Station v Station

So Kuyasa, Land of the Solar Panels. It always surprises me to see the rows of identical houses, with rows of identical geysers hooked up to rows of identical solar panels on the roof. I can't remember who the project belongs to, I think someone Scandinavian. It looks Scandinavian. In between all the identical houses are electrical wires netting the surface of the roads. I'm used to seeing electrical wires form a canopy, not a ground-cover. But I wasn't there to look at alternative energy sources. I was there to look at informal trading in Khayelitsha. More specifically, I was in Kuyasa to look at informal trading at its train station.

Now Khayelitsha train station, HEY! You can buy live chickens from squawking cages, or snack on some chicken feet off the braai. You can get your hair done, or buy a fridge. Fruits, veggies, washing detergents. The bridge over the tracks extends the shopping experience, with flapping canvas stalls and rickety metal structures. It smells of fire, of fresh produce, of less fresh produce. Someone is playing beating music, a man sits on a wheelie chair in front of his container shop chatting to a couple of guys who stand leaning against the open container door. The City wants to regulate the space, but there's public land and no-man's land and private land owned by Chinese businesses. There's some rental and no rental and no uniform designation of space and services. Regulating that space is going to be a challenge, to put it lightly.

A couple of curves down the road is Kuyasa train station. Think lonely tunbleweeds and wide open spaces. Shiny new red brick buildings with no occupants, broad entrances covered by (closed) black roller-doors. All the infrastructure, none of the activity. Just nothing. It's almost eerie. White elephant eerie. The woman showing me around points out a young couple sitting on a bench, sharing a naartjie, there on the far side of the quad. "That's about as lively as it gets," she tells me. Two people and a citrus fruit.

The cynic in me would say that once upon a time, someone in the City was tasked with upgrading a train station in Khayelitsha. They took one look at the mutable Khayelitsha station, shuddered, and then shuffled a little further down the tracks. Struck by the absence of lively chaos at Kuyasa, they smiled to themselves and built a beautiful station. I shame my inner cynic into a corner. It's probably less sinister than that, probably less intentional. It's probably, like most flopped souffle development projects, a combination of shitty/overly optimistic planning and too little political will or know-how to challenge the plan once it's been set in motion.