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The aim of his book: to gather together 50 lies that “shaped, shook and sometimes shattered South Africa”.
From jaw-droppingly dodgy financial pyramid schemes, the lunacy of apartheid, corrupt politicians, conspiracies, paranoia, the Hansie Cronjé matchfixing saga, Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla firepool to Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farmgate debacle, writer Jonathan Ancer was spoilt for choice when it came to selecting material for Bullsh!t: 50 Fibs That Made South Africa.
In this extract from his new book he looks at the bizarre lies that have circulated for decades about Cape Town's unfinished highways.
"The Mother City is famous for Table Mountain, drivers who can’t find their cars’ indicator switches, being the gatsby capital of the world, peak-hour traffic at 10am on Friday as people head home from work and highways that end in midair.
Two roads going nowhere overlook the busiest intersection in Cape Town’s CBD, a stone’s throw from the city’s swankiest tourist attraction, the V&A Waterfront. In the distance are two more stubs of unfulfilled potential. These concrete edifices form part of the city’s unfinished freeway, a source of urban mythology since 1977.
When Cape Town’s shoreline was built out into the bay in the 1940s, planners started imagining how the reclaimed land would include sweeping highways that would lift off over central business district traffic to make Cape Town a “metropolis of tomorrow”.
By the 1960s, with the design of a new highway approved, construction began. Parts of the elevated freeway went up in 1977 and then, suddenly, construction ground to a halt.
So many lies have circulated about why the unfinished highway – named Solly’s Folly after city engineer Solly Morris, who proposed the structure – was never finished. One has it that a stubborn owner of a cafe slap-bang in the middle of the construction site refused to sell his land to the government – even though it offered him millions of rand.
Another is that someone made a calculation blaps and the freeways were not going to align. Just who made the miscalculation is a matter of debate. Some believe it was an engineer who was so embarrassed that he took his own life.
The truth of why the foreshore freeway was never completed is more mundane: the project ran out of funds and after a while it was no longer seen as a priority. It seems the money was diverted to causes deemed more pressing – like propping up apartheid and forcibly removing people who weren’t white enough from District Six and dumping them in Mitchells Plain.
The unfinished flyovers have featured in adverts, played a cameo role in Black Mirror and Fear Factor and hosted the world’s largest vuvuzela, which was blown during the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Homeless people used them for shelter until officials placed sharp stones to keep people away and built a parking lot for buses. From time to time, there’s a buzz of excitement as a request goes out inviting proposals to connect the freeways and redevelop the area, but these plans go nowhere (much like the freeway).
In 2022, then Transport minister Fikile Mbalula said the predicted cost of completing the Foreshore freeway was about R1,8 billion – a bridge too far for the cash-strapped government.
So, Cape Town’s unfinished bridges will remain unfinished, accidental monuments to procrastinators all over the world. For many Capetonians, though, the spans protruding into the air like fat middle fingers represent the city’s “up yours” to all the Vaalies who either swarm the beaches every December or flee Johannesburg’s potholes and semigrate to Cape Town, driving up property prices and hooting at local drivers who don’t indicate.”
This is an edited extract from Bullsh!t: 50 Fibs That Made South Africa by Jonathan Ancer, published by Jonathan Ball.
