Beautiful Stranger
Taweni Xaba
Founder of African Book Connection, an NGO that provides textbooks to the higher education sector, and editor of The Deal, Taweni Xaba tends to focus her considerable talents on doing good. As a straight-talking humanitarian and aesthete, she experiences this city as beautiful but estranged and in need of a bit of mixing.
Cape Town – the city of blue skies, big seas, mountains, winelands and fynbos – is more of an idea than an experience for me. The expectation is that we’re taking it all in, all of the time, but that is not true for most of us.
I hear talk about how laid-back and slow the people are here. My impression is that we’re too busy to really engage with our surroundings. I know the mountain is there and that I can touch the sea if I want to – it’s right outside my office in Mouille Point after all – but I don’t do it often enough and I’d like to change that. Knowing that my environment is majestic, beautiful and calm is comforting, and is one of the reasons I don’t feel overwhelmed, no matter how hectic my life becomes. Cape Town makes space for me.
I’m at home here on a very basic level because my mother is here. When I’m away it calls me back. I may love being in other cities around the world but they don’t call me back like this one. That’s the definition of home, a place that calls you when you’re away from it. I feel like the Pope whenever I return from a trip away – even if it’s to Jo’burg. I want to kneel down and kiss the ground!
I love that this truly is a ‘town’ in terms of its size. I was born in Blantyre in Malawi where the tallest building at the time was 24 storeys high, so this is big enough for me. It doesn’t feel chaotic. I feel that the city is a bigger version of my home, in that I know how it works and where everything is. That said, after 16 years here I’m still discovering new things.
I found a tobacconist near Greenmarket Square the other day – an old-style store with friendly, smiling people and a great old man behind the counter. That sense of connection and a recent walk through Green Point Market, where I heard a mix of languages, including French, Senagalese and German, is a reassuring experience. It gives me hope that we are not as parochial as we seem. You can feel isolated here. The space between people is too wide; our social bubbles are too inflated. We need to embrace a different kind of input. It’s important to connect on a real level with people who aren’t part of our social and cultural group. If we do this more, travel more, read more, we’re invigorating our thinking.
It’s time to break out of our divisions – black, white, occupation, family – if we’re to become a world-class city. The future beckons. New York didn’t become New York by being insular – it opened its arms! If you take the obvious example of black and white, some of us are living ‘equally’ but we’re still separate. I’m lucky enough to have a wide circle of friends made up of all sorts of people, but when I bring them together it doesn’t work. What we’re busy with is just the decor. We’re creating pockets that look like diversity without changing our thinking. No wonder outsiders come here and create their own communities made up of their own people. When in Rome…
We have to stop seeing people politely in controlled circumstances and start bringing them into our hearts and homes. We have always known how to do that. Africa has an attitude of abundance; the poorest person will offer you his last morsel and it is this basic humanity that we can teach.
We have so much to offer. Globally, people are looking for a different way to operate. Humanity is becoming a strength. Guests to this continent have abused our hospitality repeatedly so it’s natural that we’re in two minds about whether we want to share it, but that is no reason to stop being who we are. We must open our arms.
ROAD
High Level Road above Green Point
SOUND
The Moreira Project
DISH
Fish and chips on the rocks in Hout Bay
TRADITION
Tweede Nuwe Jaar
(a traditional Cape celebration on 2 January)
LANDMARK
Greenmarket Square
DRINK
Home-made lemonade from Birds Boutique Café
SPOILING
The Secret Room at Cavendish Square
PASTIME
Playing with my baby on the Sea Point Promenade
NEIGHBOURHOOD
Green Point
ICON
The V&A Waterfront
STORE
The Pan African Market
HIDDEN TREASURE
Sturk’s Tobacconist
DON’T LEAVE WITHOUT
Shack Chic