small shards of a great mosaic

Small and white, enclosed with regular teeth, the cowley shell was once used by slave owners to “pay” their slaves. On the beach at Milnerton we came across poor white men, their faces burnished copper by the glaring sun, their eyes trained on the sand, each looking for these cowley shells which fetch R1 per 25. Worthless to the hapless slaves and of piteous value to these collectors, they are used to make necklaces and bracelets for the tourist trade. They showed us their other finds, ancient fossilized shark’s teeth, old and broken blue crockery pieces from shipwrecked galleons, perhaps carrying slaves in their holds. All worth a few rand to some collector. Across the narrow lagoon inlet black people in their orange tunics collected rubbish from Woodbridge Island beach, their filled bags bringing in the minimum wage of R60 a day.

In a small down near Worcester, displaced Zimbabwean immigrants are prepared to work for R40 or less a day. Two days ago, a thousand locals invaded their informal settlement and tore it down. Now they sleep on a playing field under the stars, the more vulnerable in a local hall. Earlier this year many were put to death in the townships.

Two nights ago, a black Maserati pulled up outside the best Italian restaurant in town, Il Leoni, a block from the Institute and a mere 200 metres from the Salvation Army soup kitchen. As the staff came out to look, other high value, big engines were directed by a policeman to take the one way the wrong way to shortcut on to Somerset Road. A tall, elegant waitress doing a PhD in English called Emma observed wryly with a tired sigh, “Yah, this is Cape Town”.

Pondering on these and many other images in the dead of night, awake because the howling wind caught the scaffolding opposite, making a sound like a rehearsal for a tubular bells recital, South Africa seemed to strain with its great contradictions. We are meeting the tall Emma at the Institute in the morning. She will be offering her free time to the Projects.

And, yah, this too is Cape Town, anotherof those tiny shards of a great mosaic.