More Sights and Sounds of Cape Town

South Africa is a country of multiple paradoxes, brought about in large part by its diverse racial and socio-economic history. Unlike its cousin Johannesburg to the north west, Cape Town has a centuries old history as it was established as a convenient pit stop for the seafaring Dutch traders who were en route to the Far East to trade in spices. On my second visit there this past Easter, I took the time to revel in the predictable and well-trodden touristy excursions.  But this time I chose to experience them through the lens of a visitor from an East African country, more specifically a Kenyan lens.

 

You see, in this beloved sun kissed country of ours, historical partiality has ensured that access to the sea front along the coast line is reserved for the favored few land and hotel owners. One can only see the beautiful beaches in the North and South Coast by entering one of the hotels, visiting a beach front private property or gaining access to the slivers of public beaches that would appear to have been begrudgingly provided to stifle the potential noise of the pedestrian proletariat.  As we weaved our way south, out of the city towards Cape Point, we drove along a road that neatly divided the beach to the right which broke the crashing Atlantic sea waves and beautiful, expensive residences and shopping districts to the left. The beach and the sea have been democratized to enable everyone to enjoy what is a public utility. There were public parks along the way, the most notable one being Moui Point, with playgrounds, benches and public sculptures while ordinary citizens cycled or jogged along the made for purpose paths.

 

Our driver Ali had lived in Cape Town for the last twelve years. He is originally from Bukavu in eastern Congo. It only took a few minutes of him listening to our Kenglish before he cottoned on that he could speak to us in fluent Swahili, creating an instant bond. His guided tour was thereafter centred on showing us the million dollar homes of the people who have transformed Cape Town into a playground of the globally sourced rich and sometimes famous. The moneyed suburbs of Clifton and Camps Bay were nestled on the foothills of the stunning 12 Apostles mountain range. At the base of Camps Bay peninsula was a public beach where we found mainly colored families barbecuing up a storm in the name of Sunday lunch, each in their own little space but taking scenic advantage of the Atlantic vista in front of them and the public facilities that the Western Cape provincial government had provided for them.

 

We snaked further south, driving along the stunning ocean drive which cuts a meandering path along the jutting rocky mountain range that makes up much of the Western Cape coastal line. As we crested yet another cliff, a breathtaking settlement appeared down in a valley, bordered by a rock filled beach that provided a natural breakwater to the giant waves that crashed around them.

“That’s Llandudno town down there,” Ali said in hushed tones. The houses were enormous architectural masterpieces and skillfully built into the rocky foundations that made up much of the area. “Only celebrities and rich people live there. There are no schools and no shops there. Nothing that can attract the ordinary person,” snorted Ali.  I had to scribble down the odd name of the town as we zipped past a signpost with the Welsh name. According to Wikipedia the last census in 2011 revealed that the population is largely 86.9% white, 10.3% black and then the rest. Memo to self: devolution comes in all shapes and sizes.

 

The Western Cape is home to the South African wine industry and its tourist sites such as Table Mountain, Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent most of his imprisoned years as well as the Cape of Good Hope ensures that there is a steady stream of tourists all year round. But it is the large African diaspora that lives and works in this very cosmopolitan city that draws on its nectar like attraction to economic promise. As I wrote earlier in the year about Mtwapa’s multi-tribal substrata that ensures non-violent episodes during each Kenyan election cycle, Cape Town similarly remains removed from the occasional xenophobic incursions that flare up in South Africa. “Why is that?” I asked Ali. “The people here are very mixed,” was his quick response. “There’s lots of coloreds here, more than the blacks so no fighting.” As Cape Town to the south and Mtwapa, on Kenya’s coastline demonstrate, the more you mix up a population from a racial and tribal perspective the more tolerance you find. That’s some food for thought.

 

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

A Bulgarian’s Unlikely Success Story in South Africa

I recently went to South Africa on a work assignment and was met at Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport by a gentleman called George for the transfer to my hotel.George is a Bulgarian who came to South Africa in 1994 aged twenty-eight years with just $500 dollars in his pocket. He had just left the army after being tired of the growing sense of helplessness and poverty in a struggling economy following the collapse of the Soviet Eastern Bloc at the tail end of the last decade. He landed at Johannesburg’s airport and asked the first taxi driver to take him to the cheapest hotel he knew. That hotel ended up being in Hillbrow, a rough, crime ridden Johannesburg suburb where his was the only white face for miles around. Armed with his $500 and ten or so words of English which included “cheap hotel” he walked around the neighborhood and bought a map so that he could get a lay of the land, as he wanted to figure out what he could do to earn a living. After walking for several blocks that took him beyond the confines of the dangerous Hillbrow zone, he found a butcher’s shop owned by a Serbian. Speaking Russian, which was a secondary language for former Eastern Bloc countries, George was able to find that therewere other Bulgarians who were working as food delivery riders for Nandos.

“I only knew two things: the map of Johannesburg and how to ride a motorcycle,” he said with a chuckle as he proceeded to tell me how he found that his country mates, ten in number, all lived in one house and welcomed him with open arms. They told him that all he had to do was buy a motorcycle and they would introduce him to the owner of the Nandos restaurant so that he could get a job as a delivery guy, which didn’t require much English. He spent his few remaining dollars to buy a second hand motorcycle and began working. After a few yearshe moved to work at another Bulgarian’s coffee shop, who eventually sold the restaurant to him which he ran successfully and subsequently sold in 2002.

A random chat he had with an acquaintance led him to discover that hotels in Johannesburg’s commercial district of Sandton were looking for clean, executive vehicles to transfer their guests to the airport. He bought a Mercedes Benz, “I incentivized the concierges in the hotels to call me whenever a guest wanted to go to the airport,” he said. George now has over 30 luxury vehicles and, according to him, he’s made a lot of money from the transport business as he has a few blue chip South African companies on retainer to transfer their executives.

“What are your key lessons?” I asked him as we approached my hotel. He looked straight ahead, lost in deep thought and I almost thought he hadn’t heard my question. Sighing loudly he answered after about a minute. “I’ve never taken my family on holiday ever,” he said. The intensity of the business has never permitted him to take a day off. “To get one really good and responsible driver, I have to endure almost fifty recruits,” he said. George speaks good English now and his two children are playing competitive tennis, with his eldest son representing South Africa at junior global tennis meets. But he is well aware that the tenuous socio-economic threads that bind the rainbow nation can easily become undone. His family fell victim to armed robbers at their home a few years ago. “I want my children to finish school and then will see where to go from here,” he summarized as we pulled up at the entrance to my hotel.

George’s story is one of sheer gumption, hard work and the power of drawing on traditional social networks to grow himself into a successful business owner. But that growth, as he ruefully ruminates, has come at great personal cost to the quality of life with his family, children in particular as they only have a few more years before they move on to university. Time, particularly quality family time, is a precious commodity that absolutely no money can buy was my conclusion as I stepped out of that interesting discourse.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Innovation Comes In Different Forms

Thabo has been my official airport transfer resource in Johannesburg for the last two or so years. With a medium build and dark brown complexion, his eyes are always dancing even when the rest of his face is cast in a serious expression. When Thabo first came to pick me up, we hit it off even before his Toyota Camry had left the gates of Oliver Tambo International Airport because his first question to me was “How do you think the Kenyan economy will perform with the new government?” I whipped my head to my right to take a keener look at this South African who, having just picked me up from the airport, was engaging me in an economic discussion about my own country. I couldn’t even get to the answer as curiosity abounded. “How do you know I am Kenyan?” was my intrigued reply. “Oh I usually like to Google my clients before they arrive so I can know what makes them tick. I found your website and I saw you write a lot about the Kenyan economy, so I thought I could learn some more from you.”

If you visit South Africa often, you will understand why this random conversation with an airport transfer driver would be generate a certain level of astonishment. Let me leave it there before I’m accused of hate speech. Within the first ten kilometers I came to understand that Thabo owns his own company with a fleet of cars that he prefers to lease rather than outright buy, as the cash flow benefits as well as tax efficiency from leasing were much higher. In the two years since I first met Thabo, his business has grown leaps and bounds simply because of his personal touch which I personally experience as he now ensures that he’s the one who always picks me from the airport, rather than his other drivers, whenever I visit Johannesburg for work. On my last visit in November, he proudly showed me his new app called “Africa Ride”. The app allows both him and his travel agent clients to show what time the passenger was picked up, what route the driver used and what time the passenger was dropped off. It then sends an invoice immediately to the client. In a city that experiences “Nairoberry” levels of insecurity, this app provides much peace of mind for his clients.

More importantly, the app gives Thabo greater control over his drivers all over the country. He chuckled as he told me that he can now see where the drivers are at any given time and the excuse that “I got lost” no longer washes with him as passenger destinations are automatically linked to Google maps which every driver’s smart phone has. I gently chided him for his hubris, as earlier in the year I had flown to Cape Town and used his driver there for the airport transfer in what ended up being a disastrous trip. The driver had no clue where my hotel was, despite it being on the iconic V&A waterfront and he got lost several times much to my chagrin (and mild panic at being in the company of a male driver late at night). “Ahh Kerol,” he drawled, “no worries, this app now fixes that nonsense the driver was giving you. And I fired that guy anyway, he was ruining my business!”

On a completely different innovative note, a close relative of mine lives and works in the United States. On my last visit there in 2015, he took a week off to spend time with us and completely switched off his phone. When we asked him whether his boss would be offended if he needed to reach him urgently, Close Relative shrugged his shoulders and said that he was on mandatory unpaid leave. “What’s that?” we asked. Apparently his employer was going through a fairly rough financial period. Sales were flat while costs were creeping up in line with inflation. The company had a mandated inflationary salary increments on everyone’s employment contracts. An effective way to manage these costs was simply to ensure that every single employee took about a month a year (broken down into maximum periods of one week at a time) of mandatory unpaid leave. The immediate effect would be to reduce the entire company’s payroll by the equivalent of one month by the year end. The overall impact would be to effectively cancel out the annual salary increment that had to be given to employees.

“So even if my boss calls, I don’t have to call him back or answer his emails because I am not being paid to,” was Close Relative’s defensive conclusion. “Even my own boss doesn’t answer his calls or emails when he’s on unpaid leave.” Close Relative is a smart one, and he ensured that he aligned his last 2016 unpaid leave week to the Christmas season. “How long can this last?” I asked him during a Christmas Day call. “Well, as a company we only have two choices. We can increase sales by either volume or innovation. Higher volume of sales of course leads to higher costs. Innovation is more desirable as new products have higher margins. But there’s no innovation taking place right now.” I chuckled. There was innovation taking place alright, specifically on the employee costs line. The mandatory unpaid leave was an excellent way of keeping that cost line flat while ensuring that the more unpleasant retrenchment option was kept at bay. The flip side of this innovation was its morale killing effect. While employees were relieved that there were no retrenchments – yet – the culture forming was one that if one was not being paid then one was simply not going to engage or be engaged whatsoever during such time. Innovation evidently takes many forms; some that lead to higher employee and client engagement and others leading to the exact opposite. Have an innovative 2017!

Gentrification in Johannesburg

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]A few weeks ago, a work assignment took me on a tour of the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg’s Central Business District (CBD). Now if you are a frequent traveller to Johannesburg, it is quite likely that there is little, if anything, that will take you into the city’s CBD which features tall, imposing skyscrapers grounded in streets teeming with bustling retail spaces and some rough thoroughfares that even locals fear venturing into. Most visitors tend to focus on the more glitzy shopping districts of Rosebank and Sandton rather than the dated and down market offerings to be found in the CBD, which has notoriety for high criminal incidence. To get to Maboneng, we drove past the financial district that has the distinct campuses of two of South Africa’s big four banks: Standard Bank and Absa. The two banks have multiple towers in close proximity that are linked via underground tunnels and air bridges which reduce the need to walk the streets. Getting off the ramp from the highway we entered streets that had clear evidence of time decay: broken windows, graffiti walls and heaps of uncollected garbage. The shops were kindred spirits to Nairobi’s Kirinyaga road with automobile industry players like “Camara Car Parts” and “Onyechi Auto Repair” dotting the scene nestled next to “Al Hakim Super Store” that seemed to sell just about anything, “Omega Fire Ministry” which hinted at the promise of spiritual redemption and “Cash For Scrap” that had an equally compelling promise for disposers of scrap metal. Meanwhile the city’s skyscrapers cast long shadows less than 400 meters away.

After making a few wrong turns here and there, we arrived on a street that was straight out of a European capital’s photo album. Chairs and tables filled the streets in front of cafés and restaurants offering multiple gastronomic delights. There was the fashionable Patta Patta restaurant owned by a fairly young South African gentleman called Ziggy, which had eclectic non matching chairs, burlap lampshades and brick cladded shelves that created a very warm and inviting atmosphere to taste local South African fare. Further down were more artisanal coffee shops and specialist bakeries co-located with architectural offices and electrical engineering consultants making for a very interesting mix of businesses and synergies. This was the heart of the Maboneng Precinct.

According to the official Gauteng Province website, “Maboneng” is a Sotho word meaning “place of light”. In 2008, a developer called Jonathan Liebmann bought old construction offices and warehouses dating from the 1900s and, in collaboration with an architect, he transformed the industrial space into a cultural oasis that is now Arts on Main, which is one of Maboneng’s two main building complexes. The building houses various studios which displays beautiful arts and crafts created by local South African artists. One studio was a testimony to social responsibility using creative rather than financial means. With an arresting title of “I was shot in Jo’burg”, the studio is the brainchild of South African architect Bernard Viljoen who converts Johannesburg’s street children into prolific photographers. His program started in 2009, when he picked 15 children from Twilight Children’s Shelter in the less than stellar Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg. He gave them disposable cameras and met them once a week on a Monday afternoon for a workshop. Bernard says, “We learnt how to search for beauty, composition and interesting subject matter where we thought there were none.” In December 2009, they had their first exhibition at the Arts on Main and it was a runaway success. Bernard says, “the kids mingled and chatted and explained their work like they have been doing this for their whole lives. They had a voice. I wanted to create an evening these children will never forget for as long as they live. It was a great success.”

Having walked the few streets of the Precinct, I was struck by the power of gentrification, and its ability to convert previously unattractive and uninhabitable spaces to premier retail real estate in the space of a few years. Every Sunday, the Precinct hosts “Market on Main” where fresh produce, baked goods, indigenous plants, books, art and fashion are all showcased. It launched in January 2011 and has morphed into a compelling weekend destination for the Johannesburg residents as one can find Ethiopian, Moroccan, Chinese, Italian and Indian food for sale as well as local South African delicacies.

This is not pointless rambling. What I saw in Maboneng is something that is inspiringly easy to replicate. From the roller skating youth that throng the car park adjacent to Aga Khan Walk, to the countless artists and designers that showcase their wares in the rather elite confines of the annual Christmas Craft Fair Nairobi has the capacity to showcase its food and culture in an organized, cheap and vibrant manner that can provide depth to the limited public offerings in the city. A drive past the roundabout near ILRI in Uthiru’s shopping centre will reveal an amazing use of public space every Sunday. Someone was inspired to provide a bouncing castle and other forms of children’s entertainment on Sunday afternoons, resulting in an efficient and cheap use of a public space that elicits delightful use by the residents of Uthiru. Parents, children and young couples sit on the grass and make active use of the space provided, which is simply a roundabout on Naivasha road that has unkempt grass but is transformed into a public utility by an enterprising entertainer. From rough neighborhoods on Nairobi’s Quarry Road to Industrial Area there are lots of opportunities to transform streets into public entertainment spaces that can showcase our inimitable Kenyan culture. We need to deepen our perception beyond giving youth loans to do businesses and look at art and culture as a credible source of compelling youth engagement as it provides an outlet for self expression as well as a non academic based source of gainful self employment.

Food for thought on this Labor Day holiday.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]