Revisiting the Happening Cape

Sometimes you don’t realise how much you miss a place until you go back.

 

And so it was with our five-day jaunt to Cape Town last week, with me in my official capacity as hanger-on, and my Beloved working his socks off at a conference.

 

Because, although it undoubtedly depends on what you’re into and what your tastes are, Joburg, to me, simply isn’t a patch on the Cape.

 

Particularly at this time of year during the dry winter season when everything in Jozi is turning a parched, ugly brown, and bush fires, some laid as fire breaks and others just ignored, appear to be breaking out all over the place.

 

The Western Cape, by way of contrast though, is looking lush and green and gorgeous as ever – and just has so much more going on, even during the tourist low season.

 

Even the shopping’s better. For ages now, I’ve been looking all over Jozi for a nice ornamental bowl to act as a wedding present from my Beloved and drawn a complete blank, disheartened as I’ve been by either the pedestrian or the showy bling that a lot of shops seem to specialise in here.

 

But a couple of days in the Cape and that coveted bowl is mine – a beautifully simple Zulu izinkamba, or drinking pot, traditionally used to share beer around a camp fire – courtesy of the African Trading Port at the V&A Waterfront.

 

A truly intriguing and suitably musty-smelling store, it resides over four uneven rickety floors in the Old Port Captain’s Building. And it specialises in selling genuine African artefacts ranging from sculptures to ceramics sourced from rural villages all over the continent by 500 or so art scouts. It’s fabulous.

 

Keeping on the arty theme, I also took myself off at one point for a trip to the Cape Town suburb of Woodstock, initially to nose around an interior design exhibit at custom furniture producers, Leon at CCXIX.

 

World Design Capital

 

Created to celebrate Cape Town’s World Design Capital (WDC) status this year, the 12Rooms Exhibition showcased the work of a dozen local designers, including a Xhosa tribal-inspired living room and a French loft-style bedroom.

 

The WDC designation is awarded every couple of years by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design to those cities that demonstrate a desire to employ design as a tool for social and cultural change as well as economic development.

 

But Woodstock seems to have been doing it for itself over the last two or three years regardless – although the city’s WDC status certainly won’t do it any harm either.

 

Woodstock is, you might say, the equivalent of East London’s Hoxton about 20 years ago – an area that you’d now describe as being down-at-heel but was once quite dangerous, with an eccentric mix of car repair shops, tatty hardware stores, ultra-trendy art galleries and foodie hang-outs all sitting cheek-by-jowl.

 

It’s also home to what you can only describe as ‘retail spaces’ such as the upmarket and extremely pricey Bromwell Boutique Mall [http://www.thebromwell.co.za], and the Old Biscuit Mill office and shopping complex, which holds a popular food and craft market every Saturday.

 

So while Woodstock’s regeneration may still be very much a work in progress, you can definitely see that it’s a neighbourhood on the up.

 

Another suburb that’s also starting to see gradual change is the infamous District Six. Unlike Woodstock, which was one of the few multi-racial areas to escape forced resettlement during apartheid, District Six was decimated.

 

Renowned at one time for having some of the best music and nightlife in the city, after it was declared a ‘white-only’ area in 1966, the bulldozers moved in, flattening homes and evicting a vast 60,000 people to the barren wastelands of the Cape Flats.

 

Cultural zone

 

While some have since managed to reclaim their land and rebuild with the help of a Trust set up for the purpose, another 800 or so claims are still on-going. But one of the few buildings to survive the devastation was the 1860 church hall of the now disappeared Congregational Church in Buitenkant Street.

 

This beautiful red brick space reopened its doors in February 2010 as the entrance hall and downstairs bar area of the Fugard Theatre, which is meant to act as the centrepiece for a new cultural zone in a bid to breath life back into the area.

 

The theatre itself, meanwhile, was named in honour of Athol Fugard, arguably South Africa’s most significant and internationally-acclaimed playwright. Perhaps best known for the 2005 Academy Award-winning film of his novel Tsotsi (Sesotho for ‘thug’), he also won a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2011.

 

Anyway, I wish I’d known about the place when we lived in Stellenbosch as I’d have been there every five minutes. While last week, I treated myself to the former Broadway romantic comedy classic ‘Same Time Next Year’, the future repertoire seemed to cover everything from Shakespeare to good, old Fugard himself. A lovely, intimate space seating just 335 souls, I’d highly recommend it.

 

And then finally for the trip’s foodie piece de resistance, there was Nobu at the One&Only hotel close to the V&A Waterfront.

 

The first restaurant in Africa to be set up by celebrity chef, Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, the décor was tastefully modern and the cuisine classically Japanese with a bit of a twist – my favourite.

 

Out of a six-course tasting menu though, my pet dishes simply had to be the smoked salmon sashimi and yellowtail California roll – gorgeous. The only bum-note to the proceedings, in fact, was the coffee-flavoured desert, which not only seemed out-of-keeping but also didn’t suit my caffeine intolerance.

 

Nonetheless, seeing as it was all kindly paid for by my parents who’d left us money for a culinary treat ages ago while on holiday in the Cape, I couldn’t complain too much.

 

Which means that, all in all, it truly was a good few days well spent.

 

 

 

 

 

Joburg’s D-Day: An Easter 420 Festival

In similar vein to the UK, getting away from it all over the Easter break to have yourself a South African adventure is not exactly the cheapest of propositions.

 

Hence my decision to stay put, stay local and stay solvent by seeing what delights Jozi had on offer to amuse and delight me with.

 

And so it was that, on Easter Sunday, I found myself at a Paschal Feast with a difference. No Easter bunnies or Easter egg hunts for me. Oh no.

 

Instead it was about bearing witness to Joburg’s very own 420 festival, dubbed the D Day Street Party – the D being short for Dagga, the local name for marijuana – in Staib Street, located in downtown, and somewhat dodgy, New Doornfontein.

 

The festival, which was one of 150 or so taking place around the world this weekend, including Hyde Park in London, saw thousands of pot smokers come together in tribute to all things weed, on what has become a hallowed date in their calendar – 4/20 or 20 April.

 

Because 420, it turns out, is a commonly-employed codename for the drug, which appears to have been coined by five friends while attending San Rafael High School in California in the early 1970s.

 

Calling themselves the Waldos because they used to hang out near a wall outside the school, the lads happily came into possession of a map allegedly showing the location of a disused cannabis plant plot in Point Reyes Peninsula.

 

Keen to get hold of some free bud, they started meeting regularly outside of school at 4.20pm after athletics practice in order to drive off to search for it – but to no avail.

 

Although the plants remained undiscovered, the spin-off creation of the boys’ 420 code word led to a much more famous legacy. Its use was spread far and wide by mutual friends and acquaintances of rock band, the Grateful Dead, from where it was subsequently picked up by the media and went global.

 

Legalisation

 

While the US may still be the epicentre of most of the world’s 420 celebrations, which generally focus on campaigning for cannabis legalisation, this year was apparently only the second time that South Africa has hosted such an event of its own.

 

And the driving force behind it all here is the so-called ‘Dagga Couple’, Myrtle Clarke and her partner, Julian Stobbs, a Brit who has been in the country for 23 years or so.

 

The whole story started back in August 2010, when the pair’s home was raided by the South African Police Service following a tip-off that they were running a drugs lab.

 

Although no such lab was found, they were arrested for being in possession of more than 105g of cannabis. Despite claiming to be mere recreational users, the quantity involved meant the couple were charged with dealing, before being bailed and released.

 

After appearing at the local magistrates’ court six months later, they duly applied for their case to be heard in the Constitutional Court, the highest in the land. Their aim was to create a test case in order to challenge existing laws prohibiting the use of, and trade in, Dagga, and have them ruled unconstitutional.

 

While the case is still wending its way through the country’s legal system, with all of the fits and starts that implies, it is now expected to be heard in March 2015 – hence the need for events such as the D-Day party, with its R50 (£2.80) entrance fee, to act as a fundraiser.

 

And an important, although not at first glance obvious, contributor to the campaign will be the Anti-Drug Alliance of South Africa (ADA-SA), a charity set up by former drug addict, Quintin van Kerken, to provide education and support services to substance abusers and their families.

 

During the event’s speeches, which were held just prior to lighting-up time at, you’ve guessed it, 4.20pm, van Kerken, took to the stage to pledge funding of a massive R500,000 (£28,000) in order to support the Couple’s legalisation efforts.

 

Addiction

 

His argument for the move, when I spoke to him afterwards, was that marijuana was much less harmful than other legal highs such as alcohol and there was no evidence that it led on to harder drug use.

 

Alcohol, on the other hand, was very problematic, particularly in a heavy-drinking culture such as South Africa, accounting for roughly 20% of all addiction at the national level. Drugs of all types came in next at a further 20%, while the rest comprised a heady mix of prescription medication, gambling, sex and porn.

 

Moreover, van Kerken elaborated, it wasn’t marijuana with its relatively low addiction rates of about 4.5% that were currently causing the biggest drug-related challenges in the country, but rather the amphetamine-like methcathinone or ‘cat’. Despite this, cannabis still accounted, bizarrely, for a huge 80% of all police drug investigations, leaving only 20% of already stretched resources for probes elsewhere.

 

As for more active advantages of legalisation, van Kerken believes that addicts would be more inclined to seek help without fear of recrimination, while cancer, arthritis sufferers and others would be able to exploit the drug’s medicinal benefits without fear of legal reprisals.

 

A third equally important consideration, however, is fiscal. Not only would legalisation take the industry out of the hands of criminal gangs, he said, but the resultant tax revenues from both marijuana and supplementary products such as hemp could be used to fund much-needed health and education programmes, as has happened in the US state of Colorado since it changed its legislation in 2012.

 

Despite its serious message though, the event itself was actually quite fun. What with indie bands making music, tattooed taggers creating artwork and people dressed as huge spliffs wandering around a large, borrowed 1960s warehouse with merchandise stalls and a bar, it was all very civilised.

 

And the neighbourhood looks to become even more so as it gets ready to experience a transformation of its own.

 

Although until recently this particular bit of New Doornfontein was pretty much a no-go area, Propertuity, the developer of the nearby uber-trendy Maboneng Precinct, with its fashionable Sunday Market-on-Main, has now bought up a number of buildings on Staib Street in order to redevelop them and work their regeneration magic there too.

 

And good luck to them, I say. It seems that this urban renewal bug has really quite addictive qualities of its own.

 

 

 

 

 

Up Market in Johannesburg

Our mission over the last few weeks has been to find a weekend market in Joburg that we enjoy quite as much as our lovely Slow Food one in Stellenbosch.

 

The good thing about our Cape Winelands favourite was that it sold everything from organic veg and freshly-made eats to a variety of arts and crafts, including hand-made jewellry.

 

Another advantage was that it was just around the corner from home and had an absolutely stunning setting. Located in the Oude Libertas wine farm on the side of the Pappagaaiberg (‘Parrot Mountain’ in Afrikaans), the site was surrounded by oak trees and vineyards and afforded breath-taking views over the Stellenbosch mountain range. Fabulous.

 

Sadly, so far however, we haven’t found anything that compares to our market-that-had-it-all– although the Fourways Farmer’s Market at the Earth Outdoor Living Nursery in Jozi’s northern suburbs probably comes closest.

 

Open every Sunday from 9am until 2pm, its 50 or so canopy-covered stalls are set in pretty gardens that you access via a pine tree walk, passing a hay bale seating area to your right and an open air maypole ribbon marquee to your left.

 

Just beyond the maypole are a number of wooden al fresco bars selling everything from wine and craft beer to a very dangerous seven per cent proof cider that tastes just like sparkling apple juice.

 

And even at 11.30am in the morning, a respectable number of hardy souls were already partaking, sitting around on hay bales with glasses in their hands, listening to a live blues band as they munched their way through pulled pork sandwiches, chicken biryanis and the like. You’ve got to admire their stamina.

 

My personal favourite in stall terms though belonged to a retired property developer of Italian heritage, who had nothing to show for himself but a blue-checked table-cloth, a basket of bread and crackers, and a sparse, white serving dish containing multi-coloured dips.

 

Nonetheless, as we ambled by, he called us over and encouraged us to sample his wares. Which turned out to be the most amazing pesto that I’ve ever tasted and which he made at home simply for the love of it. Great stuff.

 

Montecasino

 

Somewhat incongruously though, this right-on foodie hang-out is directly opposite Montecasino, a huge R1.4 billion (£780.6 million) – as its name implies – casino and entertainment complex, fashioned a la Las Vegas in the style of a Tuscan hilltop village.

 

And this tasteful theme continues inside – all sandstone and ochre winding streets and palazzos, housing shops, restaurants and even a cinema and theatre, alongside 70 gaming tables and 1,700 slot machines, apparently. It’s as kitsch as kitsch can be – and I loved it.

 

I had the pleasure of meeting a mate from Stellenbosch there a couple of weekends ago now who, together with her family and the old school friends that they were staying with, treated me to a game of 10-pin bowling.

 

Amazingly, seeing as I generally have the coordination of a jellyfish, I even managed to make it into second place out of a group of seven – a once-in-a-lifetime achievement, and true journalistic triumph as the winner happened to belong to the profession too.

 

Anyway, getting back to the food market point, another venue that’s definitely worth a visit is the more edgy Neighbourgoods Market in “vibrant” – for which read regenerating and bohemian – Braamfontein (or ‘blackberry fountain’ in Afrikaans).

 

Unlike the Fourways Farmers Market, which is mainly about selling fresh, seasonal produce and deli-style delicacies, this one is more of a breakfast/brunch/lunch venue.

 

Here you can sample Bunny Chow or ‘bunnies’, a mild curry from Durban’s Indian community served in hollowed-out bread; frikkadels, which are gently spiced, baked meatballs; and vetkoekies, which comprise yeasty balls of fried bread dough.

 

These can be served either in sweet mode, for example, covered in cinnamon sugar, or in flattened form as a savoury sandwich generally with some kind of meaty filling.

 

The Market itself, meanwhile, first started life at 73 Juta Street in 2011. Opening from 9am until 3pm, it is housed over two floors in a Brutalist-style former office building, which boasts a 15-storey concrete façade by Edoardo Villa, an Italian sculptor who lived for most of his life in South Africa.

 

Urban renewal

 

And it also turns out to be the sister of a similar venue in Cape Town, which was founded five years earlier in a sky-lit Victorian warehouse at the Old Biscuit Mill in the rundown, but likewise regenerating area of Woodstock.

 

The aim of entrepreneurs, Justin Rhodes and Cameron Munro, was to try and aid this regeneration process by introducing their own version of the artisan markets, operated along ethical and eco-friendly lines, that they missed from time spent in New York.

 

And it seems that Braamfontein was grateful for the break. Located just outside of the now rundown Central Business District (CBD), it had been a key commercial hub before the so-called ‘white flight’ from the inner city.

 

This migration of businesses out to Joburg’s new economic centre in the affluent northern suburb of Sandton and the exodus of residents to its surrounding neighbourhoods took place during the late 1980s and early 1990s as members of disadvantaged communities increasingly moved in.

 

The upshot was that, by the late 1990s, the CBD and its surroundings had become gang-infested, no-go areas. Over the last decade or so, however, the provincial government has tried hard to promote inner city renewal.

 

As a result, it has, with varying degrees of success, introduced everything from CCTV cameras in a bid to cut high crime rates to tax incentives in order to encourage businesses back.

 

But Braamfontein had never been quite as devastated as its notorious residential neighbours such as Hillbrow and Yeoville, and so has proved easier to bring back to life.

 

Current site of Joburg’s University of Witwatersrand, it now fancies itself as a young, trendy, creative centre, with The Grove, a bar and eatery-filled public square at its centre – although non-student residents still aren’t too keen on trailing the streets after dark, so I hear.

 

Anyway, while we still may not have unearthed that perfect Jozi market just yet, finding out a bit more about the city and its delights has to be one good way of settling in.