It is a typical day in the middle of Cape Town: Two brothers from Côte d’Ivoire
sit in a patch of sun in a garden while a Dutch couple take photographs of a squirrel climbing an oak tree.
Since apartheid ended in 1994 Europeans and North Americans have been visiting Cape Town as tourists and in recent years have been buying up some of the city’s most valuable properties.
But Cape Town is also becoming home for African immigrants, who come to this city on the tip of the continent to find work and start a new life.
”We came to Cape Town on a ship ten days ago, but we are still looking for jobs. Cape Town is a beautiful place and we have heard that there is a lot of money to be made here.” But unlike Europeans and North Americans, African immigrants face an uncertain future in Cape Town, which has a population of roughly three million, 51% of whom are coloured or mixed race, 30% black and 18% white.
Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane says that poor African immigrants are changing the face of Cape Town, established in 1652 by Jan Antony van Riebeeck, who was sent by the Dutch East India Company to establish a trading post on the shores of Table Bay.
”Often these people are not even recognised by the government social welfare departments, they do not qualify for social grants and are not cared for by non-governmental organisations and churches,” he said at church service this week.
Many of the immigrants will more likely end up in one of the poverty-stricken shantytowns surrounding Cape Town.
The shantytowns were set up by local migrant labourers who came to Cape Town from the neighbouring poverty stricken Eastern Cape province when apartheid ended to find work.
The site of the thousands of tin and wood shacks backing onto the highway to Cape Town International Airport is often the only contact most visitors will have with poverty in the city.
Last year British musician Dave Stewart told journalists of his horror drive into Cape Town.
”People ask me if I’ve been to Cape Town… that it’s really beautiful,” he said.
”And people are saying it is much better than before. And I think, ‘Christ, what was it like before?’ The extremities are really scary… it’s like a vision of hell,” he said.
Yet less than 20 minutes drive from the shacks, life is completely different.
Visitors take a leisurely trip in a cable car up the flat-topped Table Mountain to enjoy the view of Table Bay and Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison for fighting against apartheid, or they spend the day at a vineyard or lazing on one of Cape Town’s beaches.
Tourist numbers to the city have rocketed in recent years. Last year more than 1,5 million people travelled to the city, according to the official Cape Tourism agency.
The boom in tourists has led to a surge in new restaurants and hotels to cater for visitors and the city’s wealthy population.
The movie industry has also boomed, with large-scale Hollywood productions using the city as a stand in location for California or Europe.
The Cape Film Commission says foreign film productions spent more than two billion rand ($316-million dollars or â,¬260 million) in Cape Town last year.
Estate agents are raking in profits from wealthy foreigners looking to invest in property in the city.
The real estate company Pam Golding says it sold more than a billion dollars worth of houses mainly to Europeans and North Americans last year, a significant portion of which was from sales in Cape Town.
Investors have recognised the city’s potential too. Last week a group of Irish businessmen announced details of a property venture, in which they plan to invest R500-million to turn the city centre into a European-style ”old city”, with luxury apartments, cobbled streets and sidewalk cafes.
Most of the Cape Town’s properties, restaurants and tourism facilities are out of reach for the majority of the city’s black population.
It is a something that Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool has promised to change.
Rasool said this week that he wants low-cost homes built in suburbs with medium and high cost houses to make the city more racially representative.
”We need to push forward and start integrating spaces racially by building mixed-use housing,” he said.
”We need social inclusion — and this means the way in which we use the space in our municipalities.” But immigrants like the Ivorian brothers can be sure they will not be getting any benefits from the city. — Sapa-AFP