I love Woodstock. It’s in the blood that courses through my veins. It’s where I spent my formative years. A first crush, a first kiss and the place I made lifelong friends, writes Gasant Abarder.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
The streets were rough. I met two of my best friends during a fight. The two came at me at once for no other reason than that as a 10-year-old, I was the new kid in the neighbourhood. My head felt like it was going to explode but I gave as good as I got. I lost the fight but I won respect.
Our house was flanked by two drug dealers and one across the road. But they never really sold to the kids from the street in some kind of warped logic. And when the fellows used to pass out from their mandrax pipes, we were allowed to help ourselves to the cash in their pockets for our nightclub matinee sessions.
I moved out of the area when I was 21 with an education of sorts – with street smarts that money can’t buy. One of the unspoken rules was that when you passed Woodstock’s Gympie Street you gave it a wide berth. The people who lived there were lovely. But it was the ouens on the hoek you had to be wary of.
If you were wearing a smartwatch, a lekker jacket or new sneakers, these would almost certainly be uplifted, along with the contents of your pockets. But how different were they really from the cops who would just search you – even as a 12-year-old – for crossing the street? If you spoke back you ended up second best.
So, I was more than a little amused when I read a Tweet from social housing activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi that a room in Gympie Street was renting for just under R4 000 a month. Over the last few years, the original rent-paying residents and owners have been moved out as a developer made them more “palatable” for inner city living.
Those who owned were lured into selling with big offers for the properties, which were then flipped and got the developer a lot more than what they paid. And those who stayed are having to shell out way more for rates and municipal services because these are market-related.
A little further down the road is Bromwell Street. It runs adjacent to Albert Road, where the swanky Biscuit Mill is located. Very few Woodstock residents hold down jobs at the Biscuit Mill and have to think a few times before they purchase a craft sandwich from the exclusive little eateries. The community is constantly abuzz with people from all over and cars that park all over the show.
It is home to the Test Kitchen, a restaurant so exclusive you need to part with your left testicle to get a reservation. Just a few metres away, the residents of Bromwell Street are fighting the City of Cape Town for the right to stay in their homes. They had lived there for many generations. Their kids go to school in the area, they live close to work and they have a claim to their space.
The battle to stay may be over for them. It is now about finding suitable accommodation for the evicted residents. But the City of Cape Town is fighting back and questioning what exactly suitable accommodation entails.
It is really simple. Accommodate the people in an area where they won’t be uprooted to such an extent that it becomes another District Six. House them where their kids can still go to the same school, play for the same sports clubs, attend the same churches and mosques and get to work without having to spend half their salaries travelling there.
There is a solution just up the street in Mountain Road, Woodstock. The old, vacated Woodstock Hospital has been overrun with people who have moved in there illegally. Just a few days ago, undocumented foreigners were arrested and drugs were confiscated.
Those who have gentrified Woodstock to such an extent that my 44-year-old self can hardly recognise it should do the right thing and chip in to convert the hospital into a residential block for the residents of Bromwell Street.
The City of Cape Town can trumpet inner-city social housing initiatives all they like. But if profits and superficial aesthetics are prized over social justice it can never be deemed a success.
Also read:
Keep your blue tick Elon… it’s ticking along nicely here on TikTok
Picture: Cape {town} Etc gallery