Magnificent Cape Town, Quiet Windhoek, Sane Africa

As published at Unz Review and TruthSeeker, 12/2/21:





My last night in Cape Town was spent at 91 Loop Boutique Hostel. Paying $33, I had a rather large, if very spartan, room, with my own toilet. With six beds, it was clearly intended as a dorm space, but tourists were still scarce, thanks to Covid.

A filling breakfast was included, and it wasn’t just a buffet, but prepared to order. As is usual at any hostel, the clientele was mostly young. I noticed a Southeast Asian, a rare sight in Cape Town.

(During my three-month stay, I had met a Vietnamese-American and a Filipina, both under 30. As we chattered over coffee, they kept their masks on between sips. When I said I didn’t trust the Covid “vaccines,” the Vietnamese-American got even chillier. At least the Filipina smiled with her eyes. Neither understood why I’d stray outside Cape Town’s safest zones, or take a taxi van.)

The Southeast Asian at 91 Loop was a Filipino nurse working in Qatar, where he had spent six years. Before that, he was in Saudi Arabia. Eric had the confident, easy manner that comes with knowing you’re good looking. (God has blessed me in the opposite direction, however. If I was handsome, I’d be unbearable, even to myself.)

Applying for a job in Springfield, Missouri, Eric had just taken a test in Joburg. As everyone must know by now, American hospitals are constantly recruiting foreign nurses and doctors.

I had to warn Eric about leaving Qatar for Springfield, “You must know Filipinos in the States? Ask them about the situation there. Also, make sure you can save while working in the US. You don’t want to regret leaving Qatar.”

After twelve years abroad, Eric had stashed away enough to ponder opening a mini hotel back home, “In Bukidnon. I’m from the same province as Manny Pacquiao!”

“Your next president!”

“Ha, ha!”

Investing in tourism during a worsening Covid crisis is not exactly wise, but hey, he’ll figure it out soon enough. In any case, Eric hadn’t been home since Covid was launched. His last two vacations, he spent in Georgia and Armenia.

Overhearing our conversation, a young man at a nearby table introduced himself, “I’m sorry, but I hear you guys talking about jobs overseas?”

“He’s applying for a job in the US. Where are you from?”

“I’m South African, but I want to get out. It’s horrible here.” Thin, Dean had a worried face and defeated posture.

“Are you from Cape Town?”

“Just north of here. I just got cheated. That’s why I’m at this hostel. A guy rented me a room he didn’t own.”

“How much did you lose?”

“Just a month’s rent.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll look at another room today. It’s cheap enough. I hope it works out.”

“You can always move into a township!”

“Yeah, right.”

“And get killed!”

“Even if I don’t,” he frowned, “I can’t walk 50 yards to get water to do my laundry. I’m a white man.”

“I’m just kidding. So what do you do, man?”

“I work at a sporting club. I sit at the entrance and collect the money. I’m sort of the manager there,” he chuckled. “That’s one job where they still want a white man!”

“What do you mean?”

“The Africans, they steal.”

“Hmmm.”

“For just about every other job, a white man is at the bottom. There’s a thing here called Black Economic Empowerment.”

“Like Affirmative Action in the States.”

“Exactly, so white men are below blacks, women, gays, black women, everybody! I know a black woman who doesn’t even show up to work! She doesn’t have to, and her company doesn’t really care. They just hired her because she’s a black woman.”

There’s a cartoon by Anton Kannmeyer, a Capetonian artist. In a corporate office, a bald white man is interviewing a black woman. She has huge lips and fro. He’s a middle-aged Tintin. “I SEE BY YOUR RESUME THAT YOU’RE A BLACK WOMAN,” he says.

“It’s wrong, man. All racism is wrong.”

“I know, but that’s just how it is here. That’s why I want to get out. Do you have any suggestion?” Dean half grinned.

“Listen, when this Covid bullshit is over, you should consider going to Asia. You can teach English there. In East Asia,” I laughed, “being white is actually an asset.”

“Yeah?”

“Seriously. Have you traveled much?”

“Ten years ago, I went to the UK. I worked there for two years, saved some money, then came back.”

“How much did you save?”

“12,000 pounds.”

“That’s pretty good! You must have worked your ass off.”

“Yeah, but I also had fun. I had friends, I partied, I drank. Now, I’m making the same money I made ten years ago, but prices have gone way, way up. Twice as much! I’m 32-years-old. It’s horrible.”

As a teenager, Dean made the national baseball team, but was bumped to make room for a black. When his dad offered to buy some of the team’s equipment to get Dean reinstalled, he balked. He didn’t want any derision from his teammates.

In Cape Town, I met skilled or entrepreneurial whites who weren’t just doing well, but absolutely loved the Western Cape. A white couple drove me to a vineyard where whites, plus a few coloreds and blacks, enjoyed drinks and food at long tables, set outside amid a magnificent landscape.

Near Cape Town’s touristy waterfront, I chanced upon Un/Settled, an art installation by white South African Sydelle Willow Smith. Various whites are quoted at length with their photos.

Seen on his ocean-facing veranda, a clearly affluent Albie Sachs says, “You do not shed the aspects that constitute you as somebody with a history, with a culture, with a presence that is particular […] The next generation are picking up the remaining elements of white hegemony, with an assumed sense of superiority and white living conditions. There is no ‘one size fits all’ in relation to anything in South Africa. Everything is jumbled up and mixed up. When the shackles of overt racism fall the pinpricks of covert racism hurt unbearably.”

Chavi Alheit, “I just think white people, white South Africans are the luckiest nation, community, whatever you want to call it, in the world. For all intents and purposes we all should have been macheted a long time ago. And the fact that we are still living with comforts and advantages that we have, really goes to say a lot for the black population. We really should be thankful towards them. They have been very tolerant of us.”

Terry Oakley Smith, “I suppose the only glimmer of hope on the horizon is that we as whites only make up 8% of the population so we are becoming increasingly irrelevant.” Judging by her tasteful clothing and jewelry, it’s obvious Terry is no trash.

Sydelle Willow Smith also shows photos of whites at the horse races and in a desert swimming pool, to emphasize their privileges.

One woman, though, is depicted in a white frock, standing in the ocean with water reaching her lower abdomen, as if to purify her lower half. Unlike most others, only her first name is given. Deryn, “I have survived unspeakable brutal violence in this country and as a result I have given myself permission to leave. But I belong here. This is where my roots are. This is where my relationships are. This is where I am woven into. I am not woven in anywhere else. It’s actually just that simple.”

A guy like Dean would have something entirely different to say, but he’s not a part of this installation.

Although Capetonian whites on the lowest rungs are miserable enough, at least they still have indoor plumbing, unlike thousands of township blacks dwelling in wretched shacks. For them, toilets are just portable stalls lined up in rows. The luckiest among them must dress up smartly each day to serve whites in distant neighborhoods. A black barista in Green Point may appear stylish, but she might not have pot to piss in, back in Khayelitsha.

With a white friend, I visited Langa, South Africa's oldest black township. He had to go there to buy some (legal) pot. We drank beer with people and had a great time. When I told one woman I liked her "HARLEM" cap, she said it was in Germany, then volunteered that she loved Hitler.

"You don't just like Hitler?" I grinned.

"No, I love him!"

A man asked me, a foreigner clearly just visiting, if I had a job to give him.

Leaving, my friend said, "By evening, everyone in Langa will know that a white guy and a Chinese guy came by to drink beer!"

Capetonian whites, colored and blacks reach absolute equality when they end up sleeping on sidewalks, panhandling and digging through trash cans for food. When I mentioned these whites to a retired colored cop, he said, “If whites end up on the streets, they only have themselves to blame. They’ve had so many advantages.” During Apartheid, his family was evicted from thriving District Six, near downtown, to still barren Athlone. That bitterness lingers.

With Covid, Cape Town’s homeless population has exploded. An Iranian restauranter told me that with fewer tourists, there are fewer cops on the streets, so there’s more crime. She’s afraid to even walk around downtown. Travel complications have also prevented her from visiting Iran, which she used to do yearly.

Even with a much lower volume of business, the food at Persian Peacock was still excellent. “I’ll be sure to come back here,” I said to the lovely, smiling and soft-spoken lady, “should I return to Cape Town.”

The older you get, though, the less likely you’ll come back anywhere. Covid strictures only lower the odds considerably. A Canadian friend told me he’s resigned to possibly not seeing his wife again, as they’re stuck in different countries. How many relationships have been destroyed because of this engineered madness? Just be thankful you’re not death jabbed.

With a few hours before my bus to Namibia and Eric’s flight to Qatar, we went to Corner Bar in Sea Point. I had gone there three months earlier, on my first day in Cape Town.

Too airy to be a dive, Corner Bar is nevertheless a magnet for old drunks, artsy types, somber salt of the earth and the loudly garrulous. This time, I found myself sitting next to a boastful old Englishman.

A small gent in a green jacket and yellow shirt, the colors of the national rugby kit, he said he had been recruited to South Africa 53 years ago by Harry Oppenheimer himself, and was paid in gold. He was so brilliant, he had six college degrees. He said he had been to every country on earth but Australia, “because I’m not a convicted criminal.” He claimed to be obscenely rich, so he was just slumming, I suppose, sipping a $2 glass of red wine. His two sons had emigrated to the UK and lived near Newcastle. He rarely saw them or his grandkids.

He introduced me to a woman he said was Miss Israel 50 years ago. She turned out to be a rather interesting painter, but I can’t remember her name. I had a stressful several days and was guzzling. Self-taught, she paints girlish women besieged by dark forces. There are so many artists with at least a handful of genuine achievements, provocative and unique, but it doesn’t matter, they’re still invisible. Much of “art,” though, is pure garbage.

Out of breath, he showed me a piece of paper with BIC penned letters:

COFFEE
IS
LIKE MY WOMEN

* *

LARGE
STRONG
HOT
BLACK
VERY SWEET

Like every other man, grandpa lives within his own mythology. If younger, he would do his chest thumping online, which would also encourage any propensity for snark or nastiness. Unseen, they fling shit like cartoon apes. Born before the crassification of much of the world, grandpa is still a gentleman, fortunately. You take the fight out of a populace by destroying its character.

A month removed from Cape Town, I’m in Windhoek, Namibia. It’s much quieter here. Downtown, there isn’t much beyond a shopping mall, but that’s OK. Joining the loosely-masked crowd, I stroll often through its air-conditioned pleasantness. I get my grocery at Checkers and eat bacon cheeseburgers at Wimpy.

At one end of the mall, there are three very young professional photographers. They work next to the Covid jab room, with its large banner, "COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective." Even with the Omicron brouhaha, this antechamber to the morgue is nearly always empty.

“Don’t go in there, man,” I said to a photographer. “They’re trying to kill you!”

“I know,” he laughed while giving me a fist bump.

With the fewest lockdowns, lowest Covid “vaccination” rates and no social distancing to speak of, black Africa has the fewest deaths, by far, from this orchestrated emergency. That’s why they’re punishing it now. Normal African life exposes as nonsense their extreme measures everywhere else.

Suddenly, the tourists are gone, and southern Africans are blocked from many countries. To not be shunned, Africans must be poisoned, they insist.

There are rumors South Africa might impose a new lockdown. This would trigger riots, certainly, for there are already too many South Africans barely eating. Lockdown induced economic hardship was a key factor in the Durban rioting this July.

I’ve mentioned a Serb who’s been living in Africa for 30 years. When I walked by his cap, T-shirt and CD stall yesterday, he shouted, “You’re still here?!”

“I’ll be here at least one more month.”

Holding up six fingers, he scrunched his face and cryptically said, “No, six more months!”

“What do you mean?”

“If they close the borders, you’ll be here six more months.”

“What?! Are you sure?”

“That’s what happened the last time. People were stuck here for six months. They ran out of money, lost their jobs, it was terrible. This morning, I talked to a Japanese guy. His embassy told him to leave immediately, so he’s flying out on Sunday. Ethiopian Airlines. You must get out now!”

“I’m OK here. I like it here. I’ll see you all the time then,” I smiled. They're tightening the Covid vice even more fiercely evrywhere else, no?

In late November, Philadelphia broke its all-time murder record. California is sicker than ever, Portland rests on Antifa tinder and Chicago is run by a racist moron. Mobs shoplift without fear. Showing no spontaneity, thus sign of a live mind, Biden can only fart unscripted. Shrieking Jim Crammer thinks soldiers should inject poison into all Americans. Jew jerked, Americans are stuck on black and white racial grievances, even as they’re maimed or murdered by Jewish “vaccines.”

Vietnam is closed. To enter a handful of reopened Asian countries, one must be vaccinated. Ditto for the European Union. Georgia and Bulgaria have introduced vaccine passports. Mexico remains open, so that’s an option, but it’s a long, costly flight away. My first meeting with Fred Reed will have to wait.

Suddenly a mall-rat at 58-years-old, I’m lucky to be in Windhoek, among those who won’t be forced into deforming their biology, chemistry or, simply, life.

Stay strong and true, Namibia and, of course, all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Done, I’ll eat some boerewors and drink a Castle, then stroll leisurely down to the mall. It’s always good to be among your own.

Eric failed his test, by the way, so won’t be going to Springfield, Missouri, but it’s a secret blessing, I told him. Thinking it over, he agreed.