Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
70
The Sreet of Differences
‘I am buses, trains, and taxis. I am prejudice, bigotry and discrimination. I am urban South Africa’
Richard Rive (n.d.)
, Black writing in the back room of the District Six Museum
‘Cape Town is a racist city, Cape Town is not a racist city’
Sean Field, Renate Meyer, Felicity Swanson
, Imaging the City
(2007: 6)
‘Tempo, spazio: necessità. Sorte, fortuna, casi: trappole della vita. Volete essere? C’è questo’
‘Time, space: necessity. Fate, fortune, chance: life’s traps. You want to exist? This is how it is’
Luigi Pirandello
, Uno nessuno e centomila
(1993 [1926]: 224)
Situated in the heart of Cape Town’s Central Business District, Long Street is one of the
oldest streets in the city, and has a reputation as ‘a liberal, heterogeneous, or mixed space’
(Tredoux and Dixon 2009: 765). Even during Apartheid it was considered a ‘partially free’
area, ‘a place where the normal rules of Apartheid could be flouted’ (Tredoux and Dixon
2009: 766) and where it was possible to break the physical, psychological and social
boundaries imposed by the regime. In the post-Apartheid period Long Street was adopted as a
symbol of the Rainbow Nation to present the city as a tourist destination and for advertising
purposes. In particular, its burgeoning nightlife was viewed as a ‘bohemian melting-pot for a
mixture of people, cultures, activities and tastes: a site, par excellence, of contact and
integration’ (Tredoux, Dixon 2009: 766). The presence of people of different ethnic origins
both from the city and from other parts of the world was celebrated as the triumph of the
multiracial over the divisions of the past.
Nevertheless, the heterogeneity and the multicultural character of Long Street do not
render it immune from the economic, social and psychological divisions of the past. Some of
the more significant aspects, which conspire to keep alive the spectres of the past are the
financial and social differences and social marginality inherited from Apartheid, which
continue to impinge upon the least advantaged members of the population. In the article
Mapping the Multiple Contexts of Racial Isolation: The Case of Long Street
(2009)
Colin
Tredoux and John Dixon emphasised how forms of racial segregation in the post-Apartheid
period can be found in situations in which people of different races share social spaces like a
street or a bar. They noted how people of different races being on Long Street cannot
necessarily be taken to mean that there are none of the social barriers that had marked South
African society. They show how in this street there are also forms of racial isolation like the
tendency for territories to form made up of people of the same skin colour, even inside
nightclubs frequented by a mixed clientele.
I started my exploration of Long Street on the lower part of the street, which runs from
the junction with Hans Strijdom Avenue and goes to Strand Street. This area is considered the
business and financial heart of the city and is characterised by modern architecture, while the
upper part of the street still retains its colonial-style houses.
The tall buildings on Lower Long Street were constructed in the 1960s, a period of
strong economic growth and development for the city. These structures, with their gleaming
marble and granite walls, house the headquarters of major national and international
companies, banks and offices. Doormen stand guard over the grand entrances to these
