Cape Town often makes it into American and British travel magazines as one of the most scenic holiday destinations in the world. According to the UK Telegraph Travel Awards, Cape Town is the Best Foreign City of 2004. It’s not difficult to see why when you drive the Chapman’s Peak route, with its beautiful beaches on the one side and spectacular rock cliffs on the other.
But I went to stay in another Cape Town, the one that never makes it into the travel magazines — Parklands.
To get to Parklands, take the N7 up the West Coast and when you see the enormous Caltex petroleum plant looming large, just opposite the Potsdam sewerage farm, take a left. Emissions from the plant are causing havoc with the health of people in the area, resulting in nosebleeds, asthma and a whole list of side effects. The sewerage farm constantly overflows as it tries to cope with the increasing number of residents to the area. Locals complain of the stench, swarms of flies and dubious water quality.
Parklands was launched in July 1997, a joint venture through the ASKA Property Group and Milnerton Estates Limited. In 2000 Parklands boasted of being the fastest developing area in the country, releasing about 700 plots a month to local developers and private home builders. This number slowly dwindled to 700 a year, and in August 2003 the release of land from ASKA to consumers had totally dissipated. Not surprisingly, this was owing to the lack of sewerage facilities.
Local authorities have assured residents that the problem is being dealt with and development of the area has resumed.
Parklands derives its name from the many parks that are supposedly scattered throughout the suburb. All I ever saw of these were bulldozed sand mounds and deserted land.
It is an eerie place. There are hundreds of villas, houses, apartments, cluster developments, security complexes and guesthouses, all practically brand new. Most are empty, awaiting new tenants. It is a somewhat desolate place and I kept looking for tumbleweed as we drove through this seemingly ghost town.
Cape Town is growing so rapidly that almost every month a new block of semi-detached units are built to accommodate the booming population. So there are all these little units that look exactly alike, all with their little white walls and electric fences just waiting for their new owners to move in once the block is finished.
Everything in Parklands is new. The housing, the shopping centres, the trees and the gardens. It felt like a Disney version of suburbia. Let me put it this way: if World War III broke out and the aliens came to save the human population by relocating us to another planet, they would probably build suburbs that looked like Parklands. And we would walk through the streets marvelling and saying, ‘Gosh! It looks almost exactly like home.”
I went to stay with Alison, an old chum of mine, who lives in just such a Truman-show neighbourhood. She and her husband, however, refer to it as ‘deep suburbia”.
‘Everyone is buying in Parklands,” she said with estate-agent persuasion. ‘It’s only 20 minutes from town, five minutes from the beach and very reasonably priced.”
Driving through the streets of Parklands, the smell of fresh cement in the air and the view of Table Mountain in the distance, I thought about the Cape Town dream. It is a place to slow down and enjoy the good things in life. Sundowners, beautiful sunsets over the Atlantic, great hikes, drumming, smoking weed — these are the things people come to Cape Town for, either as tourists or residents.
One lazy Saturday afternoon, Ali-son took me to meet her friends. We screeched around the suburb’s many traffic circles in her bakkie — apparently the streets were designed this way to discourage speeding. I guess
I must have looked a little nervous because Alison smiled reassuringly and said: ‘Don’t worry. I drive much better when I’m stoned.”
I couldn’t comment since I have never driven with Alison when she was straight.
Alison’s friends are mostly ex-Jo’burgers. Claire is a former advertising executive who, fed up with materialism, moved to Cape Town bent on opening her own healing centre. She had spent all her savings on setting up the centre without having done any market research, as common sense would dictate.
July, also from Jo’burg, is a focus-puller in the film industry. For those of you who do not know, a focus-puller is someone who makes sure the camera is always in focus. She is an animal-lover and offers a home to a couple of cats and a pet iguana.
‘So how big is this thing going to get?” I asked, as she tried to pry the iguana’s claws from her shoulder.
‘Six foot,” she said.
‘That will make things very interesting for you,” I said, feeling rather uncomfortable with the way the iguana was eyeballing me.
‘I don’t know,” she said. ‘I just always wanted an iguana.”
She giggled and showered the lizard with loving words spoken in a baby voice. If you always wanted an iguana as a pet, Cape Town is the place to do it. I would, personally, just rethink the choice of an iguana. When a six-foot reptile gets cranky, you don’t want it in your semi-detached unit.
Sitting on the white plastic chair, which passes as garden furniture in suburbia, I watched Alison, Claire and July get stoned. Since I don’t smoke, I was left with my own company. I glanced over the electric fence and saw a hundred more fences and little gardens that all looked exactly like the one I was sitting in. Was there someone exactly like me sitting in those gardens, thinking about the aliens and the Earth they were recreating on some uninhabited planet?
I realised at that moment that it was time to leave. Lucky for me, Parklands is only a 30-minute drive from the airport.