Zukiswa Wanner

‘I am not staying here much longer. If the election results were different, there might have been some point. But with the  present government of noble niggers, all sorts of racialist laws might be passed; and life for minority communities could  become tricky….I would prefer a hundred times to be ruled from London, as in the old days, than to be ruled by the present people.’

The above quotation is from a letter that V.S. Naipaul wrote to his late wife Pat upon a home visit to Trinidad as that country was in the throes of decolonizing.  It is quoted in his AUTHORIZED biography, The World is What it Is that  I am currently reading.  What, you wonder, does the quotation above have to do with Cape Town and why the hell did I refer to that South African city as a republic?

To be blatantly honest because I think V.S.Naipaul, ingenious writer that he is, is also very much a sad human being. He is a clear indication that art and the artist can be truly separated. So too with Cape Town . A beautiful town full of many ingenious people who, fourteen years later, still need to find a way to become part of South Africa . In fact, I know many paler people who have moved to Cape Town because they feel about the rest of the country the way that Naipaul felt about Trinidad although they will not be as candid as that but will use indicators such as crime rate is high (while moving to the murder capital of South Africa).When I talk of Cape Town’s people, I of course am referring to the white people.

Don’t get me wrong, Cape Town also has those other people referred to confusingly on official papers as Coloureds and Africans (are white South Africans not Africans? And the Coloureds?) but one rarely sees the two groups unless one visits their ghettoes in the Cape Flats , Langa, Gugs, or Nyanga. In fact, I think if the country were to do a survey they would find, just as many whites move to cape Town from elsewhere, similarly many non-whites move out as fast too because Cape Town is still afraid to deal with colour. Every time I am in a restaurant in Camps Bay in Cape Town and I spot a black face (not a waiter), I am pretty certain that the person is probably a business tourist from my country ( South Africa ) or somewhere else in the world. Rarely is that person a Cape Tonian – so many years after the rest of the country agreed on reconciliation and integration.

And then of course the cost of living is so high that even if the ‘African and the Coloured’ wanted to rise above being working class by scraping and saving they still could not. One cannot buy a house in the ‘burbs of Cape Town unless they have a trust fund, a salary of at least five figures a month or, they are British or German expatriates coming with their pounds and euros. One of my friends who just surrendered out of Cape Town for Johannesburg told me an interesting anecdote. On asking for a raise from his last employer because, ‘I am barely making it. Rent in Rondebosch, school fees for my two children, and petrol for my car plus the rising cost of living, please, can you consider giving me a raise?’, was met with a resounding ‘no’. And not a polite, ‘the company is not doing well but when things looks up we’ll revisit your problem’ type of no but a rather funny if sad no. His lady boss apparently said ‘no’, but then proceeded, ‘if it’s really tough Stephen, why don’t you consider moving to Langa?’

Tragic, No?

I am not saying this rant out of the blues. I know many of my colleagues who feel the same way but it hit me how the separation of Cape Town from the rest of the country is problematic when I was having a conversation with one of South Africa’s elder statesmen of literature and he highlighted how he goes to Cape Town only when he is absolutely required to do so with work. It was disturbing.

Now, there are many a wonderful people in Cape Town who may not be consciously separating themselves from their darker fellow citizens but – if you are running a company and are paying your employee an amount that cannot get them out of the ghetto (there are those who decide to stay in Langa by choice but most people are not given that choice) then you too are complicit in Cape Town’s apartheid.

I am part a group of writers who is taking part in MobFest’s a Novel Idea…the cellphone short story competition. I am  of course honoured to be part of the inaugural group taking part in something this innovative but I was amused to note that the Cape Town editor sent through an email to all participants stating, ‘in order to be more representative and to appeal to a wider audience, we have invited an Afrikaans writer.’ I wondered whether any Zulu, Xhosa, sePedi or Shangaan writers had been invited. But then again, she is in the Republic of Cape Town and in that country, I suppose Afrikaans constitutes a multiplicity of voices.

I am not totally pessimistic about Cape Town . May be we can find a way, under the next government, to colonise them so that the rest of the country can finally say, ‘Welcome to South Africa , Cape Town ’.

I am at the inaugural Pan African Literary Forum in Accra, Ghana, a forum that attempts to bring together established and emergent literary voices from Africa and the Diaspora to learn from each other. It’s been enlightening. It has been an interesting experience and more on that on another day because this piece is not about that. This piece is about the hotel I am about to check out from tomorrow as I make my way to a retreat with the rest of the delegates (hate that word. It sounds so bloody politician-like but couldn’t find a better one, this being a lazy Sunday and all!).

When the South African delegation (ouch!) arrived in Accra, we were checked in, like the good patriots that we are who like the familiar, into the 3-Star Protea Hotel. Alas, the Protea only had space for us for three days although some of us would be in Accra for at least ten days. So we sent feelers out to the hotel staff the night before the day we were supposed to be out and many of these helpful folk came up with addresses with one, Raul, even calling around to make tentative reservations for us. Sunday morning we all emerge bright and early and after checking out, we are forced to call our assigned driver, Noah (more on this colourful character later. May be even as a character in a future short story or novel) to come and pick us up and take us hotel-hunting if you will. Unbeknown to us, Noah had already made a deal with a friend of his that we would be checking into their hotel so this is where he first takes us. Lovely place. Spacious rooms. Ghanaian-owned, and they were willing to give us all rooms at a set single rate in spite of the sizes (executive, standard, whatever). Sounds great yeah? But we did not like to be dictated to so we told the manager we would come back after an hour. Besides, Raul was meeting us elsewhere to show us the hotel he had tentatively booked for us. So Noah drives us to this other hotel in a sulk – and the man can sulk- all the while refusing to take part in small talk. I felt sorry for fellow scribe and poet Kitso then.

Fortunately for Noah and the commission he had been promised at the Ellking Hotel, we found the second hotel not as great as the one he had taken us to earlier so he drove us back, this time in a happier mood but not forgetting to remind us that ‘I told you’, so we could do our booking. Kitso, Prof and I were given an executive suite – I even have my own balcony and such. But this alone would never have made me feel as highly sentimental about checking out of this hotel tomorrow as I do now. Hotels are after all hotels with their standard fare, and the enforced politeness of the employees and the patronizing one of the hotel manager to people paying standard fare right?

Wrong.

For the first time in my life, I am actually going to miss being a hotel. The owners, Madam Ellen and her husband Mr King, are gracious and are characteristic of the Ghanaian hospitality that I have experienced all the time I have been here but without the falseness that one would get in a hotel chain. I have talked to the employees and strangely, they are not related to the owners of the hotel yet it feels very much like everyone here has a stake in the hotel and the employees all make one feel as though you are part of a family. The hospitality includes having the chap at the gate run to get you a cab when traveling elsewhere (something everyone probably has encountered in Accra), but what others have not experienced is how the management of the hotel offers their guests courtesy car with driver when making short runs for something. I have never been made to feel pampered while feeling a part of a family – a hotel family as I do now while sitting here in Ellking Hotel typing this from their complimentary computers.

I do not know when next I will come to Accra but what I do know is that, when I do, I will be returning to this hotel again and if anyone is coming this side, I am not recommending any other hotel to them.

To Madam Ellen, Mr. King and the wonderful staff of Ellking Hotel: yours may be a two star hotel but you have afforded a bunch of South African writers who may not be always as polite as they should be (being from an aggressive Joburg and all) five star hospitality. Thank you for showing us true Ghanaian hospitality!