Cape Town is going right. For many people who have plenty of money and upward mobility. It really works for them. (Illustrative image: Generated with Google Gemini Flash Image 2.5) I’m one of those Joburgers who tends to fly into Cape Town for a night or a few days at a time but never really lives there. So I can’t, in good or bad conscience, claim to really know what it’s like under its skin. All I can do is compare it with my own life which involves a daily disappointed-but-not-surprised sigh that my rubbish bin still has not been collected.
I should live up to the best standards of my profession and use each trip as an exercise in observation, taking note of the local dynamics and how they appear to be changing.
Instead, probably a lot like you, the moment I’m safely in the Uber, I am lost in a screen responding to messages and emails and huffing and puffing about why the world did not take the two hours I was offline to just right itself for once!
But even on those flying visits I can see the growing difference between the communities in the city.
I know there is a massive gulf between Sandhurst and Alex, but something in Cape Town feels a little different.
It’s probably that Sandton is still affected by the city around it, there are (some) potholes, businesses spend a fortune storing water because of the failures of the council, and you see a huge diversity of people on the streets.
In Cape Town most of the people you see walking in the city centre appear very middle class.
And even some of them who live there tell me they feel they don’t belong anymore.
Either the small home they’ve owned for many years is costing them a huge amount in rates and taxes, or the local shopping centre just “feels” too smart, or it’s just “not them” anymore.
But I think if you’re a younger South African, someone on the up, with qualifications and a career and prospects, well, I would move to Cape Town like a shot.
As Lindsey Schutters wrote in Business Maverick, there is a massive “premium housing revolution” going on in the City Bowl.
It’s now entirely possible for you to move in and live the kind of New York lifestyle you and your Friends have dreamt of since your parents were watching sitcoms in the Nineties. The apartments are wonderfully serviced with all of the hot and cold cappuccinos one could wish for.
Even better, when you step outside to cross the road to get something from Gunther at Central Perk the roads are perfect and the trip is entirely safe. The only thing you would have to worry about is whether the Great Wall of Gugulethu will be built by the time your parents land and have to cross the Geordin.
What’s not to like about such a life?
The problem is, like the end of Jennifer Aniston’s work day, once you leave the studio lot, you’re actually in Los Angeles.
The rest of the country, whether you’re living in Khayelitsha or posh Joburg, is becoming radically different. And when the difference grows as quickly as it is at the moment, that really worries me.
All through human history the lesson is the same, deepening inequality leads to terrible outcomes. Look no further than our own history or remind yourself that Elon Musk is not a good outcome.
Now, you would think that the people who run Cape Town and the Western Cape would be incredibly aware of this. And when they speak in public they say they are.
Hill-Lewis has made more affordable housing in Cape Town a big part of his promise to voters in the local elections. And he could argue that is a victim of economic gravity. As he once suggested, the best way to lower the pace of the property market in Cape Town would be to fix Joburg.
That may be true.
Except, Cape Town also gives the impression of being very keen indeed to help the insiders.
As Kevin Bloom has shown, the people who run the city have created a situation where someone can serve on the planning tribunal literally for life. And nothing bakes in inequality than a person who can stay on a body for life.
All of this is a funny reminder, that like your Friends, all politics is local. It’s really in the local sphere that you see things going wrong. Or going right.
And this is really the issue. Cape Town is going right. For many people who have plenty of money and upward mobility. It really works for them.
We should probably ask serious questions about how they did it. How could the rest of the country attract so much money and become so much more valuable?
But the bigger question is probably how can more people, and more areas, be included?
We would all want to live that life.
But we also need our circle of Friends to be so much bigger than it is. DM