UW in Cape Town — September 14, 2017

Molweni –

Thursday, September 14….

I had a somewhat leisurely morning since I didn’t go on the van to Philippi since I needed to get to University of Cape Town to meet faculty for lunch, before my talk. I strolled to the little café… I’m a regular now… for my chai and homemade muffin/scone..

I took a taxi to the University… which is huge.. about 30,000 students on an amazing campus that is divided into three parts – upper campus, mid-campus, and lower campus. The upper campus is nestled into the hillside and has spectacular views of the city. It is the original campus. It’s quite a trek from lower to upper campuses. Anyway, had lunch with faculty and chatted about my work and what they were doing.. My talk was in the architecture and planning departments. The talk went fine; a smaller than expected turnout though – it was midterm week and the architecture students were all in their studio classes. I think the vice chair of the department who was coordinating this hadn’t ever sponsored a speaker before and didn’t seem to know what time of day was best. Several students came up to me after and said the talk should have been at noon instead of 3:00, when students are in class. Anyway, at the end there were fairly good questions and conversation, and they said if I’m back next year, they would want me to speak at the African Center for Cities which hosts more public facing lectures and the turnouts there are good. Lesson learned. 

I did meet a few architecture faculty members who are working in townships, and I did learn an interesting fact: Because there is so much student upheaval, the likelihood of students shutting down the university in the 3^rd quarter is very high (remember “Fees Must Fall!”), so faculty now “pack” the first two quarters so that if the university closes down for a month or two students are already ahead. In architecture they have created vertical studios so that students are getting more advanced work earlier. I guess the fees must fall movement has already had an impact. Lots more on this topic, but too much to explain in this note.

After the talk, and a brief moment of relaxation, Chris and I headed to Sea Point for dinner at the home of a landscape architect (Tarna) whom we had met in Seattle when she gave a talk there with her architect colleague (Nicola). They were both at my talk. Dinner got complicated, as they also had two young women who had just arrived in Cape Town, and spouses of both architects, as well as children and boyfriend of daughter. Tarna is Jewish (and sort of Orthodox – or at least she keeps kosher, and her children go to or graduated from one of the three private Jewish K-12 schools here in Cape Town). She initially had invited us for Friday dinner, but things got complicated and we said we couldn’t do that.. so Thursday became the alternative. She served a great meal and she has a wonderful and very lived-in house in the Sea Point neighborhood which is traditionally the Jewish area in Cape Town. There are about 60,000 Jews in all of South Africa and about 18,000 of those are in Cape Town. The history of the Jews in South Africa is complicated and probably more so because Israel was the only Western nation that did not take part in sanctions imposed on South Africa during Apartheid. And yet many Jews were involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.. It is said that the number of South African Jews involved in the struggle against apartheid was disproportionate to the number of Whites involved in anti-apartheid political activities. Fourteen of the 23 whites involved in the 1956 Treason Trial were Jewish and all five whites of the 17 members of the African National Congress who were arrested for anti-apartheid activities in 1963 were Jewish. Jews for Justice (in Cape Town) and Jews for Social Justice (in Johannesburg) tried to reform South African society and build bridges between the white and black communities in the 1980s.

In any case, we kept the conversation focused on planning issues and architecture as well as on inequities and disparities here, since that is the main focus of our program. We had a great home-cooked meal, with lots of wine… and returned home around 11pm. I think that’s it for the 14^th!

Best…

Fern