January 2025 – Mother City News

January gig guide

31 January 2025 by Steve Kretzmann

So that was the festive season, then. Jirre! Back at work but at least a paycheque has landed and we still have weekends and a lingering sense of what might be possible.

Music

If you’re fast enough, you can catch local jazz maestro Hilton Schilder playing a solo gig at Natural Mystic (92 – 94 Station Rd, Obs) tonight, Friday 31 January at 9pm.… Read more

Cape Town not immune to Los Angeles type fire disaster

1 March 202524 January 2025 by Steve Kretzmann

The city has better preventative measures but is far less resourced than Los Angeles

A devastating fire, such as the one that has raged in Los Angeles over the past two weeks, could occur in Cape Town, say experts.

In Los Angeles, a hot summer and autumn combined with an unusually dry winter, led to the vegetation in the hills around the city being highly combustible.… Read more

Recent Stories

Seapoint site could change future of social housing

GroundUpA pending Constitutional Court judgment on Tafelberg may have far-reaching consequences for City planning In 2015, the Western Cape Government announced it would sell the Tafelberg School site in Sea Point for R135-million. Housing activists then launched a legal battle to stop the sale and compel the province to consider affordable housing before selling off state-owned land to private parties.… Read more [...] Read more...

Orfeo: Living lies in paying attention

Steve KretzmannRarely does a novel teach you to listen. There is a scene in Richard Powers’s Orfeo in which the protagonist, avante-garde composer Peter Els, presents his final undergraduate composition at a famed music school in rural Indiana to his tutor, Karol Kopacz.… Read more [...] Read more...

Old skool sleeper reawakened

Jackie CreweThe nameplate Toyota Corona brings a rich and varied history. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, the mid-size family car made a move from basic durability to being a bit of a sleeper at the robots. In other words, the genre added a touch of sportiness.… Read more [...] Read more...

Prasa and City rail agreement finally gets going

Steve KretzmannBut plan lacks firm targets, commitments, and timelines A Service Level Plan to give the City of Cape Town oversight of commuter rail in the metro has been years in the making. In December, mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis celebrated Prasa finally signing the plan.… Read more [...] Read more...

Antarctic icebreaker returns with alarming news

Steve KretzmannScientists aboard state-of-the-art research and supply vessel have been tracking ocean health South Africa’s icebreaker ship, the SA Agulhas II, has returned to Cape Town after taking supplies and a relief crew to South Africa’s Antarctic base. The ship had first sailed to East London where public were invited aboard during an open day before the two-day voyage home, which media and members of Parliament were invited to join.… Read more [...] Read more...

March gig guide: Faustus returns

Steve KretzmannAll we want to say is: billionaires, like Musk and his fellow Trump bootlickers, must just vokof to Mars. Also: having a good time while being kind is an act of resistance. Theatre We saw Jamie-Lee Money in that fantastic patriarchy-bashing punk play In Whorefish Bloomers alongside Donna Cormack-Thomson and were very sad when Jamie moved on from our little Mother City to the sprawling smoke of London.… Read more [...] Read more...

January gig guide

Steve KretzmannSo that was the festive season, then. Jirre! Back at work but at least a paycheque has landed and we still have weekends and a lingering sense of what might be possible. Music If you’re fast enough, you can catch local jazz maestro Hilton Schilder playing a solo gig at Natural Mystic (92 – 94 Station Rd, Obs) tonight, Friday 31 January at 9pm.… Read more [...] Read more...

Cape Town not immune to Los Angeles type fire disaster

Steve KretzmannThe city has better preventative measures but is far less resourced than Los Angeles A devastating fire, such as the one that has raged in Los Angeles over the past two weeks, could occur in Cape Town, say experts. In Los Angeles, a hot summer and autumn combined with an unusually dry winter, led to the vegetation in the hills around the city being highly combustible.… Read more [...] Read more...

Milnerton Lagoon still stinks

Steve KretzmannYears after the City of Cape Town was ordered to clean it up, residents say the smell is nauseating The stench of sewage from the Milnerton Lagoon in Cape Town is nothing new, but it has been nauseating over the past weeks, say residents.… Read more [...] Read more...

PRASA finally signs rail deal with City

GroundUpThe Service Level Plan gives the City oversight over annual performance plans, station revitalisation, and the introduction of more train sets The City of Cape Town and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) have signed a Service Level Plan (SLP) following court action, threats of an intergovernmental dispute, and more than a year of negotiations.… Read more [...] Read more...

The Meat Room: Bushveldt thriller guts apartheid’s twilight

Steve KretzmannThe fourth sentence is cliched and the second sentence has a contradiction in the tenses. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have to self publish because publishing houses don’t want to put out a book that depicts a town in Limpopo circa 1990 (when it was still the northern Transvaal) too realistically.… Read more [...] Read more...

Cars with attitude show off at Capestance

Jackie CreweOn the Cape car calendar, there are a few events that stand out as representing the local car culture on an international level. Only the Fittest is certainly one of those. Hosted by automotive cultural movement Capestance, the Only the Fittest exhibitions have developed over the past decade into a must for car fans across the Cape.… Read more [...] Read more...

Dec/Jan gig guide – mense raak mal

Steve KretzmannHold on to your wallets peeps, it’s December holidays. Okay, let’s be real: you’re gonna have to shell out, but try not to hand it over to those capitalist bastards who would take the last 5c out of your credit card account and then sell your kidney to a muti mafia for the interest if they could, without even a single disturbed dream about it.… Read more [...] Read more...

De Waal Park man’s struggle to keep his beloved dogs

GroundUpThe City of Cape Town has told Clayton Smith to leave De Waal Park where he has lived for 13 years. Clayton Smith has called De Waal Park in Cape Town home for more than a decade. He lives in a small storeroom with his two dogs, Peaches and Aisha.… Read more [...] Read more...

Deafrow blows the bass

Jackie CreweSo Harlem Carelse was the winner for BEST OF SHOW with his bagged E30. The sound-off is a lesser-known but no less exciting aspect of the Cape Town car scene. This is a subculture in which, simply put, creative car folk build as much powerful audio equipment and power supply into a car as is humanly possible, and bring that car to ‘the lanes’, where the loudness is measured using hi-tech equipment.… Read more [...] Read more...

Et tu, Brut: Putting the fizz into summer

Sadé AllcockI am the first to admit I have drunk rather more MCC than the average person in the past few months. This is entirely by design; I have secretly been preparing myself for the festive season. And what a lot of preparation it has been.… Read more [...] Read more...

Rail renewal: City plan unveiled

Steve KretzmannThe City of Cape Town first suggested taking over the passenger rail network in 2017, its investigation into how it would make this work is to being presented to council Passenger rail, which should be the backbone of Cape Town’s public transport system, has been in decline for a decade under PRASA’s management, losing 159-million passengers since the 2012/13 financial year.… Read more [...] Read more...

December gig guide – get yer bums out

Steve KretzmannSummer’s here. Get yer bums out. Matric exams are done, and although the last week or two of work is dragging on, the time to jol is now, before the Christmas family obligations drag you to the salad bar. Music Salty songstresses The Fishwives bring their blues-tinged chords and funk-fringed beatsback to Cape Town to sing their poetry and like sirens dash us against their rock.… Read more [...] Read more...

Outlaw love

Steve KretzmannThe Western is a well-trodden genre, defined as much by place and time as by character and plot. So much part of the American myth of freedom and self-sufficiency, it is arguably become part of the United States’s propaganda arsenal. Of course, we swallow it, for the most part, probably because the story of lone man battling nature and other men (it is almost always men in the Western) segues so well with the Greek narrative arc of journey, conflict, and resolution.… Read more [...] Read more...

City’s heating up: More trees needed

Steve KretzmannAs global temperature records continue to be broken, cities need to move fast to prevent inhabitants dying from heat stress. Planting trees seems the simplest solution. As global heating takes hold, Cape Town appears to be losing trees in the urban environment faster than they are being replaced, and the City’s Urban Forest Policy target falls far short of international recommendations. … Read more [...] Read more...

Burning rubber gets recognition

Jackie CreweThe homegrown motorsport of spinning has gained solid traction over the past decades in Cape Town. Now, although that might be a contradiction in terms (spin is about losing traction after all) it is testament to the popularity of a motorsport that started out in abandoned parking lots and has risen to being Mzansi’s fastest-growing sport.… Read more [...] Read more...

Teacher posts: Western Cape education department quizzed in Parliament

GroundUp“We’re not retrenching teachers. We’re reducing posts,” says WCED head The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) came under fire in Parliament on Tuesday over its plan to reduce teaching posts. In August, the WCED said the number of teacher posts would be reduced by 2,407 for the 2025 school year due to a R3.8-billion budget shortfall over the next three years.… Read more [...] Read more...

Picket held to support genocide case against Israel

GroundUpThe SA government is submitting evidence to the International Court of Justice to prove Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. About 50 people gathered outside the Western Cape High Court on Monday morning to support South Africa’s additional submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide in Gaza.… Read more [...] Read more...

November gig guide

Steve KretzmannIt is Halloween, brethren. Now, normally we would scoff at these northern hemisphere festivities celebrating the start of winter and the night on which the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Point of Halloween was to spiritually prepare for the fact the old and sick would likely not make it through the coming freezing months, thus it’s not applicable down this side of the world.… Read more [...] Read more...

Not a lot of store in Babylonstoren’s babble

Sadé AllcockBabylonstoren has arguably become one of the most well-known and well-loved South African wine farm experiences. It boasts the full package: a winery, two restaurants, a bakery, a hotel, a host of cottages, a spa, and an impressive expanse of gardens which one can peacefully meander around.… Read more [...] Read more...

Skylines: seriously fly

Jackie CreweThere are certain characters on the Cape car scene who could be described as larger than life. Jonathan Schaffers is one of these people. Known on the track as Johnny 2J, he is probably best known for his red Nissan Skyline powered by a Nissan VK45 turbocharged V8 powerplant.… Read more [...] Read more...

Deadlock on old Woodstock Hospital occupation begins to crack

GroundUpAfter seven years the City of Cape Town and the hospital occupiers are beginning to find common ground, but difficulties lie ahead By Matthew Hirsch/GroundUp In 2017 a handful of housing activists organised the occupation of the old, out-of-use Woodstock Hospital.… Read more [...] Read more...

October gig guide

Steve KretzmannWoordfees, out in Stellies is wragtig impressive. It’s giving the National Arts Festival a runs for its money, and is much, much closer (but tickets are much, much pricier). Check it out if you can. Theatre An unusual love story, apparently, is It Went Above Your Head at Theatre Arts on the corner of Wesley and Milton roads in Obs.… Read more [...] Read more...

Inner-city housing: New plan in the works

Steve KretzmannMore than 70% of all accommodation in the central city is let out to tourists. A new local spatial development framework sets out how this needs to change A new plan in the works for development of Cape Town’s inner city sets out the need to accommodate about 40,000 more residents within a greener and more pedestrian-friendly environment over the next 15 years.… Read more [...] Read more...

Court asked to compel PRASA to return belongings of foreshore land occupiers

GroundUpBut Prasa denies it did anything Attorney Jonty Cogger asked the Cape High Court on Friday to instruct the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) to return the building material confiscated from 38 people who had been living on land along Old Marine Drive on the Cape Town Foreshore.… Read more [...] Read more...