The Chronicles of Vash

The (relatively) new Loading Zone in the hip and happening De Waterkant area is so quintessentially Cape Town it's painful. The chairs are functional designer chic, the music cutting edge electro and the coffee is said to be better than Eccos (and if you're truly Capetonian you'll know what that means). Naturally the walls are unfinished and the lighting harsh in that industrial/interrogation-room kind of way that is all the rage right now. The top half of the loft-like interior features a range of clothing with jeans that retails for upwards of R2600 and bicycles for an unimaginable amount. That's right, bicycles, because when you're in Cape Town it's all about innovation and being carefully, fashionably different.

I say Cape Town but of course I'm not referring to say, Mitchell's Plein, Bellville or even Sea Point down the road from De Waterkant. This version of Cape Town is all French cafes, bubbling fountains and quaint cobble streets neatly purged of the original Cape Malay population. Instead Germans, models and industry types frequent Indonesian furniture shops, speed about on Vespas and tap away on their apple laptops at painfully pedantic coffee shops. Like Loading Zone.

Because if this little section of the city has given itself over to any form of religion, it is that of fashion. And coffee is seriously fashionable right now. Has it been roasted and ground five minutes before being served? Has the milk been freshly steamed and the beans organically grown? If not you're liable to be excommunicated from this church. Drinking bad coffee is tantamount to blasphemy and not drinking coffee at all will leave you in my position. A renegade, misfit and social pariah- adrift in a sea of baristas and constantly in search of just One. Good. Cup of Chai. Yes, tea- that particular poison considered so distasteful by the High Priests of Coffee (i.e. Vida e Café) they've actually barred it from their stores.

Ecco, also in Hudson street, has taken a more conciliatory stance and I'm told they are in the process of constructing a soothing tea garden to co-exist peacefully next to the current interrogation room where Coffee is worshipped. They even have a shelf full of dazzling varieties of teas from all over the world and a laminated venue listing their flavours and origin. Black vanilla leaves from China along with more creative herb varieties from South America have all made their way here. Everything except the simple Chai: that loveliest of lovely Indian brews that has finally, in recent years, found its way across the rest of the civilised world along with lamb vindaloo, chicken korma and samoosas.

Except here. This tiny, pretentious officious nook of the world that consistently and infuriatingly refuses to serve Chai. And now you divine the real root of my displeasure. Let them have their bright yellow seamless chairs, their concrete walls and the hiss and gurgle of their milk steamers. Just let me have my Chai!! Is it too much to ask? Can Ecco really have an imported range of more than 50 teas and no Chai? "I think we had it once," the waiter says squinting at the evidently painful memory.

Both Ecco and Loading Zone offer me Rooibos Chai. Now you'd think one religious fanatic would recognise another. ROOIBOS CHAI??? COULD THERE BE A MORE HEINOUS OFFENCE??!

You must forgive my outburst. As I write I am miserably, but out of pure necessity, sipping at a lukewarm cup of this drivel. The tea bag (ha! As if Chai could be found in a bag) is all drawn out and it's still the weakest most insipid little trumpet that ever did masquerade as her real mistress.

She is but a poor, poor substitute. But it is what I am reduced to.

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*Update: according to a friend Ecco has started serving Chai. Obviously my wailing and gnashing of teeth when I was last there made a lasting impression.

Experiencing the awfulness of writing block and am on a hideously over-extended deadline. As usual it's because this article means something to me and could be good, even great. So I tried a writing exercise to help loosen that damnable stuttering and hesitant mental tongue. Came out better than I expected- I could almost feel the father's tears. Heck I nearly cried myself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Google directed me to the following exercise: The T.S. Eliot/John Gardner Killer Exercise.

Here is how it was written up on this site.

"This exercise is quite possibly the most difficult, demanding and important exercise a writer can ever do. The poet and critic, T. S. Eliot, coined the phrase "objective correlative" to designate what he believed was the most important element in writing: Rendering the description of an object so that the emotional state of the character from whose point of view we receive the description is revealed WITHOUT ever telling the reader what that emotional state is or what has motivated it.

The late John Gardner, recognised in his lifetime as the leading creative writing teacher in the United States, developed the following exercise for students:

A middle-age man is waiting at a bus stop. He has just learned that his son has died violently. Describe the setting from the man's point of view WITHOUT telling your reader what has happened. How will the street look to this man? What are the sounds? Odors? Colors? That this man will notice? What will his clothes feel like? Write a 250 word description."

Here is my fifteen minute attempt:

Mohamed slumped down on the hard pole that served as a bench at the Sea Point bus stop. Never a soft place to rest, never a break in this God-forsaken country. There was a woman with a crying baby next to him and the sound of it grated against his nerves till he felt raw and numb at the same time. In Somalia this wouldn't have happened. This woman in her brazen skirt. The child, crying.

"Will Smith is Switch!" a scratched poster next to him declared. Switch. From Zero to hero. From nothing to everything and back again. Heroes and wars and rescued heroines. Happily ever after and the bloody collateral that gets left in their bloody wake. He couldn't see the poster any more and he realised it was because of the tears and suddenly the lump in his throat was real, too fucking real. And he never swore, he was a mild man, a mild man, he tried to say to the woman next to him who had turned away and he was glad because the child, the child's voice was hoarse now and it was crying as if it's heart would break. As if everything it knew was a filthy lie and the only life that was worth living was not this one. Anything but this one.

There are a few poems that stayed with me from my brief flirtation with English Literature at University (a short-lived flirtation, alas. He was an exacting lover with little grace, pushing me into the arms of the wild-haired and dangerous Politics).

One of the mementos from that torrid year-long fling is 'Alexandra', by seventies South African poet, Mongane Serote. His quiet lament to the township of his birth is evocative and painful in a way anyone can feel. (This universal resonance is unusual for the generally parochial leanings of most apartheid poetry).

The poem springs to mind in the face of outbreaks of xenophobic violence this week, on the streets of this nearly century-old township. At least three people have been killed after mobs took to the streets on Sunday; beating, shooting and raping foreigners. In fact, not just foreigners, if news reports are anything to go by.

The apartheid-guttered township of Serote's time is reinvented as the creator of its own evil. The irony is crippling. Handed your freedom on a blood-stained silver platter, you then take it upon yourself to visit even worse evils upon the vulnerable and helpless in your community.

In the poem Serote speaks of his love-hate relationship with the unforgiving township, but ends with how it remains his home. The last line, written some thirty years ago, is particularly unsettling in this recent spate of black-on-black violence:

When all these worlds became funny to me,
I silently waded back to you
And amid the rubble I lay,
Simple and black.

Immigrants and refugees fleeing their own decaying worlds and unspeakable violence have found no such refuge in the Alexandra of today.

I'm in a darkened warehouse in *some* war-torn African country. My hands are tied behind my chair and I can't move my feet. I can feel the tight wire bite into my wrist and ankles. I slowly blink to consciousness. A rebel soldier in a blue beret stands over me with a gun, watching my every move. He barks at someone in French and then turns to me. "Good day Miss Pillay," he says, mockingly polite. His AK47 dangles casually from his arm. I pray to God the safety catch is on.

Slowly, menacingly he steps aside to reveal a terrible tableau. I try to scream but my cries are muffled by a mouth gag. All my loved ones are tied up in front of me in a row: ten in all. Their backs are to me so I don't see their faces but they are similarly bound and gagged.

"So we've heard all about your "passion" for Africa," the soldier says, pacing up and down in front of me. Narrow beams of harsh sunlight filter through broken slats above him. The barrel of the gun glints now and then as it catches a beam.

He picks up a folded newspaper from a table and shoves a specific article in my face. In the top left hand corner I see the byline. "Foreign correspondent: Verashni Pillay".

"We've read your 'journalism'." He spits the word out with barely concealed contempt. Slowly he turns around to gaze at my family and friends. He snaps back to face me. "YOU CALL US REBELS???" He screams, his sardonic manner turning suddenly, frighteningly, violent. I cringe as he bends, bringing his face close to mine.

"So we will play a little game, you and I, eh?" He is so close, I can see the yellowed whites of his eyes, smell the whiff of alcohol and sweat coming off of him.

The word on the street is victory. It tastes dangerous. Absurd. Sweet. I imagine it sets the air in Zimbabwe aglow. As if men, women, boys, children, soldiers and police are mentally taking pictures- shining the flash of internal cameras on the scenes before them. Winding queues at the polling stations, independent observers doing their rounds, riot police patrolling on their tanks. Because maybe, just maybe, this election will be different. For the first time since independence in 1980, just maybe Zimbabweans will be able to put a new person in power. I wonder… I hope.

The darkness that greets you as you throw back the covers is par for the course. You squint at your clock, barely making out the hour hand pointing at the numerals: IV.

You remember going to bed at this time on some nights in your youth.

Your hands stumble as you pour the flask of tea and you narrowly miss scalding yourself. Contact lenses are clumsily inserted, backpack packed and you're out the door- racing to beat the approaching dawn.

Every robot is red though the streets are dead quiet. The rattling of your car bugs you.

Onto Kloof street and the road starts ascending up to the mountain. It's getting lighter now but you can't go too fast around the hairpin bends.

You're finally on the road that will take you there. You've done the winding drive before but usually when it's light.

The car in front of you has had no such experience. It crawls as if there were monsters around every bend. As if no one had taught him how to use the fourth gear. It's all you can do to keep yourself from speeding past him on the blind curve.

Finally you see the others. People gathered, staring. Pointing. You follow their fingers.

It's started and you're just in time. There she is. An improbably red orb glowing on the horizon, floating above a blanket of mist pulled over the sleeping city. Up here on Signal Hill in Cape Town the air is clear.

You watch the moon's perpetually pale face warm this one time to a maiden's blush. She must have been heavily provoked indeed.

It doesn't matter that you're sleepy. That there's no parking or that you've spilt half the tea in your backpack. Not till the unimaginably far-off year of 2015 will you see this again: the earth bending the rays of the sun to set fire to the moon as it is slowly eclipsed.

There's nothing like dying in a blaze of beauty.

Photo by Jason Visagie, News24 User

Are New Year’s resolutions passé? Old hat, dead and gone, the sort of term you hear bandied about in old movies and ask your gran about?

It sure seems so. Day two of the year la 2008 in the office:

Colleague #1: Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
Me: Yes. Lots.
Colleague #1, interested: Really?
Me: Sure… doesn’t everybody?

A quick audit of the office at this point reveals that nobody else has any resolutions. “I find it’s better to not make any and then feel bad about breaking them later,” explains colleague #1, with the kind of cold logic that makes our capitalist world such a delightful place for, say, child slaves and seals.

She then admits that she does have one: getting her driver’s license. “Isn’t that more of a goal than a resolution?” I ask. “Yes I suppose so,” she replies thoughtfully.

I have so many resolutions I don’t know where to start. My boss recommended narrowing them down. But how do I choose from saving the world one beggar at a time and starting that band?

I now realise that as with all things in my haphazard life, order is… well, in order. Hitherto my resolutions have remained unlisted… like a dodgy company avoiding the stock exchange.

In order to pin it down and hold it accountable I shall attempt to commit it to paper/screen.

I would post it here but resolutions, like bathroom activity, are something of an overshare. People want to see the results of what you do, not necessarily the process.

Of course, lists are one thing, but achieving them is another. More than any resolution, I want to rely on God increasingly and trust His spirit to empower and enable me to do his will. If New Year’s resolutions are passé, striving on one’s own strength is even more so.

So… here’s to a blessed and grace-filled 2008!

This is the conclusion I've reached after trying to write my first article for the year.

It's a simple follow-up of a hijacking article. There's some holes in the story so I'm calling my usual sources at hospitals, police and emergency services.

It really is just a routine, formulaic piece.

But maybe people are still in holiday mode and have forgotten how a logical conversation works.

Ring ring. "Hello?"

"Good day, is this the Helen Joseph hospital?"

"Yes it is."

"Hi there, I'm a journalist calling from News24.com, could you perhaps put me through to your communications or PR person please?"

"No I'm sorry, this is Lion of Africa, not the hospital."

After recovering from that Little Britain-esque exchange I call ER24.

"Hello is this Mr Vermaak?"

"Yes it is."

"Hi Mr Vermaak, this is Verashni calling from News24, how are you?"

"I'm very well thanks."

"That's good. Mr Vermaak, can I ask you a few questions about the statement you've just released about the woman who was hijacked in Randburg?"

"Sure you can."

"Thank you. Okay, so you mention that her husband was thrown into the boot. Was he later released or is he still missing?"

"Sorry, can you please call me back in five minutes? I'm doing a radio interview."

.... the world has gone mad today.

I'm so anxious about the ANC conference I'm losing hair. Okay maybe that has more to do with the impending (strangled whisper) 20km a day hike I'm about to embark on. But still, I'm gorging myself on succession speculation in the media and trying not to hyperventilate in between praying: "Please God, please not Zuma..."

In the course of my anxious ramblings across the internet for all things ANC-related I stumbled across this article. Shock. Horror. Mbeki's first interview with the Mail and Guardian in his eight years in power. He finally decides to engage- two days before he, in all likelihood, gets politically castrated on Sunday. A little too little too late is the achingly accurate phrase that springs to mind and jumps up and down in jittery panic.

Mbeki was an aloof president. A stubborn president. A president too often in denial and too often lashing out in offence. But he was a competent president in many respects who failed to communicate that competence to a public and nation desperate to hear from him. If a good public relations officer is a politician's best friend, Mbeki was a friendless kid sitting in a corner of the playground reading an encyclopedia whil everyone else played marbles.

Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma (who I pray will be a last minute compromise candidate to end the madness) said in a recent interview with the Cape Argus that he's just "shy".

"I won't say he is anti-social, but he is more reserved, a bit on the shy side, and sometimes people interpret that as not being friendly." she said, reflecting on Zuma's one strength over Mbeki: his friendly jabbering and ability to say what everyone wants to hear.

There's a part from the movie, The American President, where one of the president's aides (Lewis) powerfully and poignantly points out the awful, awful consequences of a president going quiet in a time of need, and the gap it leaves for those kind of talkers to rise to power.

An excerpt from the script below:

Don’t be fooled by Zuma’s jovial façade. The charismatic leader whose warmth and ready smile is seen as an answer to Thabo Mbeki’s ivory tower style of leadership was dubbed Gedleyehlekisa at birth. The middle name is an ominous portent of things to come.

"It means one who laughs with you, whilst endangering you," Zuma told an ABC journalist in an interview last year.

In the frantic build-up to the conference in Polokwane next week to choose the ANC - and thus the country’s next leader, Zuma has been doing the rounds. Addressing a group of working class people from the Cape Flats on crime one week, flying to America to meet with elite business leaders the next, and speaking at a communist rally a few days later... he certainly does manage to fit in just everywhere doesn’t he?

I remember reading an article in some or other Afrikaans glossie, where they organised a braai with a host of Afrikaans luminaries such as Steve Hofmeyer and our very own JZ. They all got on like a house on fire apparently. He can laugh his way through just about anything, including a rape trial and the firing of his financial advisor for corruption.

But like his name says, behind that laugh is something deeply dangerous. His father knew it and the ANC, when they go to vote at the much-hyped conference in Polokwane next week, would do well to heed it.

At the crime summit in Mitchell’s Plain Zuma was all smiles and laughter until I tried to pin him down on actual specifics. His smile broke down in a serious way as he basically told me off for expecting too much from him. The man is genius at saying everything and promising nothing. Which is why he’s such a good politician I guess.

He has the chameleon’s gift to say and do the right thing as occasion demands. But post-Polokwane the real Zuma will stand up, very likely wielding a machine gun and spouting nonsense about HIV-curing showers and gays that should be knocked out. One can only hope that those will be the least of his misdemeanors if he does become president: a prospect that is looking increasingly likely.