From places they call home
After travelling the 30km from Salt River to Wolwerivier, Abu Bakr stepped out of the car and into another world. “There’s just bushes there and just one main road.”
The barren land dotted with green shacks held no appeal for a young man accustomed to the imperfect hoots and shouts and battered houses shaping familiar backways. It could never be home.
Abu Bakr’s “schedule” was to study robotic engineering and build cool electronics. He’d have to get a job to pay for his studies. For now, his first order of business is to find his mother and grandmother a new home in Salt River.
He’s used to “catching on kak” with his friends but now is not the time to play, he says. His youthful vibrance is muted beneath the mounting responsibilities of the adulting he knows is in store. Abu Bakr has tried to prepare for a potential eviction but, deep down, he doesn’t believe it will happen.
When he can, Abu Bakr plays football in the streets with his friends — Red Devils forever! — and tries to block out the growing, visible public interest in Bromwell Street. He watches strangers coming to speak to Charnell on weekends but during the week, he is out all day, knocking on doors to find a job.
One thing he’s come to understand in this world: people with money always win.
But he likes what the influx of wealth has done to Salt River, making it “more cooler” than it was before.
“Everything is different. It looks better and more modern compared to the old stuff,” he says.
Abu Bakr tries not to linger on what lies in store, but there’s always the fear that the stroke of a judge’s pen will change his life. He is just one judgment away from a future in a place that doesn’t want him.
Matilda Groepe may have experienced the biggest sweep of gentrification Cape Town has ever seen. It happened just before the World Cup in 2010, when the Belhar Symphony Way pavement occupiers were moved to Blikkiesdorp.
It was, Matilda says, an attempt by the city to clear out a protest on a main road to Cape Town International Airport before of tourists arrived for the premier event.
Unlike Woodstock, however, this wasn’t a gentrification that would lead to boutique coffee shops and hip youngsters visiting. It was a one-off event where everything was temporarily refurbished to accommodate a football tournament. Things would remain much the same, and that landmark protest on the pavement would slowly drift from public memory.
Today, Blikkiesdorp is still described as “hell” by its residents. They protested before “reclaiming the land” became a buzz phrase. They saw gangsters grow in their community and what hurt a lot was that they saw poor people stealing from other poor people. Just the other day, Matilda shrugs, someone she knows tried to kill her brother.
She has been waiting for something to move ever since she first got here. When the Airports Company of South Africa announced it was building a runway through Blikkiesdorp in 2015, there was outrage. But there was also a tinge of hope that they would finally be able to move out.
Matilda is still there, and she can’t remember the last time anyone spoke of plans being made to move Blikkiesdorp residents out.
She sits in her home on most days. Other times she wanders around the expansive settlement where people greet her: “Môre, Aunty Tila.”
Mayor Patricia de Lille has told the Mail & Guardian that plans are underway to shut down Blikkies and move its residents, but Matilda doesn’t know about this. The mayor confesses that the city has been lax in keeping residents there informed.
As things stay the same in Blikkies, Abu Bakr and Thandeka are at a crossroads. Neither knows where they will be in the coming months. What they do know is that the places they may end up don’t want them.