TWO very different gardens highlight the social and political divisions in South Africa, and give hope of the possibility of real change
Two gardens. Both alien to me. One is in a township in Cape Town. The soil is, in fact, sand and the garden is surrounded by corrugated iron-roofed houses. Some streets have electricity, running water and toilets, many don’t. In this garden, vegetables are being teased out of the ground, but as soon as they appear, rats eat them. Mama Kwande, the boss, is the head of a project growing organic produce for people in the townships to eat and sell the excess in the centre of Cape Town. When it rains, she teaches the other gardeners to write because they missed out on an education during the apartheid years. Once they can write, they can apply for a home. And start the years of waiting. Because almost 20 years into a South Africa under an ANC government, there are still thousands of black South Africans living in shanty towns.
The other garden is an hour’s drive north, in the heart of the country’s rich Franschhoek Wine Valley, cradled at the heart of the Simonsberg Western Cape mountains. It’s an Eden, named Babylonstoren by Boer settlers who thought the little hill there looked like the Tower of Babel in the Bible, and it couldn’t be more biblical, fecund and plentiful. There appears to be every fruit in existence, hanging plump, bursting from the boughs of trees, ripe for the picking. Vegetables stand to attention in rows and flowers run riot over pergolas while chickens cluck and bees buzz in the hot summer sun that also ripens the vines growing on the surrounding slopes. All this produce finds it way into the Babel restaurant in one of the former farm buildings, now a destination for South Africa’s foodies.
Belonging to media mogul Koos Bekker and his wife Karen Roos, former editor of South African Elle Decoration, the 200-hectare farm has one of the best preserved farmyards in the Cape Dutch tradition and a manor house dating back to 1777. Roos’ style qualifications are confirmed by the farm’s 14 self-catering Boer cottages, built in the garden on the footprint of former estate workers’ homes. The decor is all whites, creams and neutrals; there are posh capsule coffee machines, animal skin rugs, log fires and bathrooms with tubs so big you could swim in them. Outdoors, among the plenitude of South Africa’s agrarian bounty, there’s a large outdoor pool, spa, gymnasium, newly opened bakery and cheese shop and the vineyard has produced its first vintage, currently only available in the restaurant, but bound for a place alongside the players on the wine region map that circles the stunning Simonsberg mountain above us.
Visiting both these gardens left a lasting impression and raised several questions. The impression: that a garden is a way of not only feeding people but a means of uniting them. And the questions: why, nearly 20 years since apartheid was overthrown, is there still such a yawning gap between rich and poor in South Africa? Will it really take until the current black generation is educated to change things for the majority? And in a country so rich in natural resources, why is there still such need? Blame the IMF, the concessions Mandela and the ANC were forced to make, the fact they were a rebel organisation as opposed to an economic think tank and the corruption of Zuma’s current regime.
If you go to Cape Town and do only one thing, take James Fernie’s Uthando township tour. If you have time, visit Robben Island where Mandela was incarcerated and the awesome heights of Table Mountain. Or take a trip out into the Atlantic with the Cape Grace hotel’s luxury yacht and watch dolphins crest the waves under the bow. But for me, it was Fernie’s tour of the “informal settlements” of Khayelitsha and Langa that brought home where South Africa is now. Collecting us from our hotel in his minibus, as we travel out to the township he fills us in on his aim of directing tourism cash towards those still suffering from the financial disparities carried forward from apartheid, by taking people to visit the grassroots projects his tours support.
“I don’t take groups into people’s houses. They’re not exhibits. I take them to projects where people are working and trying to improve their lives,” he explains.
We meet cheeky children at the Happy Feet Gum Boot Dancing project who have learnt how to welly boot dance, musicians and actors who deliver drama and music programmes, and a day care centre for vulnerable pensioners that delivers more than we bargained for. We’re invited to sit round the table with the ‘mamas’ who stop making soap to ask us questions. Where are we from? What do we think about South Africa?
Then they treat us to a song. Forming a line, they start to sing, moving off, hips swaying, into a formidable conga that snakes towards us, harmonies swelling up to the corrugated iron roof. As each mama reaches us, our hands are grabbed and a hug delivered, 18 long, comforting bear hugs, one after the other, moving some of our group to tears.
Despite it being a hugely fractured society, the thing that unites all South Africans is pride in their beautiful country. Without exception, everyone we speak to, from one of the managers at Babylonstoren who grew up in the Kalahari, to the mamas in the townships, tells us Table Mountain has just been named one of the Wonders of the World. A love for their country is palpable among its citizens, and no wonder, for the views are the kind that stop you in your tracks. Every morning I gawp up at Table Mountain from my balcony at the Cape Grace Hotel. Every morning it wears its misty tablecloth and the cable car hung redundant. No matter. I’ve already decided I’m coming back and Table Mountain will still be there waiting, while the gardens will hopefully flourish and feed from grassroots up into a changing country in a way politics possibly never can.
• A tour of Cape Grace, Cape Town and Babylonstoren, Drakenstein Valley is arranged through Carrier. Stay eight nights, pay for six and receive a complimentary wine or whisky tasting session with the sommelier at Cape Grace (valid until 22 December 2012). Prices from £1,995 per person (based on 4 Aug 2012 departure), including four nights at Cape Grace with breakfast and four nights at Babylonstoren with breakfast. Also includes Virgin Atlantic flights from London Heathrowh, transfers and five-day car hire (0161-492 1353, www.carrier.co.uk).
• Babylonstoren Farm, Klapmuts/Simondium Road, Franschhoek, Babel restaurant at Babylonstoren (www.babylonstoren.com); Cape Grace hotel, West Quay Road, Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town (www.capegrace.com). Spirit of the Cape cruise, one-hour Atlantic seaboard cruise, R6,000 (max 12 guests).
• Uthando, James Fernie {http://www.uthandosa.org|www.uthandosa.org|www.uthandosa.org}
