Cape Town by night

I’ve spent a week in what is considered the jewel of Africa. Cape Town is a city boasting a population of four million, matching that of New Zealand. It’s a breathtaking oxymoron of affluence and slum dwarfed by Table Mountain, which towers above the city like a god overlooking its subjects.

My Cape experience has been spent with my brother Adrian as my tour guide. Last I saw Adrian, he was bordering on manic depressive and saving money to leave New Zealand. You can’t blame him. His experience of Aotearoa was five years of Rotorua, Manukau, and Drury (which sounds exactly like the name suggests). Consequently, he’s not too disappointed to be out. Adrian has become the self-confessed kingpin of the nightlife. He’s taken the week off to show me the highlights of Cape Town, which to him means the clubs.

So the last week has been a dreamscape of sound and light. I’ve been whisked from bar to club to VIP lounge through the course of seven days. Some of these places are your typical dives you can see kids press flesh anywhere in the world, but since Adrian knows every owner, every bouncer and bartender in the northern suburbs, he’s been able to let me peer behind the sweaty bodies and pickup lines, and shown me the heart of the scene.

We’ve drank until four in the morning with one of the Greek owners of the Buena Vista Social Cafe, a high-class Cuban bar in the recently developed (and upmarket) Tyger Falls district. The previous night Adrian walked me straight through to the VIP lounges in Vakka, and Ku De Ta (coup de état for the phonetically disinclined), where he showed me the porn lounge. Offset in pink, it comes complete with bed, a steal for NZ$400 a night for the discerning, and most likely indiscrete adult. He chats to the owner, who tells him about the problems the bar has had with drink spiking. Security is everywhere, but he can’t seem to find the culprits.

Whisked away, and several nights later we make it into the prestigious Rhodes House, home to Cape Town’s rich and famous. Rhodes is a 19^th century building, absolutely majestic, and has been converted into a plush club. Seven bars, private rooms, two DJ’s, and a clientele you would saw your right arm off and lather the stump in vinegar to meet. If you’re not a model, don’t even try and get in. I don’t consider myself unattractive, so I smile gawkily at the faces around me. It seems this is enough of a turn-off to them, as I flash my off-white canines. Nothing much happens for four hours, but I learn that Westlife dropped by earlier that week. It’s another way of saying ‘out of your league, boy’.

And again, security is everywhere. They stand in the background, keeping a sharp eye on the night’s proceedings. By day security guards patrol the car parks. They’re hired to look after stretches of road, or blocks of parking buildings. You can almost guarantee when you park your car, a guard will show his face and flash a smile, a sign that he’s got your wheels under wraps, and when you return, he’s the one you tip for keeping it unmolested. Guards patrol the malls, the clubs, the streets. They walk perimeter around housing estates, and in tourist areas. It’s bizarre at first, but like anything else they eventually fade into anonymity.

I ask people around me about the security, and they shrug. It’s the price of affluence in a third world country. Safety does not appear to be a natural way of life, but carved out by the small army of guards that maintain the border between the have and the have-not. It’s uneasy to see how naturalised to this life people have become. Everyone talks about security, and the dis-ease between these two groups.

It’s also interesting to note that for most, it’s stopped becoming a disjuncture between ‘black’ and ‘white’. It’s probably overstated in international media. A black social elite has arisen, and your wallet, not your colour, has become the new entry requirement. They’re in the bubble of affluence, and help to protect its borders.

It hit home when I saw a security van armed with a team of Kalashnikov wielding guards. It was daytime in the CBD and the van pulled up to a bank. The van was armoured not just to the point of military-spec, but designed and purchased from the defence force. They wore flak jackets and worked like a platoon from the marines. I watched as they staged a retrieval of what I suppose was cash from the premises. Guns at the ready, you realise that these guys are armed with high-power machine guns in a crowded street with live ammunition, and the desire to use it if necessary. And the kicker was that no-one but me paid them the slightest notice.