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I guess you could say I have a love-hate relationship with Cape Town’s southern suburbs, where I grew up. On the one hand I hate it, and on the other, I love hating it. Now that I live in the CBD, I often joke that if it wasn’t for De Waal Drive I would have dug a tunnel through Table Mountain with my own bare hands just to escape.
There’s something positively Stepfordian about the place. It’s almost impossibly suburban with far too many trees that sometimes obscure the traffic lights. Residents’ gardens and lawns are far more well-manicured than I have ever been. There’s a fierce sense of order and moderation. Whenever I go back there to visit my family I feel like a bit of an alien.
Now notice I said a FIERCE sense. Because as it turns out, some of its residents are so extremely goddamn moderate they’re willing to assault and maim anyone who even looks like they might challenge the status quo.
I recently wrote about Tim Osrin, now amusingly dubbed “The Kenilworth Klapper”, who assaulted a domestic worker for the totally sane and not at all dickheaded reason that he thought she was a sex worker (it turns out Osrin has a history of assaulting women in the area – a further charge from another attack has been laid against him).
Now, in what seems to be an even more serious attack, not very far where Osrin made his stand for a safer, moral society, the Southern Suburbs proudly presents to you the Sjambok Surpriser! (Too flippant? Okay, I clearly suck at coming up with catchy names.)
This time the victim was a white guy who was on his way to work when… Just kidding. He’s black, of course.
Muhammed Makungwa, a 22-year-old Malawian man, was on his way to work when a white man in his 50s tried to run him down in his BMW. He then jumped out of the car and whipped Makungwa with a sjambok, leaving him injured and traumatised.
The “reason” this time? Apparently the assailant thought his victim had broken his car window. And then he saw a young black man running down the street. Once again, this makes perfect Southern Suburbs sense.
Now some readers may be asking why I’m being so scathing about my former neighbourhood (if you are, stop it. What you should be asking is “who the fuck drives around with a sjambok in their car?”).
Well, it all comes down to this status quo thing I mentioned earlier. It bothers me that almost nothing has changed there since I was growing up (well, getting taller, anyway) in the ‘80s – not int terms of demographics or, as we see from these incidents, attitudes.
Now don’t get me wrong. Despite what I read on comments threads I firmly believe that most people are inherently good so, by extension, are most people in the Southern Suburbs. But its almost total lack of change has lowered an invisible social dome over some the leafier areas.
It’s still as white and middle-upper-middle class as it’s ever been, and some people can become a bit too proud of their neighbourhood – almost as proud as they are of their lawns. It’s an easy environment to become territorial.
So a black man walking down the street, or even worse, running, is going to provoke a certain reaction in people. And that reaction can be summed up with the immortal phrase, “You’re not from around these parts, are you boy?”
Southern Suburbs, here’s hoping you can crack that dome. It’s nice out here, I promise.
Follow Chris on Twitter.
There’s something positively Stepfordian about the place. It’s almost impossibly suburban with far too many trees that sometimes obscure the traffic lights. Residents’ gardens and lawns are far more well-manicured than I have ever been. There’s a fierce sense of order and moderation. Whenever I go back there to visit my family I feel like a bit of an alien.
Now notice I said a FIERCE sense. Because as it turns out, some of its residents are so extremely goddamn moderate they’re willing to assault and maim anyone who even looks like they might challenge the status quo.
I recently wrote about Tim Osrin, now amusingly dubbed “The Kenilworth Klapper”, who assaulted a domestic worker for the totally sane and not at all dickheaded reason that he thought she was a sex worker (it turns out Osrin has a history of assaulting women in the area – a further charge from another attack has been laid against him).
Now, in what seems to be an even more serious attack, not very far where Osrin made his stand for a safer, moral society, the Southern Suburbs proudly presents to you the Sjambok Surpriser! (Too flippant? Okay, I clearly suck at coming up with catchy names.)
This time the victim was a white guy who was on his way to work when… Just kidding. He’s black, of course.
Muhammed Makungwa, a 22-year-old Malawian man, was on his way to work when a white man in his 50s tried to run him down in his BMW. He then jumped out of the car and whipped Makungwa with a sjambok, leaving him injured and traumatised.
The “reason” this time? Apparently the assailant thought his victim had broken his car window. And then he saw a young black man running down the street. Once again, this makes perfect Southern Suburbs sense.
Now some readers may be asking why I’m being so scathing about my former neighbourhood (if you are, stop it. What you should be asking is “who the fuck drives around with a sjambok in their car?”).
Well, it all comes down to this status quo thing I mentioned earlier. It bothers me that almost nothing has changed there since I was growing up (well, getting taller, anyway) in the ‘80s – not int terms of demographics or, as we see from these incidents, attitudes.
Now don’t get me wrong. Despite what I read on comments threads I firmly believe that most people are inherently good so, by extension, are most people in the Southern Suburbs. But its almost total lack of change has lowered an invisible social dome over some the leafier areas.
It’s still as white and middle-upper-middle class as it’s ever been, and some people can become a bit too proud of their neighbourhood – almost as proud as they are of their lawns. It’s an easy environment to become territorial.
So a black man walking down the street, or even worse, running, is going to provoke a certain reaction in people. And that reaction can be summed up with the immortal phrase, “You’re not from around these parts, are you boy?”
Southern Suburbs, here’s hoping you can crack that dome. It’s nice out here, I promise.
Follow Chris on Twitter.
