Berkley Center

Approaching Cape Town from the airport, one is struck first by an aggressively Mediterranean landscape—very Cádiz in the summertime—and a grand bay vista that evokes San Diego, California more than anywhere else. A small collection of neatly packed plate-glass skyscrapers; impatiently blue waters filled with all manner of boats; chain stores and cheeseburger joints. It wouldn’t mesh with the common American preconception of Africa. Few things about Cape Town do. 

Upon further inspection, however, cracks in the generic sunny façade emerge: there’s Table Mountain to one’s left, a singular sight to be sure, with its rolling, tempestuous tablecloth of thick, beckoning cloud cover; the rainbow ruins and contemporary ghost town of District Six to one’s right, cruelly stripped of its former glory by an oppressive and unrepentant act of cultural disregard during the height of apartheid; and all around, visible evidence of the dichotomies of power, luck, health, and resources that so characterize the great African cities of the modern age. Still, it’s more London than Lagos; more cosmopolitan than it is cut off; more a story of the knowing wisdom of old cities than of the follies and chaos of the prevailing African stereotype. Cape Town lives in the omnipresent shadow of its own history, as old cities and new democracies inescapably do. 

South Africa as a whole is a study in diversity and contradiction. It is the most ethnically diverse country in Africa, hosting the largest populations of whites, Indians, and people of a mixed race background on the continent. Though around 70 percent of South Africans consider themselves to be of black African descent, they are not unified by culture or language. There are eleven official languages; three capital cities; Roman-Dutch, English Common, and South African parliamentary laws; nine provinces with 52 districts; at least seven climate zones; more than 20,000 plant species; four economic centers; a dual economy and large income disparities; some of the best hospitals in the hemisphere and one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world; large populations of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims as well as believers in traditional Khoisan and smaller African traditional religions; the list goes on.

Politics may be the most unified thing that exists in modern-day South Africa. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) is extremely powerful and has been since the first democratic elections in 1994, increasing its majorities by overwhelming margins in every election to the present day. Part of the ANC’s success can be attributed to its practice of absorbing smaller parties (often devoted to one issue) into itself or allying them through voluntary coalitions. Even the remnants of the old National Party (the political party behind apartheid) have been incorporated into the ANC. Whether or not this homogeneity in the political arena is a positive thing for a young democracy is open for debate. Still, it is interesting for its unique sameness in a country that otherwise seems to abhor congruity, to shrink away from it whenever possible, choosing instead the tumult and intrigue of multidimensionality.

Cosmopolitanism, more than anything, is what strikes me about South Africa. Whether in Cape Town or Durban, Jo’Berg or Port Elizabeth, a multitude of cultures, religions, political views, and personalities find their expression. The white Afrikaner amateur surfer in Jeffreys’ Bay is as much South Africa as the owner of the local shebeen in Inanda Newtown, KwaZulu-Natal. In this, South Africa illustrates for us an important lesson about Africa as a whole. The world must remember that South Africa is no “less African” than the Congo Republic or Mozambique, or Western Sahara, or Ethiopia. A truly useful paradigm of understanding Africa will necessarily incorporate all that is African into its framework. We cannot understand the problems that exist nor the successes that are occurring daily if we cannot take in the full spectrum of Africa—the agrarian and the industrialized, the urban and the rural, the black and the white and the Indian and Asian and the expatriates—the pitfalls as well as the sources of great and enduring hope.

Cape Town—as South Africa as a whole—is a euphony of poignant struggle; a vibrant multicultural mélange tempered by strife, composed and bound together by people fighting unceremoniously and justly for something better than that which they currently possess. It aims always for more, always for better; it is a bastion of wrenching, painful beauty and undeniable truth. The believers among us can only pray that the Cape will remain forever an outpost of hope for those brave enough to attempt to understand it; for all those who dare take on its nuanced, storm-weary beauty.