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Showing posts from October, 2010

Where are the centres of Cape Town?

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The fishing village of Khayelitsha... or the city of Khayelitsha? Khayelitsha is a city. It has a bigger population than most European capital centres. It has five train stations of its own, and numerous taxi ranks. Apparantly, it is the fastest growing suburb in South Africa. Khayelitsha is a city. And yet, we call it a township. (Because it doesn't have a cathedral, noted one commentator!) Public art in the Khayelitsha CBD, between the courts and the public baths. When people talk about `Cape Town', mostly they mean the part of the city that we know as the inner-city, the old city. The City Bowl. The neighbourhood called Camissa. When we Capetonians say we are `going to town', we don't mean to Athlone town centre, or the CBD of Wynberg or Khayelithsa. We mean the old city at the foot of the table topped mountain. Senior citizens in Wynberg, like my neighbour the late auntie Annie on Ottery Road, would talk about going to `the main road', meaning the