Life And The City

What a beautiful day in The Mother City! Hard to believe that there’s so much ugly being perpetuated, so much chaos and conflict all around, such a struggle to live together in harmony. I even got lambasted for having sympathy with people who’d been evicted from their dwellings or ‘informal houses’ as it is also referred to. Unfortunately I’m incapable of ignoring inhumane behaviour regardless of who the perpetrator is, and who the victim. Apparently in some quarters though it is completely appropriate to feel no sympathy for ‘them’, the evictees, and that ‘they’ bus in and out from The Eastern Cape, making ‘us’ the perpetual losers. Any sign of empathy with the plight of those so maligned and immediately you’re classified as an ANC-apologist, and in this instance I was even classed a ‘liberal retard’ and a ‘gatkruiper’. Now, I choose not to belong to a party because my passion is for people not politics, and I don’t ascribe to opining in a prescribed way, so I’m always intrigued by how people want to associate me with especially one of the top two, as if that somehow would define me, and never in a positive way. So whilst everybody seems convinced that it’s all politics and very little else, I must confess to a concern for whom I’ve always considered ‘the poorest of the poor’ – those without shelter, without resources, without food. Them, amomgst others, would be the homeless people evicted from their shacks in Wynberg, the car-guards banned from Stellenbosch and the people in Khayelitsha who have to decide where they’re going to place their portaloos. And my understanding of what is being perpetrated here it seems differs somewhat from what is considered norm. By all means deal firmly, if somewhat harshly, with ‘illegal squatters’, eradicate ‘drug-dealing car-guards’ and lock up protesters for ‘transporting hazardous waste’, but I fail to see how these are solutions. Ok, lock up the protesters because apparently they also didn’t have tickets for the train they were on, but pray tell what will the car-guards be doing now, and where will the again-homeless go. My frustration with politics is that everything becomes about ‘who’s to blame?’ And any search for a solution is mired in so much postulating and posturing that the wagon invariably derails long before there can even be talk about arriving at a destination. I like to think that personhood comes before policy, discretion should be used when applying the rules, and head should always be applied with heart. And always that understanding a situation is not the same as living it.

A glorious day weather-wise in Cape Town, though. The sky beautifully blue, the sun gently warming, the shade cool. The mountain present, powerful, at peace. Certainly the perfect setting for an evolved, enlightened, engaged society.

Here’s to playing catch-up

SALUT!

Read more of Soli’s blog here.