The City's Seasons

Like any ecosystem, urban or otherwise, cities have seasons. They have pressure systems that mimic rising and pushing warm and cold fronts, and trends that shift direction like the wind. Unlike the weather, however, Cape Town’s city seasons can’t be neatly summarized on colorful charts and maps. The city’s seasons are born into existence through the action and inaction of people, and that behavior is far harder to predict than falling rain or sunny skies. But there might be a backdrop to that behavior; here are a few ideas.

Migration

I live in Obs. Around this time of the year, the shuttles and busses moving students in and out of Observatory cut their schedules. The Pick ‘n Pay at St Peter’s Square empties. The McDonalds and KFC on Norfolk Road shudder with relief. The undergraduates are gone. They aren’t the only ones.

“I’m going to the Eastern Cape,” my domestic worker tells me, “my son is becoming a man.”

“Ah, congrats!” I smile in reply.

“He’s going with his daddy at the end of the month, I’m going on the 14th.”

Over December, people go home. The women’s club I sew with in Khayelitsha closes as soon as the schools do; the grandmothers have saved all year to spend six weeks back in Pedi and Ngcobo. They go home.

But as people leave, others arrive. GP number plates idle along Victoria Road from Bantry Bay to Llandudno. From the start of school holidays till the end. It’s a transient time this, our seasonal migration.

Regeneration

On the 1^st of January this year, a massive fire burnt through BM Section in Khayelitsha. Thousands of people lost their homes and the political year shortened its summer holiday and started in earnest to answer the questions of the watching public: whose fault was it that the fire could spread through the shakey infrastructure in the way that it did, and whose fault was the arguably slow response to the fire? What upgrading was and wasn’t happening in BM Section, and where were the city’s political leaders? Fire destructs, it also provides reason to rebuild. If there are resources, capacity and political will, crisis can be a catalyst for positive change. It’s a big if, but a possible if.

In January and February the wind continues to blow. It’s hot, so hot, and Cape Town burns. The fires that run up and down and along the mountain parade in the new year and require our attention and action. The southeaster blows and freshens the city, the schools open, the students return. For better or worse, the city regenerates.

Consolidation

And then the city finds its groove and builds its routine. The gaaitjies shout their Mowbray-Kaap’s and squeeze themselves into tighter than tight taxi corners. “Don’t worry, I’m a chicken,” one tells me one day as he huddles over my legs in the front row, “I only need one leg to stand.” The Village Three bus winds its way through every road in Khayelitsha before reaching its destination. Everyone knows to be patient.

I love Cape Town’s routines. At noon everyday the city blinks as the Signal Hill cannon announces: “it’s lunchtime!” At full moon we walk up Lion’s Head. The call to prayer calls us to witness the ways in which we live together, syncretically sometimes, other times in tension. But always together. The first Thursday every month turns the city into an artwork that you can walk through and talk to. And on Fridays the traffic starts early, why shouldn’t it? It’s Cape Town.

We spend April and May consolidating (and ruing the passing of the March public holidays). It’s a time for the city to function.

Protest

To speak of a season of protest is not to undermine the grievances and the pain of people whose homes flood in July. Not their shacks, their homes. Protest in Cape Town is not just about poo and closed highways, and the politics that attempt to divide us. It’s when the inequalities in our city turn toxic.

But Cape Town doesn’t just protest service delivery. The angry upside-down umbrellas that are shoved broken into the bright green bins dotted all over the city articulate our collective rage against the weather. We’re not a patient people, Cape Tonians, when it comes to the weather and dark early mornings. The general air of discontent that settles over the city in the winter dissipates fairly rapidly though, as we move into spring.

And spring pulls us back to migration and movement, and closer to the long December holidays…