A view from the top
February 24, 2022
Pulling out the stops at No. 14
February 24, 2022
Show up – ready or not
Shimmy Beach Club is an unlikely venue for a live performance by veteran gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, but I had wanted to dance with my girlfriends to their classic ‘Start Wearing Purple’, so I decided to accept the subcultural mismatch and just showed up.
Words: Jodi Allemeier Images: Peter Herring
Today, the band Gogol Bordello sings ‘Are you ready … for the roaring 2020s to begin?’ Now, with even fewer live music, cultural and arts venues than in 2015 (where has the time gone?) my instinctive answer is no.
Unemployment, well above 30% in urban South Africa, continues to rise, and the employed aren’t earning enough to fuel a boom: the average household income in most metros sits around or below R10 000 a month. The pressure on systems keeps growing; informal settlements trump any supply of affordable housing and market housing struggles with double-digit vacancies in well-established neighbourhoods, according to the recent Rode’s Report.
The commercial real estate market overall is struggling with low occupancy and capitalisation rates, with the exception of township-based retail. But perhaps that’s too pessimistic. Perhaps in the same way that the bouncers at Shimmy Beach Club weren’t ready for Gogol Bordello fans that night – roaring all around them – progress roars in all of us, asking not to be tamed, but requiring open air. A productive city is, after all, about more than just formal jobs and real estate.
Our universities are producing innovation. Launching satellites into the sky with SpaceX and producing entrepreneurs capable of creating virus-testing methods to reach majority populations. We talk to the world in call centres that operate by day and increasingly also at night. Township-based bicycle businesses have expanded and a beautiful hotel opened in Khayelitsha
at the end of 2021. New financial sector brands’ logos are going up on tall buildings and slowly to-let signs on ground floors are being replaced with welcoming faces, asking us to come back. After 10 years of advocacy, Cape Town’s streets are finally ‘open’ (albeit for night- time activities and at the time of writing, limited to the CBD). If you look closely, you’ll see the plumber, the baker and the shoemaker keeping us going.
People often talk about how much society has changed since the pandemic, that we will forever work from home as if that is the major story of how people live, inhabit cities, and co-produce space. There have been so many losses, including cultural institutions, small businesses and friends we have loved. And yes, some of us will continue to work remotely.
Our enduring traits are what tell the bigger story: we must continue to gather socially, to produce physically, and to hustle. We need creative spaces for generating ideas, as well as places to flirt and ways to move.
After World War I, there was a roar driven by industrialisation, infrastructure, automobiles, and consumer spending, followed by a crash. In the current crisis, despite good work by communities, individuals, and some people in government and big business, we didn’t fully protect the most vulnerable. Today we begin rebuilding with more people in need, more gangs, and a greater risk of social unrest. In the 2020s, we’ll also be facing climate change and the power of technology affecting every aspect of our public and commercial lives. Our ‘roar’ has to be different, or our crash will be a climate and tech resilience crisis, and will come with even harder felt social consequences.
