Modderdam Road runs from the N2 highway into the centre of beautiful downtown Bellville, part of greater Cape Town. I’ve been driving the four or so kilometers of the road to the University of the Western Cape every day for 10 years. Modderdam is a microcosm of the world we live in: vistas of development without transformation.
The first thing to say about Modderdam is that it changed a friend’s life. One day in the old days, with a few comrades, he lay down in front of a bulldozer to try to prevent shacks from being destroyed.
Randall begs outside the UWC main gate. He once told me that he lives in the graveyard with his grandmother and that he was 16 years old, but that was at least three years ago. He has a battered, adult look about him these days. For a while he had a sign laminated by someone at UWC, but now he’s back to cardboard pleas for money. He told me he makes about R30 a day. People leaving the university hand him food, and drink on hot days. It’s a good begging spot, I think, although pretty awful in the winter...
My colleague Keith once said that he saw little wild buck across the Road from UWC in the bush. Then they tore up the bush, flattened the sand and built gigantic warehouses for an aluminium company. They put up supports, a roof, precast walls and then smooth concrete over the sand. It’s quick. It takes months to build one measly little semi in the N2 Gateway project, but you can put up a whole warehouse in about six weeks.
Two or three years ago, an Irish NGO put up nice houses on Modderdam next to the highway in an empty field in a neighbourhood called Netreg. There are streets and lights and plumbing and the houses have proper tile roofs. These are what everyone thought was going to be rolled out to the poor in 1994 — good, decent houses. Not fancy, but nice, painted in cheerful colours. But no. After the Irish houses went up, shacks started to fill other Modderdam spaces. Shacks just like the ones my friend had tried unsuccessfully to defend 25 years before.
In particular, one set of shacks is called “the rastas”. First there was lumpy, sandy, weedy ground scattered with rubbish, next to a primary school. The school always had broken windows and no students that I could see as I drove by, so I was never sure if it was open or not. Then came one shack, then two, then 200.
The past two years have been busy for the rastas. Last year they were provided with electricity. As I drove by one day, the power poles were starting to go up. Then the lines started to come down into the shacks. Then porta-potties appeared. Now there’s a dumpster overflowing with all kinds of rubbish.
Along the meridian in the Road, the City of Cape Town has been planting thorn trees this year — the kind that giraffes like to eat. These thorny seedlings are each properly anchored inside a little shelter of gum-tree poles and wire mesh and now they stretch all the way to Bellville. This is good for the ozone layer. I think they planted thorn trees to keep people from hacking them down for firewood. But perhaps that’s too cynical, because thorn trees and sand and desolation may just naturally go together. But I bet they plant trees with proper leaves in Rondebosch and Claremont.
But then this year, someone planted little palm trees, too, in front of the shacks. Like a garden; and there’s an area ringed with little white stones with other garden plants inside.
There’s an electric tree in Bellville South, too, farther along the Road. With all due respect to its residents, Bellville South — one long greasy smear — has to be the grottiest place on Earth. I know that coloured people were moved there when they were forcibly removed from Bellville so that Afrikaner nationalism could have a place in Cape Town to call its own. But let not the obvious loveliness of Bellville South stop the City of Cape Town from bringing cheer to it with another 10-foot electric bulb tree with a star on top.
If the shacks have electricity, porta-potties, a dumpster, thorn and palm trees and cheer, does it mean that they are permanent? This is your neighbourhood! Get used to it! Shouldn’t the shack children have Christmas lights too?
Twice in 10 years I’ve seen pelicans flying overhead, coming from the False Bay direction. The first time it was just one bird, ponderous like a cargo plane, keeping time with my car all the way along. This year one morning there was a whole V-wing of pelicans, like a group of little fat people flapping in the air, silent and powerful.
Yesterday, Randall’s cardboard said: “Merre Christmas.”
M&G Thought Leader Terri Barnes - Associate professor of history at UWC
The first thing to say about Modderdam is that it changed a friend’s life. One day in the old days, with a few comrades, he lay down in front of a bulldozer to try to prevent shacks from being destroyed.
Randall begs outside the UWC main gate. He once told me that he lives in the graveyard with his grandmother and that he was 16 years old, but that was at least three years ago. He has a battered, adult look about him these days. For a while he had a sign laminated by someone at UWC, but now he’s back to cardboard pleas for money. He told me he makes about R30 a day. People leaving the university hand him food, and drink on hot days. It’s a good begging spot, I think, although pretty awful in the winter...
My colleague Keith once said that he saw little wild buck across the Road from UWC in the bush. Then they tore up the bush, flattened the sand and built gigantic warehouses for an aluminium company. They put up supports, a roof, precast walls and then smooth concrete over the sand. It’s quick. It takes months to build one measly little semi in the N2 Gateway project, but you can put up a whole warehouse in about six weeks.
Two or three years ago, an Irish NGO put up nice houses on Modderdam next to the highway in an empty field in a neighbourhood called Netreg. There are streets and lights and plumbing and the houses have proper tile roofs. These are what everyone thought was going to be rolled out to the poor in 1994 — good, decent houses. Not fancy, but nice, painted in cheerful colours. But no. After the Irish houses went up, shacks started to fill other Modderdam spaces. Shacks just like the ones my friend had tried unsuccessfully to defend 25 years before.
In particular, one set of shacks is called “the rastas”. First there was lumpy, sandy, weedy ground scattered with rubbish, next to a primary school. The school always had broken windows and no students that I could see as I drove by, so I was never sure if it was open or not. Then came one shack, then two, then 200.
The past two years have been busy for the rastas. Last year they were provided with electricity. As I drove by one day, the power poles were starting to go up. Then the lines started to come down into the shacks. Then porta-potties appeared. Now there’s a dumpster overflowing with all kinds of rubbish.
Along the meridian in the Road, the City of Cape Town has been planting thorn trees this year — the kind that giraffes like to eat. These thorny seedlings are each properly anchored inside a little shelter of gum-tree poles and wire mesh and now they stretch all the way to Bellville. This is good for the ozone layer. I think they planted thorn trees to keep people from hacking them down for firewood. But perhaps that’s too cynical, because thorn trees and sand and desolation may just naturally go together. But I bet they plant trees with proper leaves in Rondebosch and Claremont.
But then this year, someone planted little palm trees, too, in front of the shacks. Like a garden; and there’s an area ringed with little white stones with other garden plants inside.
And now, god help us, the city has seen fit to erect an 10-foot high electric Christmas tree right out in front of the rastas. It has a star on top and coloured lights. Let there be holiday cheer for the shackdwellers.
There’s an electric tree in Bellville South, too, farther along the Road. With all due respect to its residents, Bellville South — one long greasy smear — has to be the grottiest place on Earth. I know that coloured people were moved there when they were forcibly removed from Bellville so that Afrikaner nationalism could have a place in Cape Town to call its own. But let not the obvious loveliness of Bellville South stop the City of Cape Town from bringing cheer to it with another 10-foot electric bulb tree with a star on top.
If the shacks have electricity, porta-potties, a dumpster, thorn and palm trees and cheer, does it mean that they are permanent? This is your neighbourhood! Get used to it! Shouldn’t the shack children have Christmas lights too?
Twice in 10 years I’ve seen pelicans flying overhead, coming from the False Bay direction. The first time it was just one bird, ponderous like a cargo plane, keeping time with my car all the way along. This year one morning there was a whole V-wing of pelicans, like a group of little fat people flapping in the air, silent and powerful.
Yesterday, Randall’s cardboard said: “Merre Christmas.”
M&G Thought Leader Terri Barnes - Associate professor of history at UWC
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