An Easter outing

We pick up Heather at 9am. The sun is blazing, the long weekend is upon us, it's time to get out of town. Hartebespoort Dam is easy to get to, so that's our aim for today. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea, so the little town is busy by the time we get there, the main road clogged with visitors. As the closest resort to both Jozi and Pretoria, Hartebespoort consists of holiday homes and retirement communities. It's all very Afrikaans, as Heather points out, although I can't really tell, a white South African looks like another to me.

The signs of autumn are upon us

We have two destinations in mind today, perfect and easily digestible both: the newly renovated cablecar going up the Magaliesberg and the film set of the comedy musical Pretville (Afrikaans link).

Hartie's Cable Car

Cable car first, to avoid the after lunch crush. But when we get there, a queue is already building, the car park full of SUVs and bakkies. Stuart gets tickets while we start queuing up the stairs. The lift was built in 1973 with Swiss equipment and know-how, but closed down in the 80's, only re-opening last year. It's a pretty nice renovation, with a few shops and cafes, clean toilets and an organised system to maximise passengers. A ticket collector checks the queue to match groups to always fill each carriage with six people. Everyone is happy to jump the queue. We wind our way up the ramp until we enter the station hall, a big room open at the end where the carriages slide in and out on overhead wires.



The lift cars are small, green and glassed in. They keep moving as passengers get out and in. We have to swap seats to balance each other's weight, then the car slides off with a big whoosh like a fairground ride. Suddenly, at great speed, we are above the car park, and then above the wild hills. Underneath is a thicket of green trees, red earth, yellow rocks. We gain height and the valley unfolds below us. In the distance the green-blue of the dam blazes in the sun. Behind it low hills point the way to Joburg, while to our right and left the eroded slopes of the Magaliesberg step away from us in geometric uniformity. Below me I can make out a thin path winding uphill. Above me the slack lines of the cable connection hold us in the air.

The threesome opposite us, a couple and their lady friend visiting form Cape Town, smile at our excited exclamations at the view. The visitor was not impressed. Having the table mountain cable car on your doorstep, this must be a comedown. I am intrigued: by the sheer cliffs we pass and the trees growing stubbornly out of a tiny crack in the rocks; by the possibility of seeing animals; by the loud fresh green against the harsh dry red soil.

The ride is over too soon, and we step off the moving cart at the top station. A walkway guides us around and up the hill with pointers along the way. It's hot, with children jostling to climb the rocks on the edge of the hill, nervous parents holding on to their hands to prevent fatal falls. Haartebespoort spreads below us in a hot haze. We can just make out the sailing marina, the main road and blotches of retirement estates.

Pretville

Pretville's hairdresser set

Next we backtrack to Pretville, the film set for a 50s Afrikaans musical. It's an incongruous place, a fake ice-cream coloured confection used to film an all-singing, all-dancing spectacle of history white-washing. While the Group Areas Act was being designed to force families from their homes, the diner served milk shakes and the pharmacy treated babies with colic.

An innocuous-looking police car is parked in the square, dinky and cute. I have the overwhelming sense that it is missing a black offender of the pass laws in the back. The car repair shop lacks an oily labourer, and the tiny prison tucked away behind the children's clothing store really should have been staffed with ANC supporters. The place feels like a lie, all of us white people (unlike the cable car, there are no actual black faces at Pretville) wandering about this movie-glossed version of a reality that never was.

the sweet shop

Unlike the photos in a photo book I saw recently, where the poverty of mind and life, the harsh conditions of the Karoo, the wiry stubbornness and hateful relationships with blacks was clear and unmistakeable, here all the issues have just been airbrushed out of the picture. I guess the 50s in South Africa is just not a a historical period that lends itself to bubblegum entertainment.

On the way home, by way of irony, we passed Diepsloot, one of the biggest 'informal settlements' just north of Joburg. This woman was cutting straw from a fallow field across the township to sell as roofing material. No pink here.

You can see more photos on Flickr:

www.flickr.com

Seen at MuseumAfrica

Possibly: "Where's my hand? I am sure I had it a minute ago?"

What do you think she is thinking?

Dubai bashing

I haven't lived in Dubai for years now, but left with great difficulty and judging by my continuing interest in Dubai news I guess I still love the place. There is much Dubai bashing going on lately, fuelled by this article in the New York Times, it seems. While some of the facts are disputed already (apparently the figure of 3000 cars abandoned at Dubai airport is misrepresented and the number of cancelled visas is not offset by the number of new visas granted) it is most interesting to me to find this tone of Schadenfreude levelled at a Middle Eastern success story. As if it was somehow just that one of the few Arab economic successes should fail. Do we prefer the alternatives of repressive financial basket cases such as Egypt and Pakistan? This article is another rant at the perceived shallowness of Dubai and it's inherent unsustainability, entertaining even if I disagree, but with the best commenting I have ever read in a blog, ever.

Blast from the Past: Dubai construction workers

Once I wanted to make a film about a day in the life of a labourer in Dubai. All around us where we lived on Sheikh Zayed Rd were new construction sites and every morning, lunch time and evening we saw endless groups of blue/green/orange-clad young men either appearing from dusty buses or waiting to board them to go back to wherever they spent their nights. It turned out to be impossibly difficult to make contact, find willing subjects or gain access to the sites and hostels where they live. Most documentaries I saw about Dubai mentioned the poor working and living conditions of imported labour on construction in the UAE, but even the BBC didn't seem to be able to get access to show real live footage.

Now a Guardian reporter seems to have been able to do the impossible, and report on it without condescension or hand-wringing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/middleeast.construction

It makes me feel better that this injustice is finally being made visible.

The Constitutional Court

This court has been deciding such important human rights issues as the right of gay people to marry and adopt children; the duty of the government to provide pregnant mothers with retroviral drugs to prevent infection of their babies at birth; abolition of the death penalty... South Africa has the most modern constitution in the World, forbidding discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and disability, for example.

All the justices of the first court inscribed their names into the concrete of the new building.

Nelson Mandela said this about a democratic and free society at the Rivonia treason trial:

"It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

He then proceeded to spend 27 years in prison. The days of his and other political prisoners' incarceration are marked on these slabs.

Each of the articles of the constitution is carved into the front door of the court, in all the official languages of South Africa, as well as Braille and sign language.

More pictures from Constitution Hill

One of the remaining staircases from the Awaiting Trial Block

This is the layout of the sheds built to deal with overcrowding at the women's prison. 4-6 non-White women would spend up to 23 hours a day in a cell built for 2.

The inside of the women's prison. Prisoners were not allowed to cross the central space.

Crockery was shared and cleaned once a month

The isolation cells at Number 4, the non-White men's prison

Mapping memory

One of the projects helping to visualise the reality of the apartheid prison was to run workshops with returning prisoners to elicit their memories and capture the past. Everyday objects became meaningful when viewed through the decriptions of the ex-prisoners. This woman talked about the difficulty of opening cans brought in by visitors.
Another spoke of being arrested because she forgot her passbook on the way to buying fish in the market.

Constitution Hill

The complex housing the South African Constitutional Court is set next to and around the old prison, an architectural and political stroke of genius. Part of the site is the Old Fort, where White male prisoners were held, the women's prison for White and non-White female prisoners as well as Number 4, the prison for non-White male prisoners. A lot of effort was made to keep political prisoners apart from 'common criminals', non-Whites from White inmates, men from women, in case they realised that there really wasn't all that much difference between them. The whole complex is quite depressing with the tiny cells and sorry conditions prisoners were subjected to. Male prisoners crowded up to 70 in large rooms designed to sleep 30, sharing two toilets. Women shared tiny shacks between 4 or 6 when they were designed for two. Bedding allowances were different for White and Black prisoners, and they were fed different quality of food.

Many Blacks were arrested for violating the pass laws, which required them to carry a registration book stating their entitlement to be in a certain area at a certain time, to carry out certain jobs and to live in specified areas. Between the 1940's and the 80's more than half of all non-White prisoners were pass offenders, or as one of the displays (under)stated: "Without meaning to, it was quite easy to break the law if you were Black".
A passbook
The only building that was completely knocked down to make way for the new court was the so-called Awaiting Trial Block, which once housed famous prisoners such as Nelson Mandela and Mahathma Ghandi. All that is left is a marked outline on the floor and the four staircases reaching up to the blue sky. One of those has been cleverly incorporated into the back of the court chamber, and the bricks gave been recycled to form the wall of the court and the Great African Steps. The design of the court is based on the traditional African concept of justice under a tree, where the chief would receive complaints and discuss matters of state I'm the village square on the shade of a tree. From the lamps to the carpet pattern to the shape of the windows this design is carried through.

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