And the blame flames rage on
The UCT community is still reeling, and even though the university announced that it has begun mopping up, it does not have any concrete details yet about the rebuilding of the library or any other affected buildings. It will take a long time just to count the cost and assess the damage — and it will take many years before the piles of rubble have been restored.
The razing of Ancient Egypt’s Great Library of Alexandria is the symbol for the destruction of places of knowledge, several examples of which have shaken the world in recent times. In 2012, for example, rebels took occupation of Timbuktu, the spiritual capital of SubSaharan Africa, and hacked the shrines of Sufi saints and burnt manuscripts that dated back to the 13th century. Some of the manuscripts had been housed in a special climatecontrolled facility that SA was instrumental in building in order to preserve this African heritage.
Five years ago, protesting #FeesMustFall students destroyed artworks and rare books as they set laboratories, libraries and buildings alight on campuses across the country.
The physical destruction of libraries is not the only threat to knowledge. There’s a more subtle danger, which is caused by governments cutting libraries’ budgets and shifting priorities away from research and education. This is the knowledge we will never have.
Cape Town’s fire brought out the best and the worst in people (but mostly the best).
The worst included finger-pointers, rumour-mongers and xenophobes, whose misinformation spread like, well, wildfire, as they looked for someone to blame: homeless people, student activists, invasive alien trees and foreign nationals.
There were also those who cheered on the fire and applauded the cleansing of colonialism — and then there were “fire tourists”, who prevented emergency vehicles from getting to the blaze, in their burning quest for selfies at Ground Zero.
A homeless person who lives in a makeshift shelter on Table Mountain appeared in court this week on a charge of arson, sparking fears among activists of a backlash against the homeless. Lorenzo Davids, a social development activist, told CapeTalk radio that there are about 100 homeless people living on the slopes of Table Mountain — and accused the City of Cape Town of failing to provide adequate shelter for them.
“Safety drives people to the mountain. They’re tired of being harassed, urinated on, assaulted … They sleep on the mountain because they are scared,” he said. Earlier this month a group of homeless people represented by housing activist organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi took the city to court, arguing that some of its bylaws criminalise homelessness.
Fortunately, the good outweighed the bad. There was an outpouring of compassion — and not only in the form of “thoughts and prayers” — as communities rallied to tackle the crisis. People mobilised and their response was swift and generous, offering to accommodate students, donating money and dropping off food, energy drinks and eye-drops for firefighters.
Residents placed water bowls in their gardens for animals that might come down the mountain to escape the fire. Restaurants, though hard hit by the pandemic, opened up their doors and hearts to students and firefighters — and the remarkable Gift of the Givers sprang into action and prepared thousands of meals for students. There were so many volunteers who came to make sandwiches that many were turned away. South Africans unite not only in triumph (Rugby World Cup victories or Caster Semenya gold medals), we unite in tragedy too — well, some tragedies.
Then, of course, there were the super heroic efforts of the men and women who put their bodies in the line of fire, spending 10-hour shifts in hellish conditions to douse the flames. Their courage under fire is staggering, and with increasing temperatures and ongoing droughts, they will continue to have their hands full. Mammoth bushfires in Australia at the beginning of last year and catastrophic fires in California have caused untold death and destruction.
A rash of recent fires around SA knocked Covid-19 and the step-aside resolution off the news pages last week. On April 16, two days before the Cape Town fire, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was engulfed in flames. No-one was injured in the blaze that took firefighters more than 12 hours to extinguish. The hospital’s 700 patients were transferred to other facilities in Gauteng.
According to health minister Zweli Mkhize, the stock lost due to the blaze was estimated to be worth more than R40m.
While the world’s eyes were on Cape Town, another fire was raging at the Marikana informal settlement in Cato Crest, KwaZulu-Natal.
I went to bed on Sunday night, waking up every 30 minutes to check Twitter and to see if the flames had breached our home, which would have seen me tearing out the door in arm-warmer sleeves, clutching an ostrich eggshell. The wind had turned overnight and the fire was charging towards Vredehoek. The fire was contained by Tuesday.
The fire was out but SANParks closed the Rhodes Memorial area to cyclists and walkers, saying there were too many hazards, so Jean du Plessis is waiting patiently to make his 201st climb to the Blockhouse. He has been speaking to men he encounters on his “slow burn solidarity” rides to encourage conversations about gender-based violence — and the role men can play to help bring this scourge to an end.
The fire brought out the best and the worst in people (but mostly the best)
We need to talk about this
It’s an ongoing conversation. The rash of fires should also spark ongoing conversations. We need to talk about the consequences of climate change, and the steps we can take to mitigate it. We need to talk about our heritage and history, and how to make sure we protect and preserve irreplaceable material. We need to talk about vulnerable homeless people — some of whom live on Table Mountain — and how to properly accommodate them.
We need to talk about 38-year-old Nomasamson Dlamini, whose life was lost in the Cato Crest fire, a blaze that turned 50 shacks in the settlement into ashes. Cato Crest residents were woken by Nomasamson’s desperate screams. She was burnt beyond recognition. The residents lost everything. They did not have the luxury of packing what little they had in a bag. They also had no place to go for safety and no insurance that will help them rebuild a home. They will have to remake their shacks in the same place but in worse conditions and with even less.
The Cape Town fire is no longer trending, but it would be a shame if we miss out on an opportunity to have conversations, meaningful conversations, that lead to solutions.