Mother City News December 2020

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WARNING: May contain strong language

17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

Breaking the echo chamber in the city bowl and beyond.

Blue Flag farce Flapping in the wind‌ The Blue Flag awarded to beaches is criticised as having little relevance to the health of the marine environment.

Blue Flag award no guarantee the water is clean Steve Kretzmann

The validity of the coveted Blue Flag status, which has been awarded to ten of Cape Town’s famed beaches this summer

season, has been brought into question as three of them suffer from chronic water pollution.

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The Blue Flag is awarded by the Wildlife and Environment Society of SA (Wessa) and with its promise of clean beaches and user-friendly facilities, is seen as a tourism drawcard over the summer holiday season.

The City of Cape Town celebrates its receipt of Blue Flag awards, directly

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spending R420 000 this season on preparing for, and complying with the Wessa programme, according to community services and health mayco member Zahid Badroodien.

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17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

From Page 1

Dirty water… children play in water from the polluted storm water exit pipe on Fish Hoek beach. The local ratepayers and residents association has taken independent tests of the storm water runoff which show they are often highly contaminated with feacal bacteria.

But the City of Cape Town’s own fortnightly tests show three of False Bay’s Blue Flag beaches are listed as suffering from ‘poor’ water quality for over a year.

Fish Hoek, Muizenberg Pavilion, and Mnandi beaches, all of which were awarded Blue Flag status on 27 November, are all also red-listed on the City’s Coastal Water Analysis Report, where results are updated every two weeks and averaged over a rolling 395day period.

Although the continually updated report does not reveal what the parameters for the status of ‘poor’, ‘sufficient’, ‘good’, and ‘excellent’ are (although the City has since committed to including them), all three beaches are in the red, and were so in 2019 as well.

Fish Hoek beach water quality is listed as ‘excellent’ for 2018, but listed in the worst category, ‘poor’ in all the preceding years back to 2015.

The best Muizenberg Pavilion ever got was a ‘sufficient’ from 2018 back to 2016, with a ‘poor’ in 2015.

Tests at Mnandi are listed as Mnandi East and Mnandi West, and quality results at both are equally problematic.

While water quality – in terms of the number of e.coli and Enterococci bacteria measured in samples – is only one of 33 Blue Flag criteria, meeting

international guidelines for safe bathing water quality is a stipulation, not an option. But Wessa’s own tests at the beaches, taken in very specific areas, show these beaches pass muster.

“Fish Hoek receiving Blue Flag status is a joke,” says chair of the Fish Hoek Valley Residents and Ratepayers Association (FHVRRA), Brian Youngblood.

“We are very concerned about the pollution of Fish Hoek beach and False Bay,” says Youngblood.

The Blue Flag designated swimming area is effected by at least one of two main stormwater culverts which spew polluted water from the informal trading area and train station precinct.

He said the FHVRRA’s own tests by an independent laboratory reveals this, and another stormwater culvert flowing onto the beach, is contaminated by faeces.

He calls the veracity of WESSA’s tests into question: “Wessa is responsible for the collection of the water samples (for Blue Flag criteria), but it doesn’t have laboratory facilities to perform the requisite tests for clean water.

We have asked Wessa and the City if we may accompany them when they take samples, but this has never been acknowledged. If they are, we suspect the Wessa samples are collected far from our polluted stormwater culverts. “ He said the two-month duration of the

Blue Flag programme, from 1 December to 31 January, “does not result in longterm reduction in coastal water quality pollution for the remainder of the year”.

As a result, the FHVRRA no longer views Blue Flag status as a symbol of clean water.

Senior Stellenbosch University lecturer and epidemiologist Dr Jo Barnes said even though the City’s water quality data was averaged out when the real health risks lay in the pollution peaks, the beaches still failed the minimum guidelines, and when it came to an indicator of water quality, the Blue Flag was “totally meaningless”.

Beyond pollution of the open water, Barnes said tests in Camps Bay – which has also received Blue Flag status although millions of litres of sewage are pumped into the bay daily from the Camps Bay pump station - revealed that feacal contaminants, as well as more concerning manufactured chemical compounds, build up in the sand in the inter-tidal zone.

“Children love digging holes in the sand and then it’s great fun when the water seeps in, but that’s the worst,” she said.

Senior University of the Western Cape chemistry professor, Leslie Petrik, said the Blue Flag water quality testing criteria were not rigorous and it seemed

they did not look at the City’s long-term figures.

The whole of False Bay is terribly polluted with chemical compounds, including pesticides, pharmaceutical and industrial compounds, and although the long-term water quality data existed, it seemed Wessa ignored it.

“It’s just a tourist trap to attract people to the beaches, the Blue Flag people don’t bother their heads with long term pollution of our beaches,” said Petrik.

City of Cape Town spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said Wessa only tested the water quality once a month during the summer holiday season, and samples were taken in the precise area demarcated for swimming. Additionally, the sea water was generally cleaner in summer as less rainfall meant fewer pollutants were washed down through the storm water drains.

Nonetheless, Wessa spokesperson Vincent Shacks said water pollution led to the Blue Flag status being temporarily suspended three times at Fish Hoek last season due to sewage spills and a failed testing sample. The flag was lowered once at Mnandi last season when the water quality test was below par.

Shacks said the water samples were tested at a SA Bureau of Standards laboratory.

17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

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Woodstock facilities falling into ruin The park off Victoria Road is polluted with sewage and the town hall looks like a set for an urban slum Steve Kretzmann A stream of raw sewage flows from the back of the public toilets on the corner of Victoria Road and Aberdeen Street in Woodstock, across the entrance of a homeless person’s shelter and into Town Hall Park.

Besides the stream of sewage, the park, while it has swings, roundabouts, and see-saws for children, and a concrete skate bowl, is littered with shattered glass, with plastic and paper piled by the wind against the surrounding railings. When visited on Saturday 5 December, all the entrance gates were locked, with the only entrance being a gap in the fence at the edge of the skate bowl.

The town hall overlooking the park, and from whence it gets its name, has broken windows, is marked by graffiti tags, and has missing lettering over the entrance portico.

In addition to the shelter within the park, a group of homeless people have erected shelters in the parking lot right next to the park, adding to a sense of dereliction and neglect.

Yet despite its grim state, the park was being used, although not by children, or even by skateboarders, who seem to prefer the surrounding streets of lower Woodstock.

There were a handful of apparently homeless people lying in the shade of the trees, a young man on a bench who appeared to be studying course readings, and a dozen or so adults who were socialising in pairs or trios in cleaner patches of the park.

The dereliction of the park and town hall is not new. Mario Williams, who has lived a stone’s throw away in adjacent Plein Street all 40-years of his life, says the situation has been deteriorating for years.

Williams said the skate bowl was built about two years ago – at a cost of R567 000 according to City mayco member for community services and health, Zahid Badroodien – but it was never used due to the state of the park it is situated in.

Williams, who is a sergeant in the SAPS, said when the park was built he bought his daughter a skateboard and roller blades, but she has yet to use the skate bowl.

“I can’t just let my daughter go to the park,” he said. “How do I send a young girl there with men and women washing and exposing themselves in the open?”

The town hall is also not able to perform its community function for residents.

Williams said he got married in the town hall in 2010 while guests’ children played in the park. They had their photos taken outside the entrance, with Devil’s Peak in the background, and everyone walked back to their house for the reception. That is unthinkable today, he says.

The hall has not been available for community functions since at least last year when it was used to accommodate displaced people, who were hastily re-accommodated elsewhere in order for the hall to briefly act as a voting station during the elections.

When it came to the proliferation of homeless building wood and plastic shelters in and around Town Hall park and in vacant lots, he said the Woodstock community was generally accommodating and welcoming,

but the situation was becoming unhygienic and cars were often broken into at night.

“We’re an inviting community, but we can only take so much.”

Passing neighbours who stopped to listen to the interview agreed.

He said there used to be a small group of homeless people who lived in tents erected in the parking lot next to the park. They had a leader and kept the park and surrounds clean, said Williams, but then he died.

“It was clean for about six months and then Covid came and shacks started popping up.”

He said when residents complained to the City they got no response, or were told the City could do nothing because of Covid-19.

In response to questions about the state of the town hall, and Town Hall Park, Badroodien stated there was “no sign of sewage flowing into the park”.

Badroodien said the gates to the park were locked illegally “without our knowledge”.

When Mother City News visited the park again on 14 December, the gates had been unlocked, but sewage continued to flow into the park.

Badroodien said the park is cleaned three times a week, and R55 000 was budgeted for parks’ maintenance in Ward 115. However, Ward 115 stretches from lower Woodstock to Greenpoint and includes The Company’s Gardens and Green Point park.

Regarding the town hall, he said no major repairs on the hall had taken place in the last three years, but minor repairs to electrical infrastructure and plumbing had been carried out by an internal maintenance team. The hall was broken into during lockdown level 5, with damage to the electricity meter box, doors, locks, and the recreation room. The last time it was booked, he said, was on 5 November for a film shoot.

Regarding homeless people constructing shelters in and around the park, he said the City’s Street People Unit was mandated to provide social assistance, but despite their best intentions, many people refused any form of help.

“Accepting assistance will include access to a shelter or safe space where access to food, water and sanitation is on offer. They cannot be forced to accept help.”

New incumbent ward 115 councilor Ian McMahon, who was elected in a by-election on 9 December, said he had noted the sewage in the park and the state of the town hall, and had logged a complaint with the City.

Aquila David and Geneva Abraham, who are live in one of what appeared to be seven board and plastic structures in the car park next to the park, said they made an effort to keep their surrounding area clean, although this did not seem apparent. They said people brought food for them on Sundays and Thursdays and Woodstock residents didn’t bother them. Asked if they’d like to go somewhere else, the pair were noncommittal. Abraham indicated she would like to go “home”, which she said was in Maitland, but would not be drawn on why this was not possible. They would only allow their photos to be taken if money was proffered.

One side of Town Hall Park

The other side of Town Hall Park

The architecturally striking Woodstock Town Hall.

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17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

Food review

Arnold’s: Top notch two decades down The early bird breakfast specials at Arnold’ss restaurant in Kloof Street are legendary. At just R35 for a plate of two eggs, bacon, chipolatas, tomato, and toast, it’s worth getting there between 6.30 and 8am, and on a weekend morning you’ll encounter the exercise freaks (aka cyclists) as well as those trying to soak up a hangover after a long night of jolling (which our attentive waiter Emmanuel assured us was still happening despite Covid).

And yes, you read right, Arnold’s is open from 6.30am, and offers lunch and supper every day, making it one of the hardest working restaurants in the Cape. Which may explain its longevity; it’s been around for 22 years, and is still serving delicious food from a wide menu.

Happy to discover it survived the lockdown and tourist drought, we went back to try it out for lunch.

The interior is spacious and Covid-friendly (I mean, physical-distance compliant), but while it is attractive with its dark wood floors and large-framed black-and-white photographs, summer lunch generally calls for an outside table. Of these they have plenty from which to observe the (now somewhat muted) Kloof Street buzz, although the uncovered smoking section on the side is a little down-at-heel.

With perfect timing, Emmanuel brought the expansive menu, which covers starters and soups, light meals and pasta, salads, burgers, grills (seafood, chicken, and red meat), and desserts.

The prices of the mains ranged from R69 for a chicken club panini, to R180 for a beef fillet with all the extras, but this is Arnold’s and there’s always the specials. We lucked into a cheese burger and 500ml Jack Black draught for R75. The full menu price of the Jack Black was R45, and with nothing too

Arnold’s delivers the near-perfect burger.

pressing for the afternoon, it was a deal not to be passed up, resulting in us both wanting in.

Professionalism was maintained, however – you need at least one other dish to form something of an opinion – we ordered an Arnold’s salad to give us a wider scope, the compromise being we could always share. Of course we had to add another Jack Black to that.

Emmanuel, still on top form, brought out the food as our beers dropped to between a third and a quarter full. The first bite of the burger was a feast for the senses; dripping, tasty, succulent, aromatic, you name it.

And the guacamole was the real deal, like it had just been smashed before being ladled onto the dik hand-made patti grilled to the medium asked for. There was no skimping on the chips either, and the tomato sauce is All Gold, as it should be.

The salad, which, was essentially a baconavo with the usual extras and home-made dressing, was good. It ticked all the boxes, but couldn’t quite measure up to the burger.

Perhaps it would have got better marks on a hotter day, but it was certainly a comfortable pass.

The cappucinos to spark us out of our gastronomic somnolence was, in coffee

terms, as good as that burger; rich and roasted and bitter with cashew nut undertones.

It seems 22 years in the game has not led to Arnold’s getting frayed at the edges, instead, they have used their experience to refine their offerings across the seasons, yet being able to accommodate a wide range of clientele with a wide range of tastes. We wish them another 22 years at 60 Kloof Street, and we had no regrets handing over R300 for the bill, which included a R50 tip for Emannuel.

Wine

Time for those summer whites Sadé Allcock White wines for warm days. It is well known that white wine and summer go together like peanut butter and jam, or pina a colada. Simply put, they are a match made for each other. And with the increasingly warmer weather and the once more rising number of Covid-19 cases in South Africa, now seems as

and hints of lime. This Chenin Blanc could likely rest for a couple more years, but it nevertheless paired well with my fresh and spicy pasta dish and I would definitely buy it again. It can be found at Makro for R139.

Lastly, I would like to mention possibly one of my favourite wines that I have discovered this year: the Hartenberg Chardonnay. Many people are not fond of a wooded chardonnay but done well it can be one of the most

good a time as any to kick back with a good

superb wines. And Hartenberg’s Chardonnay

white wine and watch the world go by.

2017 is done well. The wine ages for 10

I have had the recent good fortune of

months in first, second, and third fill French

tasting three incredible white wines that

Oak barrels and once bottled can mature for

would be a treat for anyone this holiday

between three and seven years from vintage.

season. First up is the Nicky Versfeld

The 2017 vintage was perfectly balanced

Sauvignon Blanc 2019. This sauvignon blanc

and rich in flavour, with aromas of vanilla

is made from vines planted on the hills of

and pear on the nose. This wine has a creamy

Darling, an area well known for producing

and lingering finish that makes you wish

excellent sauv blanc. This wine was awarded a

your glass would never empty. It comes

gold medal at the Michelangelo International

highly recommended and is priced at R150

Wine and Spirit Awards, and it fully deserved

in cellar. Here’s wishing everyone a safe and

it. Crisp and fruity, it is highly enjoyable for

restful holiday season, take care, protect your

any occasion and retails for around R163.

friends and family, and if you’re under 18,

Secondly, the Ken Forrester Chenin

it is against the law to drink alcohol – just a

Blanc 2019. I found this wine to be fairly

reminder. Oh, and don’t drink and drive. Just

well balanced with strong aromas of melon

don’t, okay.

17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

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Book review

The Betrayals: Born to be a best-seller. Ugh! The poorly written book is a fascinating phenomenon. Unless you bump into Melinda Ferguson, it is notoriously difficult to get a novel published. Best-selling writers such as John Grisham, James Patterson, and Stephen King – whatever your opinion of their books – suffered scores of rejections. Classics such as Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 were rejected 23 and 22 times respectively. Then there’s the Lotto-like odds of actually making a sufficient living off writing novels, which should put all but the most committed aspirants on the sidelines, and there’s the editing process the publishing house wrings the text through. Yet there are hundreds of mediocre novels pushed out every year, ranging from the inane to the best-sellers. Which is what Bridget Collin’s second novel, The Betrayals, is trying to be.

Which is expected, as her first adult novel, The Binding, topped the Sunday Times list last year.

It tries. Really hard, and in doing so stumbles, and falls, mangling a Dan Brown-ish page-turning suspense with a JK Rowling-esque quaintness in what is essentially a romance bedeviled by a series of misunderstandings, set in a rambling castle on a mountain, wherein is taught an aesthetic pursuit akin to physical theatre but with the additional encumbrance of binding it all to mathematics and music and art and concept through an arcane language. A bit like a humanities thesis, or what law might aspire to be. These opportunities are not explored in The Betrayals. Rather, reflection is cast aside in favour of the rushes of

emotion that ripple back and forth between the protagonists, neither of whom are particularly sympathetic. Like an adolescent in a diary, they dither too much. All the time, actually. Take this passage, at random on page 229: “…, and sometimes she even grins at something he’s said – although that’s a Pyrrhic victory, because she always dismisses him a few minutes later, claiming curtly that she has to get back to work. And every so often, as though she doesn’t realise she’s doing it, she gives him a glancing, elusive look that could almost pass for tenderness.”

There’s a lot of desire and anxiety.

No surprise, then, that much of the novel is in the form of, not an adolescent, but a very young man’s diary, which is a means to take us to what happened ten years ago. The twist that occurs in the plot, although cunning, and somehow sweet, is insufficient to make up for the mawkish dialogue and reflections between exasperating characters.

The most interesting character is one least explored: the Christian scholar, Simon, along with The Rat; a girl who lives in hiding, stealthily surviving in the shadows, alcoves, attics, and unused corridors. The novel starts with her, and returned just often enough to keep me hanging in.

Collins’s lack of place seems deliberately obtuse. The fantasy world, or the world of fantasy, is an arena rich with possibility for social commentary. The creation of other worlds is able to reflect our own back to us anew, and to reveal what was previously hidden by assumption or habit. Ursula le Guin springs to mind, but then she is an author whose praises I doubt I could fully express. Collins just hints at relevance. In the

A deadly education by Naomi Novik

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Steve Kretzmann

It’s set at a deadly boarding school with even deadlier things lurking around. The school is exclusively for children with magic.

Naomi writes on privilege, class, and status between children, highlighting the tensions between well known wizards and witches and those from poor or unknown families.

It’s really interesting because it’s narrated by a very sarcastic, cynical, funny, snarky, and witty main character.

As you’ll have picked up, it’s got Harry Potter vibes. It’s good but not as good as Novik’s other novels.

Oh! and the book builds a lot! I mean A LOT, but with no real climax. I hope it explodes on the sequel.

The novel is a parable on society. The protagonist is absolutely not interested in parenthood or career, but she enters a phony marriage in order to get people off her back.

It gets very very dark and weird and I absolutely loved it, although I think it is worth mentioning that there are explicit scenes of child sexual abuse described in first person from the child’s point of view: broke my heart

background, behind the roiling emotions of our protaganists, is The Party and the whims of its leader, the Old Man, and patriarchy and persecution of others, Christians among them, but these are mere gestures to obscure the fact this is a Romance, a sophisticated

Mills&Boon. Which means it probably stands

The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott

Exciting Times by Naosi Dolan

The book is a set of short stories and a novella set in a mythic town - Cross River which was founded by slaves who rebelled against their masters.

It is a solid collection of short stories, and I enjoyed the novella as well. Scott’s writing is very lyrical, and has strong musical influences. There is lots of examination of history and cultural mythology. It is Insightful and darkly funny, with a touch of spec fic/ magical realism.

I do think it could be woven together neatly as a novel (about 60% of the stories are related/have overlapping characters), just for the sake of clarity and situating the reader at a linear point in the history of Cross River.

Short reviews by staff at The Book Lounge, the best indi bookstore in CapeTown

a chance on some best-seller list. Fascinating.

The Betrayals is published by The Borough Press, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

This book does an incredible job of weaving timely and important discussions (about intimacy, queerness, class tensions, neo-colonialism, imperial legacies, coming of age under the crushing weight of global capitalism…) into breezy and fun-filled prose.

This is a romance novel on the face of it, with all the wit and sugary flourishes the genre entails, but past all the layers of irony, Dolan explores her subject with care and scintillating precision; the pathos is real, and comes just as easily and unexpectedly as the chuckles. A neat opportunity for someone looking for a “light read” to learn a thing or two.

Mother City News

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17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

Koeberg Emergency Plan (EP) Calendar 2021 Dear Neighbour, We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2021.

The 2021 Koeberg Nuclear Power Station Emergency Plan Calendar will be distributed to households, businesses, and schools in Atlantis, Mamre, Pella, Philadelphia, Duynefontein, Melkbosstrand, Van Riebeeckstrand, West Beach, Bloubergstrand, Bloubergrandt, Sunningdale, Table View, Parklands, and the farms surrounding Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.

Distribution of the calendar will be completed by the end of January 2021, this includes surrounding farms and schools within the 0-16km radius from Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.

Should you not have received a copy of the calendar by 31 January 2021, kindly contact the Koeberg Stakeholder Management Department at tel. +27 21 550 5133 during oďŹƒce hours.

17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

Mother City News

7

Fresh councilor saddles an old horse

Recent by-elections see new DA candidate take the reins in Ward 115 Steve Kretzmann Fresh blood has just stepped into the technocratic labyrinth of the metropolitan municipality. Ian McMahon, freshly minted in blue, was elected as councilor of one of the city’s most disparately urban wards, Ward 115, in a by-election on December 9 after previous incumbent Dave Bryant moved up to Parliament.

With his corporate and LGBTQ-activist background, McMahon steps in with an overwhelming 82% of the vote, but only from the 1 972 people who cast a ballot. Voter turnout was a mere 11.72%, but better than the 10% McMahon said he was told was expected for by-elections.

Support for him and the DA party he represents was down to 56.5% in one voting station where 67 votes were garnered, but support in Greenpoint side was as high as 95%.

As a De Waterkant guy who served six years as chair of the ratepayers association, it seems McMahon’s challenge is to get the lower Woodstock and Salt River residents to know him, and to help them solve the problems they face; homelessness, grime, and crime.

It was here he focused on knocking on doors, backed by an experienced DA team showing him the ropes.

Having spent 24 years involved in LGBTQ

activism and activities, such as Cape Town Pride and setting up the first LGBTQ shelter in Oranjezicht, and owning the Crew Bar in De Waterkant, he had to state his gay credentials upfront to certain “more religionorientated communities” in Woodstock.

He appealed to them on his family values (engaged, three dogs), and seven years of proven track record with organisations that were “often at odds with the City”.

It seems to have worked, he improved on Bryant’s support in those voting areas, by about 12%.

Having “always been on the ground” and volunteering to do something if he saw it needed doing, he admits the thought of getting involved in politics had crossed his mind, but didn’t know how to walk through the doors until Ward 74 councilor Roberto Quintas opened one for him after he was awarded a Certificate of Recognition for services to the community in February last year. McMahon says he got his blue t-shirt and Bryant coached him for succession.

Judging by McMahon’s patter, Bryant has done well.

“Often it’s the perceived communication around service delivery (that people are upset about),” he says in the subtly gaslighting double-speak of bureaucracy, but a spark of well-meaning pragmatism comes through as he continues: “(it’s) about being authentic and honest that I don’t have an answer but I will come back with an answer.”

Asked about that bureaucracy, which he now has to deal with as opposed to the relatively flat hierarchies of activist or medium-sized business organisations, he lives up to his promise to admit what he doesn’t know.

“I don’t know, I’ll have to learn. I understand there’s three influences: community, party, council.”

When it comes to issues, homelessness is high priority, and he’s had a meeting and been briefed on the current litigation and national directives by Jean-Pierre Smith, who is mayco member for safety and security.

He says he’s had some experience in this realm and there are times when “tough love is an important element”. The standard City/ DA policy of supporting organisations and programmes rather than giving “handouts” is delivered, but he does raise the recent Cost of Homelessness Report, which is a welcome first for Cape Town. The report states at minimum, the approximately 15 000 homeless people living in Cape Town cost the public purse R744m a year. This is the cost of various social services, whereas using this money to simply house them may cost less, with savings accruing over time as their lives attain a sense of stability and some once again contributing to, rather than draining from, public services.

He says he’ll be pushing the continuation and completion of three social housing initiatives in his ward, as well as getting

involved in the District Six Local Spatial Development Framework meetings taking place.

Ironically, his Woodstock Salt River constituency is least concerned about homelessness, while it’s the number one issue for his city and Atlantic seaboard constituency where the issue is such a hot topic a social media altercation led to a Mouille Point resident’s car getting petrolbombed earlier this year.

For Woodstock, he believes grime is the fundamental concern expressed by residents, as a result of illegal dumping and litter. McMahon says he’s an advocate of the Broken Windows crime prevention theory, which was espoused by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani when he was elected in 1993. The theory is that a policing focus on eliminating petty crimes results in more orderly neighbourhoods and a corresponding decrease in violent crime. Giuliani rode the wave of a re-election on the success of this campaign. But researchers have argued that crime in Los Angeles, with its corrupt and dysfunctional police department, decreased as much during that period, while the increase in petty policing led to increasing cases of complaints of police brutality and over-reach, leading to a police vs citizens mindset. Giuliani has since become outgoing American president Donald Trump’s lawyer.

McMahon, it seems, has a fine line to tread.

Breaking the echo chamber in the city bowl and beyond

Years disappear like water through your fingers. People been going on about how 2020 has been dragging and they just wish it could be over and whaa whaa wha.

Bollocks man! This year has gone down the plug just as fast as any other. 365 days is 365 days. And as for skeeming we can’t wait for 2021, well, there we were saying the same thing last year about 2020. You seen that meme about 2020 is just holding 2021’s beer?

Well, ja. Anything’s possible. Like a large meteorite, the Milnerton fault line deciding to do a jig and cracking Koeberg in half, Elon Musk blowing up half the world thanks to some hare-brained Space X experiment, Putin deciding ‘what the hell, let’s just see if this red button works’, Boko Haram deciding to invade Mpumalanga.

You know, shit happening, as it tends to. Which is to say, this moment, now, is what we have. Forget hope, forget thinking 2021 is going to solve all our troubles. Things may get better, they may get worse. All we know is this moment, so best thing to do is appreciate it as it flows into the next and the next. And as for the people we love, Covid has taught us not to take them for granted, surely. Relish the space they take up in this world, tell them you love them, look at the clouds, try not to let the government raise your blood pressure.

What with ‘rona doing another Mexican wave around our national stadium, things have gone pretty quiet this summer, which is why I’m writing so much kak in order to take up space. If you were planning to holiday in the Eastern Cape or garden route, sorry.

Theatre The stunning Jennifer Steyn and incredible Andrew Buckland have put a play together, called the woman who did...n’t. These two actors and theatremakers have decades of experience between them and have been under the lights of some of South Africa’s best plays, and yes, we have good ones. In this one, ‘a woman packs up her home and retreats into a cave beneath her house; a place of quiet contemplation and explosive rage’. The rest of the blurb follows: “From here, we sail away on her Tableboat down a roaring river, over an impossibly high waterfall and down into an unfathomable underworld. Like a virus in a host cell, she disrupts everything, multiplying here, depositing stories there and all the time strewing the clamorous jangling questions which echo in her head. Then she encounters GreenTights, the warrior who answers; ‘No moral flexibility. There can be none. Burn it. Burn it all to ashes’.”

With these two, it is bound to be an hour of laughter, glorious flights of fancy, and some deep philosopy threaded throughout. Even some tears, perhaps. You can certain the acting will be top notch.

You’ve got to be fast though, they’re only on until December 19. Catch them at The Baxter Golden Arrow Studio, either at 4pm or 8.15pm. Tickets cost about R100, book through baxter.co.za The Theatre Arts in Observatory, the first Cape Town theatre to reopen after lockdown, has decided to close until further notice because the second ‘rona wave is more hectic than the first, and after December 19, The Baxter is also taking a hiatus and waiting for the ‘rona to simmer down. Sooner rather than later, we hope.

Music The one gig that seems to happening around krismis time is Louise Carver, who is unleashing her lovely voice in Stellenbosch at The Daisy Jones Bar on Summerhill Farm where you can listen to her crooning as the sun sets. The open air concert is set for 23 December with the show starting at 7.30pm. Just so long as she doesn’t sing her cover of ‘Give Me Hope, Joanna’, it should be worth the trip out to the country, and if you pair it with our wine column present and past, you can make a day of it and pick up some fine wine at some of the wine farms. They’re likely starved of visitors so will probably fall over themselves to welcome you, so it’s a good time for it. Tickets cost R165pp online, so consider giving yourself a Christmas prezzie. Book through louisecarver.com

FREE COPY

17 DECEMBER 2020 - 25 JANUARY 2021

Festivals If you decide to get out of the city this weekend and go Karoo ways (how is Cape Town still so madly, frustratingly clogged when we supposedly don’t have any tourists), pop into the charming, if somewhat dessicated-at-this-time-of-year town of Barrydale on the R62 and check out the 1st Barrydale Analog Photographic Festival. This is the jol that separates the hipsters with Leicas around their necks from the people who actually know what the inside of a darkroom looks like (hint: not much light). But seriously, there are exhibitions by the cream of South Africa’s photographic talent. And what’s more, they do know what silver halide is.

We’re talking geezers like Obie Oberholzer and Johann Wilke, people they mentored who are now middle-aged, like PE’s Tim Hopwood and the effervescent Graham Abbot, as well as the much-hyped Roger Ballen (Die Antwoord, anyone?), and hard-working photojournalists such as Eric Miller and Roger Bosch. Take your credit card if you haven’t maxed it out yet, when you see what they have on offer, you may just decide to invest in something in a frame. Saturday 19 December is the last day, so take a road trip. Visit Facebook: Analog Photography Festival or contact Graham on 084 663 5990. It’s happening at the Karoo Art Hotel.