{"id":246556,"date":"2021-12-04T08:05:24","date_gmt":"2021-12-04T08:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=246556"},"modified":"2021-12-07T07:43:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T07:43:38","slug":"magnificent-cape-town-quiet-windhoek-sane-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=246556","title":{"rendered":"Magnificent Cape Town, Quiet Windhoek, Sane Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh — The Unz Review Dec 2, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

My last night in Cape Town was spent at 91 Loop Boutique Hostel. Paying $33, I had a rather large, if very spartan, room, with my own toilet. With six beds, it was clearly intended as a dorm space, but tourists were still scarce, thanks to Covid.<\/p>\n

A filling breakfast was included, and it wasn\u2019t just a buffet, but prepared to order. As is usual at any hostel, the clientele was mostly young. I noticed a Southeast Asian, a rare sight in Cape Town.<\/p>\n

(During my three-month stay, I had met a Vietnamese-American and a Filipina, both under 30. As we chattered over coffee, they kept their masks on between sips. When I said I didn\u2019t trust the Covid \u201cvaccines,\u201d the Vietnamese-American got even chillier. At least the Filipina smiled with her eyes. Neither understood why I\u2019d stray outside Cape Town\u2019s safest zones, or take a taxi van.)<\/p>\n

The Southeast Asian at 91 Loop was a Filipino nurse working in Qatar, where he had spent six years. Before that, he was in Saudi Arabia. Eric had the confident, easy manner that comes with knowing you\u2019re good looking. (God has blessed me in the opposite direction, however. If I was handsome, I\u2019d be unbearable, even to myself.)<\/p>\n

Applying for a job in Springfield, Missouri, Eric had just taken a test in Joburg. As everyone must know by now, American hospitals are constantly recruiting foreign nurses and doctors.<\/p>\n

I had to warn Eric about leaving Qatar for Springfield, \u201cYou must know Filipinos in the States? Ask them about the situation there. Also, make sure you can save while working in the US. You don\u2019t want to regret leaving Qatar.\u201d<\/p>\n

After twelve years abroad, Eric had stashed away enough to ponder opening a mini hotel back home, \u201cIn Bukidnon. I\u2019m from the same province as Manny Pacquiao!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour next president!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHa, ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

Investing in tourism during a worsening Covid crisis is not exactly wise, but hey, he\u2019ll figure it out soon enough. In any case, Eric hadn\u2019t been home since Covid was launched. His last two vacations, he spent in Georgia and Armenia.<\/p>\n

Overhearing our conversation, a young man at a nearby table introduced himself, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but I hear you guys talking about jobs overseas?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s applying for a job in the US. Where are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m South African, but I want to get out. It\u2019s horrible here.\u201d Thin, Dean had a worried face and defeated posture.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you from Cape Town?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust north of here. I just got cheated. That\u2019s why I\u2019m at this hostel. A guy rented me a room he didn\u2019t own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much did you lose?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a month\u2019s rent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll look at another room today. It\u2019s cheap enough. I hope it works out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cYou can always move into a township<\/a>!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd get killed!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if I don\u2019t,\u201d he frowned, \u201cI can\u2019t walk 50 yards to get water to do my laundry<\/a>. I\u2019m a white man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just kidding. So what do you do, man?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI work at a sporting club. I sit at the entrance and collect the money. I\u2019m sort of the manager there,\u201d he chuckled. \u201cThat\u2019s one job where they still want a white man!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Africans, they steal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHmmm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor just about every other job, a white man is at the bottom. There\u2019s a thing here called Black Economic Empowerment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Affirmative Action in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly, so white men are below blacks, women, gays, black women, everybody! I know a black woman who doesn\u2019t even show up to work! She doesn\u2019t have to, and her company doesn\u2019t really care. They just hired her because she\u2019s a black woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a cartoon by Anton Kannmeyer<\/a>, a Capetonian artist. In a corporate office, a bald white man is interviewing a black woman. She has huge lips and fro. He\u2019s a middle-aged Tintin. \u201cI SEE BY YOUR RESUME THAT YOU\u2019RE A BLACK WOMAN,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s wrong, man. All racism is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, but that\u2019s just how it is here. That\u2019s why I want to get out. Do you have any suggestion?\u201d Dean half grinned.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, when this Covid bullshit is over, you should consider going to Asia. You can teach English there. In East Asia,\u201d I laughed, \u201cbeing white is actually an asset.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeriously. Have you traveled much?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years ago, I went to the UK. I worked there for two years, saved some money, then came back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much did you save?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c12,000 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s pretty good! You must have worked your ass off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, but I also had fun. I had friends, I partied, I drank. Now, I\u2019m making the same money I made ten years ago, but prices have gone way, way up. Twice as much! I\u2019m 32-years-old. It\u2019s horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a teenager, Dean made the national baseball team, but was bumped to make room for a black. When his dad offered to buy some of the team\u2019s equipment to get Dean reinstalled, he balked. He didn\u2019t want any derision from his teammates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In Cape Town, I met skilled or whites who weren\u2019t just doing well, but absolutely loved the Western Cape. A white couple drove me to a vineyard<\/a> where whites, plus a few coloreds and blacks, enjoyed drinks and food at long tables, set outside<\/a> amid a magnificent landscape.<\/p>\n

Near Cape Town\u2019s touristy waterfront, I chanced upon Un\/Settled<\/a>, an art installation by white South African Sydelle Willow Smith. Various whites are quoted at length with their photos.<\/p>\n

Seen on his ocean-facing veranda, a clearly affluent Albie Sachs says, \u201cYou do not shed the aspects that constitute you as somebody with a history, with a culture, with a presence that is particular [\u2026] The next generation are picking up the remaining elements of white hegemony, with an assumed sense of superiority and white living conditions. There is no \u2018one size fits all\u2019 in relation to anything in South Africa. Everything is jumbled up and mixed up. When the shackles of overt racism fall the pinpricks of covert racism hurt unbearably.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chavi Alheit, \u201cI just think white people, white South Africans are the luckiest nation, community, whatever you want to call it, in the world. For all intents and purposes we all should have been macheted a long time ago. And the fact that we are still living with comforts and advantages that we have, really goes to say a lot for the black population. We really should be thankful towards them. They have been very tolerant of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terry Oakley Smith, \u201cI suppose the only glimmer of hope on the horizon is that we as whites only make up 8% of the population so we are becoming increasingly irrelevant.\u201d Judging by her tasteful clothing and jewelry, it\u2019s obvious Terry is no trash.<\/p>\n

Sydelle Willow Smith<\/a> also shows photos of whites at the horse races and in a desert swimming pool, to emphasize their privileges.<\/p>\n

One woman, though, is depicted in a white frock, standing in the ocean with water reaching her lower abdomen, as if to purify her lower half. Unlike most others, only her first name is given. Deryn, \u201cI have survived unspeakable brutal violence in this country and as a result I have given myself permission to leave. But I belong here. This is where my roots are. This is where my relationships are. This is where I am woven into. I am not woven in anywhere else. It\u2019s actually just that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

A guy like Dean would have something entirely different to say, but he\u2019s not a part of this installation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Although Capetonian whites on the lowest rungs are miserable enough, at least they still have indoor plumbing, unlike thousands of township<\/a> blacks<\/a> dwelling in wretched shacks<\/a>. For them, toilets are just portable stalls<\/a> lined up in rows. The luckiest among them must dress up smartly each day to serve whites in distant neighborhoods. A black barista in Green Point may appear stylish, but she might not have pot to piss in, back in Khayelitsha.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With a white friend, I visited Langa, South Africa\u2019s oldest black township. He had to go there to buy some (legal) pot<\/a>. We drank beer with people and had a great time<\/a>. When I told one woman I liked her \u201cHARLEM\u201d cap<\/a>, she said it was in Germany, then volunteered that she loved Hitler.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t just like Hitler?\u201d I grinned.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I love him!\u201d<\/p>\n

A man asked me, a foreigner clearly just visiting, if I had a job to give him.<\/p>\n

Leaving, my friend said, \u201cBy evening, everyone in Langa will know that a white guy and a Chinese guy came by to drink beer!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Capetonian whites, colored and blacks reach absolute equality<\/a> when they end up sleeping on sidewalks, panhandling and digging through trash cans for food. When I mentioned these whites to a retired colored cop, he said, \u201cIf whites end up on the streets, they only have themselves to blame. They\u2019ve had so many advantages.\u201d During Apartheid, his family was evicted from thriving District Six, near downtown, to still barren Athlone. That bitterness lingers.<\/p>\n

With Covid, Cape Town\u2019s homeless population has exploded. An Iranian restauranter told me that with fewer tourists, there are fewer cops on the streets, so there\u2019s more crime. She\u2019s afraid to even walk around downtown. Travel complications have also prevented her from visiting Iran, which she used to do yearly.<\/p>\n

Even with a much lower volume of business, the food at Persian Peacock was still excellent<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ll be sure to come back here,\u201d I said to the lovely, smiling and soft-spoken lady, \u201cshould I return to Cape Town.\u201d<\/p>\n

The older you get, though, the less likely you\u2019ll come back anywhere. Covid strictures only lower the odds considerably. A Canadian friend told me he\u2019s resigned to possibly not seeing his wife again, as they\u2019re stuck in different countries. How many relationships have been destroyed because of this engineered madness? Just be thankful you\u2019re not death jabbed.<\/p>\n

With a few hours before my bus to Namibia<\/a> and Eric\u2019s flight to Qatar, we went to Corner Bar<\/a> in Sea Point<\/a>. I had gone there three months earlier, on my first day in Cape Town.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Too airy to be a dive, Corner Bar is nevertheless a magnet for old drunks, artsy types, somber salt of the earth and the loudly garrulous. This time, I found myself sitting next to a boastful old Englishman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A small gent in a green jacket and yellow shirt, the colors of the national rugby kit, he said he had been recruited to South Africa 53 years ago by Harry Oppenheimer himself, and was paid in gold. He was so brilliant, he had six college degrees. He said he had been to every country on earth but Australia, \u201cbecause I\u2019m not a convicted criminal.\u201d He claimed to be obscenely rich, so he was just slumping, I suppose, sipping a $2 glass of red wine. His two sons had emigrated to the UK and lived near New Castle. He rarely saw them or his grandkids.<\/p>\n

He introduced me to a woman he said was Miss Israel 50 years ago. She turned out to be a rather interesting painter, but I can\u2019t remember her name. I had a stressful several days and was guzzling. Self-taught, she paints girlish women besieged by dark forces. There are so many artists with at least a handful of genuine achievements, provocative and unique, but it doesn\u2019t matter, they\u2019re still invisible. Much of \u201cart,\u201d though, is pure garbage.<\/p>\n

Out of breath, he showed me a piece of paper with BIC penned letters<\/a>:<\/p>\n

COFFEE
\nIS
\nLIKE MY WOMEN<\/p>\n

* *<\/p>\n

LARGE
\nSTRONG
\nHOT
\nBLACK
\nVERY SWEET<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Like every other man, grandpa lives within his own mythology. If younger, he would do his chest thumping online, which would also encourage any propensity for snark or nastiness. Unseen, they fling shit like cartoon apes. Born before the crassification of much of the world, grandpa is still a gentleman, fortunately. You take the fight out of a populace by destroying its character.<\/p>\n

A month removed from Cape Town, I\u2019m in Windhoek, Namibia. It\u2019s much quieter here. Downtown, there isn\u2019t much beyond a shopping mall<\/a>, but that\u2019s OK. Joining the loosely-masked crowd, I stroll often through its air-conditioned pleasantness. I get my grocery at Checkers and eat bacon cheeseburgers at Wimpy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>At one end of the mall, there are three very young professional photographers. They work next to the Covid jab<\/a> room, with its large banner, \u201cCOVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.\u201d Even with the Omicron brouhaha, this antechamber to the morgue is nearly always empty.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t go in there, man,\u201d I said to a photographer. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to kill you!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d he laughed while giving me a fist bump.<\/p>\n

With the fewest lockdowns, lowest Covid \u201cvaccination\u201d rates and no social distancing to speak of, black Africa has the fewest deaths, by far, from this orchestrated emergency. That\u2019s why they\u2019re punishing it now. Normal<\/a> African life<\/a> exposes as nonsense their extreme measures everywhere else.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the tourists are gone, and southern Africans are blocked from many countries. To not be shunned, Africans must be poisoned, they insist.<\/p>\n

There are rumors South Africa might impose a new lockdown. This would trigger riots, certainly, for there are already too many South Africans barely eating. Lockdown induced economic hardship was a key factor in the Durban rioting this July.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve mentioned a Serb who\u2019s been living in Africa for 30 years. When I walked by his cap, T-shirt and CD stall yesterday, he shouted, \u201cYou\u2019re still here?!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be here at least one more month.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holding up six fingers, he scrunched his face and cryptically said, \u201cNo, six more months!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they close the borders, you\u2019ll be here six more months.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?! Are you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what happened the last time. People were stuck here for six months. They ran out of money, lost their jobs, it was terrible. This morning, I talked to a Japanese guy. His embassy told him to leave immediately, so he\u2019s flying out on Sunday. Ethiopian Airlines. You must get out now!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m OK here. I like it here. I\u2019ll see you all the time then,\u201d I smiled. They\u2019re tightening the Covid vice even more fiercely everywhere else, no?<\/p>\n

In late November, Philadelphia broke its all-time murder record. California is sicker than ever, Portland rests on Antifa tinder and Chicago is run by a racist moron. Mobs shoplift without fear. Showing no spontaneity, thus sign of a live mind, Biden can only fart unscripted. Shrieking Jim Crammer<\/a> thinks soldiers should inject poison into all Americans. Jew jerked, Americans are stuck on black and white racial grievances, even as they\u2019re maimed or murdered by Jewish \u201cvaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n