Mother City News 30 July - 31 August 2021

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30 JULY, 2021

Holding power to account

Commuting crisis Patching holes in a broken system... As public transport all but ground to a halt on 19 July, commuters queued to board Golden Arrow buses along the N2 at the entrance to Nyanga as taxi violence made transport interchanges too dangerous for loading.

• The path to Cape Town’s teetering public transport is long foretold Steve Kretzmann and Peter Luhanga Reeling from the shocking scenes of unrest in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng, Cape Town experienced chaos of a different kind when the city’s teetering public transport system fell apart on the evening of 19 July.

Tens of thousands of commuters, desperate to get home after a day of work, were left stranded as ongoing taxi violence, in which 24 people were murdered in July alone, brought the minibus taxi industry to a halt. Combined with Golden Arrow running a skeleton service after buses were attacked and a driver shot in the face that

very morning, and Metrorail, already running at less than a quarter of their capacity, at 3.08pm announcing the temporary suspension of their southern and Cape Flats lines, 19 July became Cape Town’s public transport day zero.

Although Golden Arrow and Metrorail significantly increased their services, minibus taxi services remain disrupted, affecting people’s ability to get to work, to clinics, and to schools.

Speaking on Thursday 29 July, Cape Town High School deputy principal Liesl van

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Egeren said absenteeism was at 40% due to pupils from Cape Flats suburbs not being able to commute to school. The Matric class was particularly hard hit, said van Egeren.

Contracted or arranged taxi transport to the school was also affected by the continued fear of violence.

Seapoint High School secretary Jessica Fassie said they had an absenteeism rate of about 25% due to continued disruption of the minibus taxi industry, as many pupils travelled in from areas such as Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, and Philippi. “Even if they get here, they are late,” said Fassie.

This is despite provincial transport MEC Daylin Mitchell having closed the contested

Bellville – Paarl minibus taxi route which sparked the most recent violent conflict between the CATA and CODETA taxi organisations.

“The situation is dire,” says Khayelitsha Development Forum chairperson Ndithini Tyhido. He said workers are in danger of being fired for being continuously late to work, or having hourly wages docked despite their ability to get to work being beyond their control.

“Without a shred of doubt there are people who have lost their jobs,” said Tyhido. “They are heads of households.”

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From Page 1 “Hawkers at taxi ranks losing income, taxi drivers, even taxi owners, the entire value chain. The only people benefiting are the hitmen.”

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

Warning bells The almost complete public transport breakdown on 19 July and the continued vulnerability of the system was not just due to a series of unfortunate events. There is strong evidence of a lack of political leadership at all spheres of government, and failure to implement progressive public transport planning policy developed within the City of Cape Town.

And like Cape Town’s water day zero – which was averted thanks to water saving efforts by residents, along with the arrival of early winter rains – warnings of a pending disaster have been aired for at least a decade.

A diversity of safe and reliable public transport options are needed if reliance on private taxi operators to perform a public service underpinning the city economy is to be decreased. The City and provincial government recognise rail is a key factor in achieving this. In a press conference on 27 July, Premier Alan Winde stated rail “is the backbone of a transport system”. This has also been stated by Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato. Research consultant Gail Jennings points out rail is not subject to congestion on the roads during peak hours, can carry large numbers of people at once, is safe if managed properly, and has lower carbon emissions than buses, taxis, and cars.

However, Cape Town’s rail backbone is broken.

Former provincial transport minister Robin Carlisle penned an opinion piece in the Cape Argus almost exactly 11 years ago - 27 July 2010 - warning that lack of investment in Metrorail would lead to its collapse. This, said Carlisle, would “take the whole public transport system down with it”. He has been proved right. At the time, he stated Metrorail was carrying almost half of Cape Town’s commuters on less than 60% of the train sets it requires. “We need at least 40 additional train sets to provide decent passenger rail service,” he wrote.

Metrorail spokesperson Riana Scott says it currently operates 20 sets. This is half the number of additional train sets Carlisle deemed necessary 11 years ago.

Attempts to fix the City’s public transport backbone In late 2012, the City’s newly formed transport authority, Transport Cape Town (TCT) initiated an agreement with Prasa CEO Lucky Montana to jointly invest in Cape Town’s rail infrastructure. Plans included a new line to Blue Downs, a line to Atlantis, a rail link to the Cape Town International Airport, and transfer of PRASA-owned land along rail reserves to enable the City to create housing and hard boundaries to prevent land encroachment. But how PRASA was looted and left for scrap under Montana has been well documented and very little came of this agreement.

The Metrorail Central line beyond Langa, which would service Nyanga, Philippi, Mitchell’s Plain, and Khayelitsha, has not Anele Ndamazi, who works as a cleaner at a takeaway in the city centre, used to walk to the Heathfield train station on the central line and ride the train to town. When the central line stopped operating in 2019, he reverted to using minibus taxis.

Ndamazi said taxis stopped operating

operated since 2019 due to vandalism, theft and crime. Informal settlements have since been established on the line and reinstating the service will cost R1,2bn, says Scott. She said the rail service to Eerste Rivier and Strand has also been closed after infrastructure was stripped during the hard lockdown.

But beyond Prasa’s failures, Cape Town’s public transport vulnerability is linked to its failure to overcome its apartheid spatial planning legacy, and its MyCiti N2 Express service to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain has not operated since April 2019 despite its commitments that year to have it reinstated by September 2019. Operations ceased following disputes by N2 Express shareholders, which include CODETA. Former City mayco member for transport, Brett Herron, who in November 2018 resigned and then joined former mayor Patricia de Lille’s new GOOD party, said the national Land Transport Act allows for devolution of public transport management to municipalities.

Herron said when the TCT was established, the City started working on the transfer of Golden Arrow, which is regulated by province, to City management in order to integrate it with MyCiTi to avoid parallel or duplicate public transport services.

When the TCT became the Transport and Urban Development Authority (TDA) in January 2017, discussions were also initiated with Metrorail’s mother body, PRASA, for the City to manage the rail and signalling infrastructure. He said Metrorail would provide a train service, in much the same way as the MyCiti where the City owns the roads and contracts vehicle operating companies to operate the buses. Herron said after negotiations stalled, an intergovernmental dispute with former transport minister Dipuo Peters was declared. Shortly before his resignation, she agreed to the City taking over regulation and contracting of the

in his area when the violence flared up this past month and so he walks two kilometres to Manenberg and waits up 30 minutes or more to board a Golden Arrow bus which winds its way through Athlone before arriving in the city centre.

“If you are chasing 11am you must

Golden Arrow service. Rail, he said, was still under discussion.

He said the problem is that we’ve had six national transport ministers in eight years and four provincial transport MECs since 2011. The devolution rail was always a stumbling block because the conversation had to restart every time we had a new minister.

Despite previous work, executive mayor Dan Plato says in 2019 the City began “the lengthy process of understanding the impact of devolving the rail function from PRASA in a phased and financially responsible manner to the City of Cape Town”.

But unlike the earlier model where the City would take care of the rail infrastructure and contract Metrorail to run the trains, Plato said the City would operate the service through a concession company.

He said a funding for a “high-level business plan” for this was turned down by National Treasury, who deemed it wasteful expenditure. This, he said, forced the City “to abandon the very critical exercise”. The City has petitioned the national ministers of transport and finance, and the President, for permission to relaunch the study but “to date, we have not received a response”.

Transport problem is a housing problem Jennings and Wilkins, who is managing director of Open Streets Cape Town, both state that Cape Town’s public transport problem is inextricably linked to its failure to break apartheid spatial planning barriers.

If poor and working class people were not confined to the city’s margins and forced to travel tens of kilometres to work close to the city centre, we wouldn’t be so reliant on minibus taxis, buses and rail. Wilkins suggests if people were housed closer to work, they could cycle or even walk to work and school if public transport grinds to a halt.

Jennings said the City’s inability to overcome apartheid planning means a mass

get out at 8am to get to the bus stop and travel the Western Cape just to get to town.”

He says the lack of reliable transport means he sometimes up to two hours late for work and has his hourly wages deducted.

“The taxis are ruling our transport

of people move from peripheries to the inner city in the morning, and back again in the evening, with very little movement in between. This “tidal movement” required a large public transport fleet which then runs largely empty during the middle of the day, which makes it commercially unviable. This, said Jennings, was part of why the continued rollout of the MyCiti bus service had stalled.

This was where Minibus taxis, because they were privately owned and relatively unrestricted, had the flexibility to move to where there was high demand, as profit, rather than the needs of passengers, were their priority.

The TDA was established precisely to incorporate housing, transport, and spatial planning into one authority. Despite progressive integrated policy development and catalytic spatial planning interventions, the TDA lasted just two years. The TDA was supported by former executive mayor Patricia de Lille, but when she clashed with the DA and resigned as mayor in October 2018, the TDA was disbanded by incoming executive mayor Dan Plato at his first council meeting of November 2018.

The transport authority was returned to being a directorate. It is a department without political leadership. It has not had a mayoral committee member since Felicity Purchase was appointed Speaker in March this year. Plato is acting mayco member for transport until a new appointment is made.

Reasons for not having appointed a new mayco member for transport were not given.

Solutions to Cape Town’s public transport crisis have been developed for decades, but unless there is political leadership and implementation, Carlisle’s words penned in 2010 will remain prophetic: “Greater Cape Town will become an urban sprawl, its transport arteries clogged and congested; its atmosphere even more polluted; its economy stagnating and its apartheid configuration forever institutionalised.”

system. These motherf***ers…they can’t talk to resolve their issues, they shoot each other instead,” said Ndamazi.

“We are trying to put food on the table, imagine, trying to survive and you die in taxi violence.”

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Yes, we can afford a Universal Basic Income Guarantee • It just needs political will Aliya Chikte and Gilad Isaacs The reinstatement by President Cyril Ramaphosa of the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant and its extension to caregivers take us one step closer to a universal basic income guarantee.

The Covid-19 pandemic has placed the idea of a universal basic income guarantee (UBIG) back on the agenda, as can be seen from the numerous demands from civil society groups and community organisers. This recognises, in the context of a long-standing structural unemployment crisis, that poverty and inequality cannot be addressed only through expanding employment.

However, the SRD grant of R350 per month can, at best, cover only 60% of a person’s minimum required food intake. In the shortterm, the SRD grant should be increased to at least R585, which is the Food Poverty Line.

This would cost an additional R17 billion until March 2022. The inadequate amount and the delays in implementing this are reflective of a government whose social policies have become reactive and crisis-driven.

A permanent UBIG is a chance to close the gaps in South Africa’s social security net. The question is then not about whether a UBIG should be implemented, but rather how it should be designed and financed.

To answer part of this question, the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) has put forward a financing policy brief for a UBIG, outlining 19 recommendations that will allow South Africa to raise funds to tackle poverty. The Policy Brief serves as a supplement to an earlier one on UBIG published by the IEJ in March 2021 and a summary of further research produced for the IEJ by DNA Economics.

The proposals include: adjustments to income taxes, consumption taxes, and wealth and property taxes; removal of corporate tax breaks; the reduction of wasteful and irregular expenditure; and the recoupment of expenditure on UBIG through existing valueadded tax (VAT).

Responding to South Africa’s extreme levels of inequality, all financing proposals are progressive and therefore remove or limit fiscal measures that currently disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

How much and for who?

There are numerous suggestions for the amount at which a UBIG should be set. We present a set of options, ranging from the Food Poverty Line of R585 per month to the initial starting level of the national minimum wage of R3,500 per month. These amounts are not, on their own, sufficient to provide a dignified standard of living, but rather seek to address the depth and severity of poverty by meeting people’s most basic needs.

The preferred approach is one of universality, allowing all people between the age of 18 to 59, currently excluded from permanent social security benefits, to be eligible for the UBIG. In tandem, if South Africa is to reach the National Development Plan’s objective of reducing poverty to 0% by 2030, then the Child Support Grant should also be increased to at least the level of the Food Poverty Line.

The universality ensures that lower-income taxpayers will benefit more from the income guarantee than they contribute in new taxes.

The net benefit varies according to income brackets. For example, if a UBIG of R585 per month is provided, 84% of taxpayers will be net beneficiaries.

How to finance this?

Queues at a South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) office in Bellville in January.

The reinstatement of the Covid-19 grant takes the country one step closer to a universal basic income guarantee, say the authors.

Archive photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana

The IEJ puts forward 19 tax proposals.

These are options, and are not necessarily proposed as a package to be implemented simultaneously.

Adjustments to income taxes include: • The implementation of a ring-fenced Social Security Tax on income, operating similarly to Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions. This will generate R67 billion annually. It would be progressively levied upon all income earners – ranging between 1.5 to 3% of taxable personal income; • A Resource Rent Tax, levied on excess profits earned by extractive industries, estimated to bring in R39 billion annually. This would redistribute the gains from commodity booms while preserving incentives for investors; • The removal of tax breaks for highincome earners – in the form of Medical Aid Tax Credits and the pension fund contribution deduction – could contribute a total of R26 billion annually; and • A halt to the National Treasury’s proposed reduction in the corporate income tax rate. In the context of pressing social needs, this reduction would be deeply irresponsible.

Proposed changes to taxes on products consumed include the introduction of a VAT rate of 25% on luxury goods; a temporary increase in excise duties; and an increase in carbon taxes to one-quarter of the European Union standard. We estimate that changes to such consumption taxes will result in an additional R13 billion that can be used to finance a UBIG. These provide good revenue-raising options but do not tax accumulated wealth. For this reason we propose a wealth tax. Though

South Africa has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality, a wealth tax has historically been excluded from the tax framework. Using the wealth tax simulator from the World Inequality Database, we show that a 1% wealth tax for the top 1%, and a 3% wealth tax for the top 0.1% would generate R59 billion in revenue in the medium to long term. While a wealth tax is not an immediate source of financing, it is an important proposal to ensure the sustainability of a UBIG. It is also possible to tax the income that derives from wealth, which is also highly unequally distributed. A Currency Transaction Tax (CTT) of 0.005%; raising the Securities Transfer Tax from 0.25 to 0.3%; and a Financial Transaction Tax of 0.1%, would raise R3.68 billion, R1.37 billion, and R41 billion respectively. These tax the buying and selling of different financial assets and have the benefit of reducing stock market speculation.

An increase in the Estate Duty Tax would mean higher taxes when wealth is passed on after someone’s death. The proposal would align the tax to Personal Income Tax rates, ensuring greater equity across the tax system. Given the skewed nature of accumulated wealth under apartheid, this seems necessary.

This combination of taxes on wealth and income that derives from wealth would add R48 billion to government revenue.

In addition, we propose scrapping ineffective corporate tax breaks – such as the Employment Tax Incentive – and redoubling efforts to tackle tax evasion. The IEJ tax proposals target a 25% reduction in profit shifting of multinational corporations.

Combined, this would free up a total of R18 billion in additional revenue. We also target a 30% reduction of irregular expenditure

reported by the Auditor-General, freeing up R36.4 billion. A further reduction of wasteful expenditure in Cabinet and government departments would provide an additional R1.85 billion.

Spill-over effects A UBIG would spur a host of positive spill-over effects in the economy, including shifting unspent funds from the wealthy and corporates to poor households, thus injecting spending into the economy that favours locally produced goods. This would also increase tax revenue as the economy grows. These all need to be investigated.

One easy element to calculate is that around 12% of any expenditure on a UBIG would be recouped back by the state via VAT. This array of financing proposals shows that implementing a UBIG progressively and sustainably is feasible in the short-term.

Furthermore, some funds could be raised through additional debt, or other avenues.

A UBIG is an important component of a broader package of social support that a capable state should ensure for all. The urgency of the moment, in addition to the longstanding persisting patterns of poverty and inequality, needs to be recognised and reflected in the debate around the implementation of a UBIG. Addressing extreme poverty is therefore not simply about financing constraints, but rather about willingness to take the immediate measures that this moment demands.

Aliya Chikte is a Research Associate at the Institute for Economic Justice, where Gilad Isaacs is the Director.

—GroundUp

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30 JULY, 2021

Theatre

DE|COMPOSITION: Life and death in process Dave Mann In DE|COMPOSITION, artist, political ecologist, geographer, and environmental scientist Linzi Lewis puts forward the notion that “Life is a fragile and uncertain celebration.” Death is certain and integral to life, rebirth is intangible yet constant.

Somewhere in between the two is where she locates her performance.

A collaboration between musicians, environmentalists, and artists, DE|COMPOSITION is one of the many shortform virtual offerings on the Fringe at this year’s National Arts Festival. Coming in at just over nine minutes, and with two distinct parts, it’s a dance piece you can watch over a cup of coffee, or while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil. Still, there’s a fair amount going on in these nine minutes.

Music, ambient field recordings, and choice imagery open the performance. The music, courtesy of drummer and multiinstrumentalist duo Mr Freddy, is steady electronic and instrumental work, while the imagery – a frayed circle, wilting grass, the winding veins and capillaries of a leaf – occupies the frame. Lewis enters and turns, falls, and folds through a mirrored choreographic sequence that’s superimposed over all the rest. In the first half she appears almost spectral, with the medium of film allowing for a good amount of shadow play and digital theatrics. In the second half, which features a new instrumental track and imagery in the form of damp, scattered leaves, her likeness is more concrete – though a hoodie pulled over her head still obscures

her face.

Death, revival, transience – they’re topics that have always prompted inspiration and inquiry within the performing arts. With the advent of a global pandemic, when death and uncertainty feel all the more present, they’ve taken on a renewed sense of urgency. As such, DE|COMPOSITION feels very much like a pandemic-born production.

It’s a short, sharp work with distinct inputs from a small team of collaborators who’ve

likely chipped in via a series of whatsapps, emails, and Zoom calls. It’s unresolved and affect-laden, yes, but perhaps that’s the point. Rather than making any firm statements or claims to the times we find ourselves struggling to make sense of, it’s a piece that grapples with the peripheral and the immaterial, and subsequently presents itself as a work in process – a testing and teasing out of ideas and emotions.

In this way, DE|COMPOSITION can serve

as an example of the kind of work that’s well-suited to the current world of online festivals and virtual performances, making use of platforms like the virtual National Arts Festival to gauge interest and trial-run concepts against a global, online audience through distinct, but evolving performances or bodies of work.

For now, it’s an engaging performance that’ll take you a few minutes to watch, and the rest of the day to think about.

Wine

White Wine for Brighter Days Ahead Sadé Allcock The past month has been a tough one.

Although our livers are probably thanking us for the reprieve, if you own a restaurant, winery, brewery, distillery, or anything in between, it has meant the dread of reduced income and lost jobs. For those of you who rushed to the aid of businesses that were hit hard by lockdown restrictions, I thank you.

In the spirit of support, I thought I would touch on a range of different wines that have been on my radar recently. My selection is admittedly skewed towards whites rather than rosés and reds, but considering the slew of warmer days we have experienced in the Cape recently, perhaps this is merited.

I was introduced to the Van Loveren Neil’s Pick Colombar while on holiday two years ago, and I cannot believe it has taken me so long to write about this delicious white.

It is a stunningly light, off-dry wine which boasts aromas of guava and a hint of fresh clementines. Absolutely delicious on a warm day with a cheese and charcuterie board. And the price is very pleasing too. I sometimes feel that many really good wines are dismissed by wine snobs simply because they don’t cost an arm and a leg. Well, this wine costs R59 and is not to be passed up.

The Piekeneirskloof Heirloom White was a recent discovery and a lovely treat. The grapes are sourced from bush vines grown in vineyards tended with the utmost care. The grapes used for this blend (60% Chenin Blanc, 30% Grenache Blanc, 10% Chardonnay)

are all hand harvested from middle to late February. Only free run juice is used and fermented in first and second fill French and American oak barrels for four months.

On the palate, fresh white peaches and pears lingering to a gentle oak finish. Paired perfectly with crispy Cape Bream and a fresh Asian slaw. Heaven.

Peter Falke is a boutique winery nestled between Stellenbosch and Somerset West.

They boast two impressive wine collections

and a beautiful tasting room. The perfect location for a day out in the winelands. We chose to share a few bottles of wine while reclining on their extremely comfortable beanbags. The wine of particular interest was the PF Sauvignon Blanc 2020. It has been a while since I enjoyed a good Sauvignon Blanc, but this one was delightful. Aromas of tropical fruit such as granadilla and pineapple followed by a lingering finish of fresh lemongrass. I highly recommend that you

enjoy this wine in the company of friends on a warm day, preferably with a beanbag nearby for good cushioning.

Price list:

Van Loveren Neil’s Pick Colombar 2020 – R59 @ their cellar or online Piekenierskloof Heirloom White Blend 2020 – R150 @ their cellar or online Peter Falke PF Sauvignon Blanc 2020 – R150 @ their cellar or online

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Book reviews

House of Glass: A deep draught There are many books I have enjoyed immensely, yet they leave no lasting trace other than the memory of pleasure, possibly because I was in agreement with the philosophy and viewpoints they contained; they presented no particular challenge.

Then there are books that insert themselves months afterwards, at odd, idle, or occasionally opportune moments.

Hadley Freeman’s House of Glass is one of these. It arrived in the post, unasked for, and I read it because it was there. It is unlikely I would ever have pulled it off a shelf unless the only other books to choose from were written by James Hadley Chase or Wilbur Smith (not that I haven’t read the odd Wilbur Smith while on holiday but I would not be able to recall their titles even if they were printed on my shaving mirror).

For a start, House of Glass is the story of a 20th Century Jewish family. Which means WWII, which means The Holocaust. Is it a heresy to say I am tired of reading about the Holocaust? There are six million and more stories to be told of that nadir of recent history, but there is also so much else that begs discovery. Anyway, House of Glass is a thick book, and about much more than the Holocaust, even though those five years of horror cast a shadow across half a century and, judging by the way Israel continues to behave like a terribly abused child whose fear is so internalised he sees no option but to strike and dominate, continues to fall across our years.

Yet, Hadley notes in her introduction,

apparently 41% of Americans don’t know that Nazi’s murdered six million Jews on an industrial scale, and neither, incredibly, do a third of Europeans. At the same time, incidents of anti-Semitism are on the rise.

Which gave her the courage to write this book. And I’m glad I got to read it.

House of Glass is not a novel, it is a biography of a family, written by one of its members. A family split across continents by a hatred and cruelty that killed brothers and sisters and parents and cousins and uncles and aunts.

Hadley, a New York fashion journalist, haunted by the French family she met as a young girl, tries to understand her aloof, sad grandmother by documenting the clothes she used to wear. Fine French fashion she wore to mark her as sophisticated and cultured and not American. Like C.S. Lewis’s hidden portal that led from the back of a wardrobe to Narnia, what Hadley finds in a dusty shoebox beneath her late grandmother’s dresses hung in dry-cleaner’s coverings, reveals secrets, loss, dreams, adventures, and extraordinary bravery. Her book is not about the concentration camps – no more than it needs to be - it’s about the people who escaped them. It’s about a woman’s life being ripped away from her just as she was blossoming into Paris after a childhood in Chrzanow, Poland, which is about as cold and grim as it sounds. It is about a short, bullet-shaped man who invented and re-invented himself; a haute couture designer who fought in the first battles of the war as a Legionnaire and

became part of the French resistance, later breaking bread as an art dealer with Picasso. It is about a mild-mannered brother who never believed it was possible such evil could exist in the world and followed instructions as a good citizen, instructions that led him to his extermination.

As fantastic as the events and stories are, they are more so because they are true. It is a book that taught me a little more about Europe, quite a lot more about human nature and family, and gave me a new appreciation for fashion and the importance of art. At the very least, you’ll discover Alex Maguy.

Being non-fiction, it is not a devourin-one-sitting book. Rather, it is like a meal lovingly prepared, which you savour as you

participate in conversation, later picking at the tasty left-overs in the pots every time you go to the kitchen.

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Active Measures by Thomas Rid

The Unfair Advantage, by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba

Expecting a child, Safran Foer investigates what is best for his family to eat. His calmly and insightfully narrated quest leads us to the horrors of the meat production chain. We encounter a brutally sick system in which pigs and chickens are bred stacked in factories which would kill you within halfan-hour if the ventilation system cut out. That, plus the monstrosity of what takes place in slaughterhouses is clearly laid out, sans sentimentality. He also looks at what caring animal husbandry tries to achieve, and introduces us to the tiny and dying breed of humane farmers attempting to run humane farms.

Although he only looks at what is happening in the USA, meat factory farming on an industrial scale is also practised in China and Europe, and gaining ground globally. He does not proselytize, but if you ever buy or eat factory farmed meat again, you need to consider whether you possess a soul.

The subtitle to this book is ‘The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare’, which deftly explains its contents. Rid spills out the guts of what the Russian spies were up to, as well as the Americans, although by Rid’s account, the Russians were fare more active in spreading disinformation against the West, and more dastardly.

Covering the period from 1921 to 2017 in six sections, he spells out the tactics demanded by changing technology and geopolitical winds. It is fascinating material and particularly relevant to understanding the current tricks of touting ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. Unfortunately, what could be scintillating subject matter is written in a style so dull it resembles a textbook. It is a mine of information and insight but requires dedication and commitment.

The authors are both millionaires thanks to their successful digital entrepreneurship.

Ali created the startup Just Eat, which was an early version of Uber Eats.

Kubba made his fortune through Search Engine Optimisation, ending up earning himself passive income and travelling the world. They’re both in turn selfcongratulatory and transparently faux-humble as they push you to recognise and leverage your own ‘unfair advantage’ that everyone possesses. I only made it halfway through the book before putting it down in disgust at the clichéd language, complete lack of insight into the unsustainability of the disruptive start-up economy they espouse, and the blind support of capitalist systems. In the end, I suspect they are not changing the world, they’re just gaming it, at someone else’s cost, and urging you to do the same.

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Amazon moving in on potential national heritage site The entrance to the Two Rivers Urban Park bordering Observatory. It is accepted that this area is the original site of colonial land dispossession in South Africa, as it was where the Khoi were pushed off their traditional grazing lands by the expansion of the Dutch East India Company. Photo: Steve Kretzmann

• Provincial heritage council passes the buck to national body Mia Arderne The Two Rivers Urban Park in which a new Amazon headquarters is to be built, is deemed by Heritage Western Cape to hold national heritage status, but the process of declaring it will take a year or more.

The emerged when the provincial and national heritage of the area surrounding the confluence of the Liesbeek and Black Rivers below Observatory, was discussed by the Heritage Western Cape’s grading council on 22 July 2021.

The 240ha Two Rivers Urban Park (TRUP) encompasses the River Club, where a strongly opposed R4,5bn redevelopment was earlier this year given the go-ahead by City and provincial government authorities.

TRUP is the site of the first colonial dispossession by the expansion of the Dutch East India Company. An application to have it declared a provincial heritage site was filed over a year ago by the Observatory Civic Association (OCA), the Goringhaicona KhoiKhoin Traditional Council and the Two Rivers Urban Park Association (TRUPA).

The outcome is particularly consequential given that the global Amazon company headed by space cowboy Jeff Bezos is to be the anchor tenant of the River Club development.

The meeting of Heritage Western Cape’s (HWC) grading committee to assess the heritage application was attended by the

full HWC council, as well as interested and affected parties. In a surprising turn of events, it was recommended that TRUP be assessed for national heritage status by HWC’s national body, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA).

SAHRA heritage officer Heidi Weldon said she believed this was “a very fair recommendation” which was “well within the procedures of grading of heritage sites”.

Following the meeting, HWC CEO Michael Janse van Rensburg stated: “Based on discussions at various meetings and documents put forward in terms of the heritage significance for the TRUP area, and not withstanding that an application for the proposed nomination of the site for Grade I status is also currently submitted with SAHRA, HWC is of the strong opinion that the TRUP area is worthy of being further investigated for Grade I heritage status.”

Janse van Rensburg said the council would notify SAHRA of its opinion that the TRUP area should be assessed for Grade I (national) heritage status.

The Observatory Civic Association and Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council supported the recommendation, but said there was no reason HWC should not proceed with a parallel provincial heritage application.

Supreme High Commissioner of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, Tauriq Jenkins, said it was important for recognition of the significance

of the site “to begin at home”.

Jenkins said he was puzzled at the HWC’s decision not to act.

HWC had invoked a two-year provisional protection of the River Club site within TRUP from 2018 to 2020, precisely because of the threat of the River Club redevelopment. The protection was appealed by the property owners, City, and provincial government departments. It lapsed without the site’s heritage status being graded.

“To choose to then escalate that responsibility solely on SAHRA without making a decision seems to hold in and of itself some contradiction,” said Jenkins.

Ground has already been broken for the Amazon development on the River Club site, although Weldon said national heritage status for TRUP would mean any “development, changes, excavations” would require “necessary permits” from the national authority.

A Heritage Impact Assessment would be required before permits were granted, said Weldon. The HIA “does not necessarily prohibit development, but rather guides the development to ensure the heritage values are sustained”.

“The case will need to be assessed and a determination made from there.”

She said declaration of a national heritage site would take “no less than nine to 12 months”, but some declarations “have taken a few years due to various complexities”.

“I would imagine that considering the

Two Rivers site, this is likely to be quite an extensive process and may take a little longer than is expected,” said Weldon.

In the meantime, earthmoving equipment has been installed at the River Club site, with nothing to stop the site owners, Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust, and Zenprop, from filling in what is a floodplain, and turning the original Liesbeek River channel into a swale.

Attorney Nicholas Smith, who represented River Club owners Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust at the HWC grading council meeting, was not available for comment.

“That the developers are pursuing their development despite the fact that land should be part of a heritage precinct flies in the face of our constitutional protections of human rights and heritage,” said Observatory Civic Association chair Leslie London.

The Observatory Civic Association was instituting a High Court challenge to the City and provincial governments’ decisions permitting the development to go ahead, said London.

“The OCA will be adding this perspective to our court action.”

Jenkins said the site was “an epicentre of liberation and resistance”.

“It’s where the sacred rivers and its embankments were occupied for the first time, which resulted in massacre, exile and genocide, which is still unrecognised. It’s of undeniable spiritual and heritage value to the San and Khoi as well as our collective memory as a country.”

Breaking the echo chamber in the city bowl and beyond

You think we’ve hit the bottom, then realise there is no bottom, things can always get worse. Cue an attempted insurrection, looting and arson on a mass scale across KZN and in Gauteng, amidst which a chemicals warehouse burns down engulfing parts of Durban in toxic fumes and killing the Ohlanga River estuary overnight. Just as we think we here have escaped the carnage, taxi bosses start shooting at each other and passengers, killing 24 people this month and bringing this year’s taxi shooting death toll to 83. To top it off, the teetering Metrorail service has to shut even more lines down and transport day zero lands in the midst of an actual storm in the midst of a lockdown.

When it gets to this point, it’s probably best just to do like Shakespeare’s King Lear and challenge the gods: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

Rage, blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulfurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head! And though, all-shaking thunder, smite flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world, crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once that make ingrateful man!

It helps, I’ve tested it.

The arts always help. And despite the closure of theatres, music venues, movie houses, even restaurants and bars, we still have a National Arts Festival, which has been a portal for our treasured artists to present us with work that helps us make sense of it all.

Although the festival officially closes on 31 July, Mother City News has inside sources and we can reveal that the festival’s fringe programme will still be available to view during August. We urge you to step away from Netflix, Showmax, Apple TV, and DSTV and watch some of these shows. You will not be disappointed. You may even be enlightened. Go and buy a few tickets (cheap cheap at R30 or R40) on nationalartsfestival.co.za, here’s a few suggestions:

Dance Buya: The word means “come back”. Return. It’s about grief, but with a celebratory feel.

Khensani Mathebula’s choreography mixes American contemporary dance and South African deep groove, with the Matheta Dance Company a clear combination of South African choreography within a So You Think You Can Dance pageant-type of US contemporary form. It is delightful. And the considerations of choreographic styles plus the solo make this company one to watch. Buya is a thoroughly enjoyable return to exuberant group movement, after so many isolated performances in light of the pandemic.

(Wo)man: I want to put big-eye emojis for this title. Because why is the “man” not the part in brackets? So long after postmodernism has peaked, why are bracketed titles still a thing?

And, oh yes, I too used brackets in titles when I was a student so, we forgive. Anyway, these performers can dance. Even though the work ebbed at times, I still looked forward to the moments they got into their bodies. It’s about women’s issues and everything else one could consider an issue. Activism on steroids.

Mobile Inertia: If you excuse the awkward juxtaposition of ‘mobile’ with ‘inertia’ in the title, you are in for an exquisite piece of work. Inertia is ineffably moved and spoken through this film noir experience. Two dancers relay their separate encounters with a kind of existential lack of progression in their lives. The events are banal. But they are expertly told moments of realisation: that they have not been moving, or their movement has been stuck in one place.

Shot in stark black and white with intense shadows, Siphumeze Khundayi’s lens follows the dancers and we get into an intimate relationship with their movements and their thoughts. It is a gentle gem of existential crisis, crafted with disarming charm.

11 Walls in 7 Days is a surrealist trip. This piece made me feel high. And, oh, it was exactly the tonic the doctor ordered. So, if you don’t do drugs and need a fanciful flight from the weight of everything happening outside, watch this to feel like you’re floating in a small plastic pool on a serene South African summer’s day. It’s a dose of escapism amidst the current tumult.

Mommy Mommy… tells a fraught tale of sexuality, abuse and authority. The work follows the story of a young boy raised by a mother whilst his father saunters and wanders, unconstrained and undisturbed. Sons become their fathers, even if only in the imagination of a patronising, narcissistic mother. Written as a dark fantasy, it explores the effects of abuse within the context of a dysfunctional home. Whilst for many, home is safety and love, in this context home is traumatic and fraught. The work is artful and gripping.

FREE COPY

30 JULY, 2021

Theatre In (extra)ordinary, (un)usual, six actors tackle a monologue each, seated on a chair in front of a camera. There are no bells and whistles, the set is bare, the performers plainly dressed. The whole thing’s premised on the ability to tell a good story, and they range from disillusioned brides and opportunistic care-workers to pseudo animal psychics and disgruntled twins.

They’re as goofy as they sound, in an endearing sort of way, and all of them wield a degree of macabre humour with a twist – sometimes expected, other times improbable.

The Memoir Monologues is an anthology of individual stories grouped together by a common theme. That said, you can’t dip in and out of the show, selecting monologues as you please.

Writer and director Anastasia Amy and her team have opted to edit each monologue into considered fragments that, though disparate, weave in and out of one another’s narrative arcs. The result is a rich and engaging body of work, the success of which is evident in its clear development of tone – a collage of myriad tales and perspectives.

Film The Shack is the film we’ve been searching for in the midst of the mess South Africa is currently in. It’s seven minutes of erudite storytelling. Wait for it… from the perspective of a shack, e Mpantshi! It is a thrillingly artistic film for our time and every politician within the City of Cape Town should be forced to watch it as part of an intervention to try cultivate whatever empathy remains in their soul.

Durban International Film Festival You have until Sunday (1 August) to watch some of the really great films and documentaries being screened at the Durban International Film Festival. They are free of charge. And, GO! durbanfilmfest.com