February 2025 – Mother City News

March gig guide: Faustus returns

27 February 2025 by Steve Kretzmann

All 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

Recent Stories

Residents battle for a say in Blaauwberg development plan

Steve KretzmannCommunity alleges their input over ecologically sensitive land has not been taken into account Residents of Blaauwberg on Cape Town’s west coast are locked in a battle over a proposed development on ecologically sensitive land in Big Bay. About 30 families are currently living on the land in shacks.… Read more [...] Read more...

Should you give handouts at traffic lights? A view from the street

GroundUpPeople helping do so out of goodwill and with the best intentions By Chantel Sampson/GroundUp My name is Chantel Sampson. I was a homeless person for six years. I lived at the foot of Table Mountain from 2018 onwards. You probably walked past me if you visited Van Riebeeck Park in Vredehoek.… Read more [...] Read more...

Cape Town’s water recycling project should not be privatised

GroundUpComment on the proposed Faure New Water Scheme closes on 17 April By Group of water researchers/GroundUp A group of water justice researchers has warned against the City of Cape Town’s proposal to “externalise” the implementation and operation of the Faure New Water Scheme.… Read more [...] Read more...

Western Cape promises progress on inner-city housing projects

GroundUpSeveral social housing projects in Cape Town will go to tender this year Matthew Hirsch and Daniel Steyn/GroundUp MEC for Western Cape Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers announced this week that he intends to finalise the tenders for three major inner-city housing projects built on state-owned land in Cape Town.… Read more [...] Read more...

Department of Social Development proposes changes to SRD grant application

GroundUpQuestions about income could be removed By Marecia Damons/GroundUp The Department of Social Development is proposing changes to the Social Assistance Act, including removing questions about the income of applicants for the R370-a-month Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. The proposed amendments are open for public comment until Monday, 14 April.… Read more [...] Read more...

Affordable housing proposed on prime Green Point site

GroundUpThe land value of the site ranks “among the highest in the southern hemisphere”. The City of Cape Town has approved the sale of more than four hectares of prime land traversing Green Point and Sea Point. The site currently includes the Sea Point library and civic centre, which are to be retained.… Read more [...] Read more...

Building in Bishopscourt begins for land claimants

GroundUpA return to the land is in sight for scores of families forcibly removed during apartheid Matthew Hirsch/GroundUp A sod-turning ceremony for the construction of 86 homes in Protea Village, Bishopscourt, was attended by land claimants, community members and government officials on Tuesday 11 March.… Read more [...] Read more...

East city ‘problem building’ occupiers face eviction

GroundUpAbout 30 people have been living at 104 Darling Street for more than two decades Matthew Hirsch/GroundUp Unathi Mangali’s daughter was a baby when they moved into 104 Darling Street in the Cape Town city centre twenty years ago. Today her daughter is 22 years old.… Read more [...] Read more...

Book shorts

ContributorThe Fourth Boy by Andrew Robert Wilson Set mostly in the Klein Karoo, beautifully written, atmospheric and irresistibly intriguing, The Fourth Boy explores notions of belonging and a myriad of other longings which I found profoundly moving. It tells the story of a young man’s search for his father against the backdrop of the 80s in apartheid South Africa and the fate of five hundred Polish WWII refugee children who arrived in Oudtshoorn in 1943 – a piece of local history I have been fascinated by for as long as I have lived in South Africa.… Read more [...] Read more...

The best of both worlds in a Pinot Noir

Sadé AllcockHumans are deeply sentimental creatures. This has been the case for millennia. It is evidenced by the number of personal artifacts buried together with human remains, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Egyptians to the present day. We keep letters, photos, scrapbooks of all the special moments and places.… Read more [...] Read more...

Audio build to blow your hair back

Jackie CruzeOne car subculture that announces its presence with sheer volume in Cape Town is the audio enthusiasts. Take Granger Nieuwoudt and his Seat Vario Cordoba, the only car of its kind in the country. Experiencing the force of his sound system is a full body experience; you can literally feel your skin vibrating while your hair gets blown in every direction by those blasting decibels.… Read more [...] Read more...

Herd of puppets migrate from Congo to Scandinavia

GroundUpLife-sized animal puppet project to raise awareness about dangers of accelerating climate change Ashraf Hendricks/Groundup Hundreds of life-sized animal puppets will be performing in cities from Central Africa to the northern tip of Norway to highlight the loss of biodiversity caused by rapid, human-induced climate change.… Read more [...] Read more...

April gig guide

Steve KretzmannTheatre The absolutely superb actor Tony Miyambo brings Red Peter back to the stage in Kafka’s Ape, an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s A Report For An Academy, in which the Ape presents himself as a civilised being after being captured and trained.… Read more [...] Read more...

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...