filed at the Western Cape High Court and at the Equality Court to challenge the by-laws on Streets, Public Places and the Prevention of Noise Nuisances (2007) and Integrated Waste Management (2009). The applicants are represented by the
Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre. In a previous statement, NU said the by-laws criminalise homelessness by making it a crime for people living on the street to conduct ordinary life-sustaining activities, like sleeping, camping, resting, bathing, erecting a shelter, keeping personal belongings in public, or even lying down, sitting or simply standing in a public place. The organisation cited the actions by the City to “criminalise homelessness” as a “cruel, inhumane and unsustainable response to addressing the challenges faced by those living on the streets”. “[T]reating those struggling with homelessness like criminals doesn’t address the root causes of homelessness, such as poverty, inadequate affordable housing, a lack of state assistance, mental health issues, substance abuse, and discrimination.” They said the City’s emphasis on law enforcement and punitive measures to deal with homelessness is also expensive and diverts money away from implementing more effective solutions.
A 2020 study by U-turn, Khulisa Streetscapes and MES estimated that more than R744 million a year is spent on homelessness. Ndifuna Ukwazi attorney Danielle Louw said they first saw the City’s document on Wednesday afternoon. “[T]hrough these questionnaires, the City is roping in the assistance of members of the public — who are housed — to formulate their answering papers in the Gelderbloem matters. By doing this, they are pitting these segments of society against one another.” Louw said the City needs to uphold its constitutional duty to represent the interests of everyone, particularly the most vulnerable. “It is a dangerous move which only stands to deepen the divide between those who are housed and those who are not,” said Louw. “The City appears locked in an approach that criminalises homelessness instead of working with those experiencing homelessness to find sustainable solutions.” - GroundUp
Breaking the echo chamber in the city bowl and beyond
Third wave, Level two. The Fugard is closed, shut, kaput, sign removed. The Bellville civic theatre has burnt down. Guga S’thebe theatre burnt down long ago. Alexander Upstairs Theatre is closed and the Kalk Bay Theatre which in the last few years only put on popular song-and-dance shows (although they have their place, too) has had to take up a dark corner in the downstairs section of the Brass Bell. Artscape exists in a little badly managed bubble of its own and The Baxter – god bless it – seems to be the only one forging a lonely path. That’s not to mention the live music venues that have died – like we had so many to begin with. Not! And what hope do we have that the municipality, the provincial government, or the three-ring circus that is the national state will do anything to help rebuild performing arts? Well, that’s easy: none. No hope whatsoever because they don’t have any idea how important arts are for the creative health of a society. How arts help people grieve, heal, and imagine new futures. And if they do have an idea, all they see is how the arts critiques power and destabilises autocracy, thus they will do what they can to crush it. Don’t let the bastards win. Blow what little embers are still glowing into roaring life by buying a ticket. Go see the shows being staged by amazing theatremakers at the Baxter, take that trip and travel to Makhanda next month and get a dose of what will be a unique National Arts Festival and if you can’t do that, buy tickets to watch the work that will be available online. Buy the digital albums from local artists instead of streaming it through Spotify. We need to support our artists and get them through this bloody awful pandemic. If we don’t, we may as well stay locked up in our homes forever, watching increasingly banal TV series streamed by megacorporates such as Amazon that simply bleed the world out until we achieve complete system failure and all die slow deaths while Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk jet to Mars to eke out their miserable lives in an off-world colony built by their slaves, sorry, employees.
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If you’d rather not be bothered by mediocre portraits in oils, you can wait a fortnight and head north-east into to the mountains for the one-day Tulbagh Winter Daze music festival on Saturday 19 June. It’s hosted by Bush Pub Tulbagh and has Ashly Hilton and the Stashband, and Blitzind on stage. There may be others. It’s on Van der Stel Street and entry costs R120.
Thrift Before going shopping this Saturday 5 June for warmer clothes, or soap, or veggies, or bread or anything really, go to the Obs-fficial thrift fest at the Obs community centre (cnr Collingwood and Rawson Roads). Buying second-hand clothes is way better for the environment than buying new, and its cheaper, and buying products from local artisans and small business is not only greener, it helps reduce inequality by circulating money rather than pushing it up to the planet-killing multi-national supermarket head honchos. Also, there’s real human interaction going on. Entrance is just R10 and R5 for kids.
Environment There’s a beach clean up at Muizenberg on Saturday 12 June, hosted by Knead Bakery and Adidas. It’s part of a global movement to clean up our shit and prevent the ocean becoming a plastic wasteland so this is a good first step. Of course we need to take the next step, which is dumping all the tons of plastic we pick up in the homes of CEOs of companies that spew out rubbish in the form of chip packets, cooldrink bottles, water bottles, clingwrap, etc, etc, etc. Can we throw the bags up over their larney garden walls with a note that says ‘here, we found your stuff and returned it. No need to thank us’? Because really, what those mega profitable companies playing on the global stock exchanges and avoiding paying their taxes are doing is externalising their costs to us. A beach cleanup is essentially us doing their job free of charge, and that includes Adidas. So, please do join the clean up but know what is actually going on, and let it make you angry. Angry enough to shove their plastic back in their faces.
Theatre Keep fingers crossed the third wave doesn’t sink the genuinely exciting productions on stage at The Baxter this month.
Director Lara Foot has collaborated with the Handspring Puppet Company to stage an adaptation of JM Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K. Although Waiting for the Barbarians is Coetzee’s best known book, Life and Times of Michael K is arguably his best book. And if you are familiar with its dystopian Cape Town setting, you’ll agree that it is disturbingly apt despite having been written as an allegory of an apartheid civil war in 1983. It will be showing at The Baxter at 7pm nightly from 7 to 19 June. Book through Webtickets on 086 111 0005, online at www.webtickets.co.za or at any Pick n Pay store. Tickets cost R250.
Director Sylvaine Strike has a knack for crafting really good theatre. Rarely do we find fault with the work she stages, and we are experts and fault finding. So Kiss of the Spiderwoman, despite its B-grade-style poster, has got us looking forward to something again. We’re just shivering with antici.....pation. It’s written by Manuel Puig, set in an Argentinian prison, and brings political intrigue into sharp focus. Given that we’ve been having a lot of that here lately, it’ll be interesting to see how it reflects our local ANC soap opera of double-crossing drama. See Kiss of the Spiderwoman at The Baxter from 5 to 19 June. Tickets cost R200 and can be obtained through Webtickets or at Pick n Pay stores.
Music Besides courageously hosting a live festival in Makhanda, or what used to be called Grahamstown, the National Arts Festival is also bringing some of the incredible jazz on the programme to our doorsteps. As part of the Standard Bank Presents programme, Mandisi Dyantyi and the Jitsvinger Trio are going to be playing separate gigs at 44 On Long on 19 and 20 June. Keep a lookout for the full National Arts Festival programme being released on 7 June to find out more. Just follow National Arts Festival on social or keep nationalartsfestival. co.za permanently tabbed on your browser. Arno Carstens is playing at Camel Rock in Scarborough on 5 June if you feel you need an excuse to head south. Unfortunately, he will also be exhibiting his paintings. Tickets cost R200 on Quicket, show starts at 4pm.
We buy vinyl. If you have inherited a crateful, or shifted to digital, we’ll exchange for cash. Call 083 348 4936. We’ll come to you.