Jogging and Politics

Sad and not so sad – Rondebosch Common up to Rhodes Memorial and back

It is all about jogging and it is not about speed but about the fact that you jog – still. This September I challenged myself – I said, I should run up to Rhodes Memorial on the slopes of Table Mountain (actually on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, on the eastern side) and test my condition. From Rondebosch Common, an open field below the mountain of about 1x2 kilometres, to the memorial there is a difference in altitude of about 300 metres. So if you run you will feel it, the straight road bypassing the university (UCT, The University of Cape Town) is quite steep indeed. Here cyclists and runners do their training. My whole run from the common to Rhodes Memorial and back will be about 8 km.

The run itself is invigorating, makes you feel you have come alive, makes you feel that life is on your side somehow. If you run the whole way without stopping or without starting to walk then you would know that your condition is more than OK. So the way up is more about checking whether you still are up to it or not and about keeping your breath under control, but also gradually realizing that you are getting a fabulous view of the whole expanse of Cape Town eastward up to the mountain range from Stellenbosch to the Strand, 50 km away, an expanse called the Cape Flats.

But most of the way up you don’t see as much as you feel, feeling your way, even trying to run the last few metres up to the memorial itself. There he stands, Cecil John Rhodes, a statue in bronze, ca 4 metres high, under a canopy of a building, or rather a roof, sheltering him, but to the east completely open; there he stands looking out towards the east, or in fact to be understood as looking more to the north and his Rhodesia (here is your hinterland). After having done about five runs up to the memorial, I now know what to expect: Rhodes’ bronze nose is cut off. It looks funny and it is a very effective way of making this whole, majestic statue look ridiculous, degraded, disempowered, but he still stands. And this is exactly what the UCT students wanted to effectuate. Rhodes certainly was a very decisive part of British colonialism and empirical moves at the time (second part of the 19^th century) and in so many ways a presupposition of the much later constructed apartheid system. So, in South Africa, thanks to the students, reality has now caught up with the British, who might have thought that they were going to get away with it (i.e. their complicity in the oppression in Africa; I am reminded of Tony Blair’s farewell speech as Prime Minister when he said to his people: “you can only be proud of your history, and no better society has been built”).

Every time I come there are a few people there, probably they have heard about the missing nose. The atmosphere around this memorial, and has always been to my mind, is quite austere, awe-inspiring, ominous, even hostile. I do not bemoan what the students have done so far.

Turning back and eventually (after 1, 5 km) going downhill is quite different. It is time for relaxed running and for more of reflection. Looking down towards Rondebosch and beyond, I  am reminded again of the white colonisation that took place many years ago and how that has shaped the grounds below me. The next few kilometres I see the leafy suburbs, still inhabited largely by English speaking white, better off, people, Rondebosch, Claremont, Newlands… I am reminded by Mdu Xaxasa, artist and nowadays head of an art gallery in Durban, but above all a PhD student at our university (UWC). As a Zulu he easily identifies the different landscapes that the Europeans have brought in literally into South Africa. So it is still there, even though, undoubtedly leafy trees should and could be enjoyed by everybody. But the very fact that whites exclusively have occupied what they created and in addition created a loathing of elaborate gardening because of the fact that all the manual work (to this very day, mind you) is done by black boys and men makes the leafy suburbs a not so peaceful place as it seems, and tree felling could one day be seen as an interesting act of Schade Freude.

And yet, here is something happening. Thanks to the students, Rondebosch is no longer a white suburbs, it is just as black. The former Vice-Chancellor Njabulo Ndebele, a well-known writer, lives also here. He has for a long time been aware of what the students now act and talk about: not only was there oppression from the Afrikaner and his political apartheid system. The British are also a significant part of the same oppression, albeit it took a different shape. Ndebele talks about a condescending attitude to all those (and of course almost all blacks) who don’t speak the language in the British way. When talking about the guilt and complicity that even English speaking whites share with others he says: “With their condescending platitudes, they have massacred hundreds and thousands of souls… English-speaking South Africans have yet to acknowledge their willing compliance, by developing their own way of oppression, in the oppression of black people.” [Ndebele, ‘Memory, Metaphor, and the Triumph of Narrative’, in Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa, Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee, editors. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998, 19 – 28.]

I am filled with sadness. Below my feet lies the proof, the comfortable suburbia, brought in from outside, literally with buildings (there are still a fair number of Victorian mansions from the turn of the 19^th century for example), garden lay-outs and the rest. No change.

Or are you really sure? For the first time, and I am now heading down the steep hill and have to curb my speed so as not to run too fast, but also in order to spare my knees, I am also not feeling all that sad. There is some hope around. Maybe Rondebosch could still be transformed without disappearing altogether. I think so, and I hope so. I am soon back on the busy streets of the suburbs and heading back to Rondebosch Common. I am getting tired, another much smaller uphill from the Liesbeek River.

I am back at this open ground, this common, in the midst of this mega city, once a gathering place for military troops. It is an amazing place today, very popular for joggers of all kinds and increasingly people from the Cape Flats; those further away drive over in order to get a safe place where they can walk or run. Hundreds upon hundreds will do their rounds every day here. The common is securely anchored on the eastern side of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak. The mountain functions as a protective wall to the west, rising steeply 1000 metres. The light on the common is baffling me, it is a persuasive, mesmerizing light, probably due to the mountain functioning as a shield to the west, but in addition sheltering from the Atlantic sea on the other side: somehow the light from the sea is reflected over the mountain…

Having lived in the vicinity of the common in various streets for many years it could be seen as the centre of the world. But more than that, things are a changing but slowly. Instead of seeing Rondebosch Common as only a part of an old white area of privilege, it is now already much more an open space accessible to all people. The further you go eastward the further you go into what is the Cape Flats, that flat, sandy area, the old sea bed of course. Today one could say that the Rondebosch Common is part of or the beginning of Cape Flats. The movements on and around this common field suggests that we now are dealing with the new South Africa that does not ask about your categorization. You just live on. This is also the part of town where mixed couples would turn up.

So coming back to Rondebosch Common is the right thing to do. Here is the new South Africa. Here there is already a sense of solidarity, a sense of “this is ours” and hopefully the leafy trees surrounding it will still be there consoling and shading ever more people. It is bound to be one of those places where people from the whole city and the whole country are making themselves at home.