Every time #SliceofGasant columnist Gasant Abarder visits Sea Point, he is reminded of how it epitomises the melting pot of cultures that Cape Town should represent as an African city. This should be preserved at all costs but should exclude the danger of profiling visitors to maintain order.
It was a lowkey end to 2024 for the Abarders, as we took the kids out early to avoid the mad scramble into town for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. It was one of our better decisions and we’re officially adults now – off to bed just after 2025 was ushered in.
The time spent as a family just walking around the main road in Sea Point was wonderful. The suburb has really turned the corner from its early 2000s crime and grime where you could be offered a variety of illicit substances in a 10m radius on every street corner. A lot of the credit needs to go to City of Cape Town safety honcho JP Smith, who was the ward councillor at the time.
For me, it is one of the best suburbs in Cape Town. But there is a fine balance between creating a safe environment and over-policing a suburb. Right of admission reserved signs may no longer be a physical fixture but it is rather tacitly implied.
I have fond memories of Sea Point. It was the mid-80s, but as a six-year-old, I was allowed to swim in the pavilion pool and have KFC – then the only real takeaway that was around.
Our New Year’s Eve cruise into 2025 started with a late lunch at a newish burger joint, called Brash, on Regent Street. The kids wanted to go because they saw it on TikTok. Here we go again, I thought, but I was pleasantly surprised by the good food and service.
They have just two items on the menu so there is no long queuing. The staff are super friendly, and the owners are very engaging. One criticism I have is that bugbear of mine where they don’t accept cash. It excludes a significant portion of people who use cash as legal tender.
Cash, despite what we’ve been told, is no longer king. Look, I understand that new, entrepreneurial enterprises use cashless transactions because it’s easier and more convenient.
It is a tiny thing – and I don’t think it’s what the owners of Brash intended – but it does exclude the unbanked. I didn’t give it a further thought as we walked down Regent Street, browsing through the many independently owned boutiques, looking at the crazy prices of property in the area in an estate office’s shopfront display and visiting a really cool Asian market.
It’s very cosmopolitan. Please don’t tell Gayton McKenzie but punctuating the boutiques and delis are the Bangladeshi-owned shops stocked with everything you need and the kind of stores everyone loves.
This is a great neighbourhood. You’re in spitting distance of the beach and you can smell the ocean breeze. The kids were soaking it up. What is a visit to Sea Point without a pop-in at our favourite Dooby Scoo? It’s another independently owned store and the owner is a wonderful guy who knows his products well. And his prices compare favourably with the large toy store chains.
While inside, there was a wonderful soundtrack coming from the saxophone of a busker outside. If I were a tourist this is exactly what I would be expecting from such a cool neighbourhood. Then the music stopped abruptly.
As we exited the store, there were two security types with the authority to check for permits issued by the City of Cape Town for buskers. It is quite possibly the single most nonsensical bylaw ever conceived in the entire history of the world. They stopped the saxophonist from playing because he didn’t have a permit.
Then, for good measure, they asked an uncle, whose weathered face was that of a hardworking individual, to move on from the corner where he was enjoying a soft drink. It was quite puzzling. This man wasn’t homeless or a vagrant. He was just taking a break from the hot sun.
The thing was, it wasn’t even racial profiling. The busker was white. The cooldrink sipper was coloured. I asked the soft drinker why he was asked to move on and he was as perplexed as I was. He had committed no crime and wasn’t even loitering – which would’ve been a stretch. He left in a huff and with a great sense of injustice, vowing never to vote for the DA again while hurling expletives. His frustration was justified.
I went back to the saxophonist, and he just shook his head in frustration. He said his music had a calming effect on the folks walking the streets. He was right. He then said busking was a feature of most major cities where no permit was required. He was right.
I’m not about looking for these microaggressions any longer. I’ll admit I found them everywhere in the past, but I’m deliberately ignoring them now.
This was different. For the cooldrink sipper – even if he was homeless – his constitutional right to freedom of movement was clearly violated. For the saxophonist – even though he had no permit – it felt a bit Philistine-like stopping him from playing his beautiful music.
The irony was when we returned to our car in a basement parking area we found a cashless paypoint. The well-heeled aunty behind me only had cash and didn’t believe in card transactions or having virtual cards on her smartphone. Go figure!
Officials need to strike a balance. You’ve cleaned up Sea Point and that is amazing. But don’t overbalance so far that you lose your humanity and common sense. You’ll be ruining an otherwise gem in our city.
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Picture: Zacheus Van Rensburg / Pexels
