Now that the struggle for socialism has been fought, won and ignored, Cape Town’s beaches are hot on the heels of shopping malls, writes Justin Pearce
WHEN I was a laaitie, Cape Town’s beaches were for swimming. Or at least for building sandcastles, exercising the dog and similarly wholesome pursuits.
The nearest thing you got to commercial activity on the beach was a kiosk that looked like a public lavatory and which opened whenever the person inside felt well disposed towards the universe, which wasn’t often. When it was open, the kiosk sold special sand-flavoured ice- cream. If you wanted to spend money at the beach … well, isn’t that why God created Durban?
But all that was in the days of volkskapitalisme, when much of South Africa’s retail sector closely resembled a bad day in Bucharest. Now that the struggle for socialism has been fought, won and ignored and the retail sector aspires to Los Angeles, Cape Town’s beaches are hot on the heels of the shopping malls.
It’s at Camps Bay and Clifton that you notice it first: people stalk around with insulated boxes of Magnum ice- creams, or with plastic backpacks filled with fruit juice which they pour out through an elephantine rubber tube. (The backpacks are an import from Norway, where they are used for hot drinks.)
Others sell canned cooldrinks or rent out sun loungers from stalls on the sand. Hokkies dotted along the edge of Camps Bay beach sell hot dogs, Mexican tacos, mineral water and oysters.
These, after all, are the beaches with the money, visited mostly by tourists and singles. On the False Bay beaches, frequented by families, the traders look less happy — even the Carmen Miranda-style fruity hats worn by the juice vendors haven’t persuaded people to part with their cash. An enterprising tool rental firm in Fish Hoek has, however, done well by expanding into flipper and boogie- board rentals from a stall on the beach.
Still, the sight of people tucking into sushi on the sand is likely to remain exclusively an Atlantic Coast phenomenon. Mr Delivery, a service which does home deliveries from a variety of city restaurants, has obtained a permit to deliver to Camps Bay beach as well.
If mere cones are insufficient to satisfy your ice-cream lust, you can order the stuff by the litre and have it delivered. If you have the kind of money which enables you to order restaurant food on a beach then you probably won’t think twice about packing your cellphone in your beach bag and placing your order without getting up from your freshly laundered kikoi.
A new development this summer is that you can really use your cellphone on the Atlantic beaches. Earlier this year that side of the mountain wasn’t yet on the network, though this didn’t stop people from airing their phones at the beach anyway.
Robin Horn, Cape Town City Council’s acting director of civic amenities, says the beach trading boom is the result of a shift away from the previous policy whereby the council invited tenders for beach facilities (such as the sand-flavoured ice-cream kiosks) and associated vendor services.
Now the council invites applications for temporary trading licences. Most of these are taken up by small entrepreneurs who operate only during the high tourist season of December and January, and who either operate solo or employ students.
Food vendors are subject to inspections by the city’s medical officer of health and the council regulates the issuing of licences to ensure that the beaches do not become full-scale flea markets, and that there is a reasonable variety of produce on sale at the different stalls.
At the moment the only gap in the market is for pocket- sized containers of Vim, which is the only effective way of getting the remains of oil slicks off your feet.