The Hindu Business Line : Of jazz, slaves and Table Mountain

The awesome Table Mountain dominates the skyline of Cape Town, also known as the Mother City of South Africa. This is the place the scurvy-afflicted sailors of the Dutch East India company had halted to pump them with Vitamin C. Waleed Osman, our tour guide from Rhino Tours, relates the colourful story of how the Dutch went about producing this Vitamin C from vegetables and fruits, particularly grapes, and hence famous winelands of South Africa..

“But as the sailors’ spotless white clothes would get dirty by working in the fruit orchards, the Dutch brought in slaves from East and West Africa, India, Indonesia, etc. So you see we have masters and slaves in this coach.”

There are three Dutch, two Indian and one Kenyan journalist in his group; we’ve been brought in by South Africa Tourism to cover the Cape Town International Jazz Festival from March 28-29, and other tourism related ventures.

Best of jazz

Now in its ninth year, the festival continues to grow in popularity, bringing in the best international and local jazz masters. Considered a jewel in Cape Town’s social calendar, the Brazil maestro Sergio Mendes is here, performing with other star names such as Randy Crawford and Joe Sample; African Inkspots, Ananda Project and Beat Bag Bohemia are the other star draws.

But a day earlier, in Waleed’s coach we are headed for the awesome Table Mountain, and his comment on slaves and masters is protested vigorously by this Indian journalist. But Rene Seghers, the editor of a Dutch fashion magazine is lapping up the history of the Dutch colonization of this country and testing Waleed’s Afrikans, “which is nothing but the Dutch language”.

Getting into the mood, as we visit the colourful former Dutch residential area known as Cape Malai which has picturesque and quaint houses painted in unusually bright orange, yellow, green and blue, he whispers to me, “Should I hand over my laundry to this slave?” As I hush him, he quips, “Don’t worry, I’ve already handed it over to the slave at the Front Desk in our hotel!”

‘older than Himalayas’

After Seghers has tested Waleed’s Afrikans and decided to go shark diving later, we are allowed to proceed in peace. The Table Mountain, we are told, is the oldest mountain in the world, and its tourism pamphlet says: “Though no one can be sure, we believe that Table Mountain is at least 6 times older than the Himalayas and 5 times older than the Rockies”. And yet this mountain, which you can see from most places in Cape town and is 1,085 metres at its highest point, can be reached via a cable car in a couple of minutes.

Obviously a huge tourist attraction, there are huge queues for the cable car that handles 900 people an hour with each car having a carrying capacity of 65 people. Its novelty is a revolving floor so that each visitor gets a 360 degree panoramic and spectacular view of the city that you leave behind as you ascend.

Formation

Some 600 millions years ago, says the tourist literature, “a granite and sandstone mass, almost twice the size of the 1,086 m mountain that we know today, was formed under the surface of the ocean.” It was carved flat by glaciers and honed by waves; “for millennia the new landmark remained an island, until the sea receded when the mountain formed by the sea finally came into its own.”

You require at least a couple of hours to walk around the place which boasts of over 1,460 different species. The National Park on this mountain “is the single richest floralistic area in the world. For this alone, the Park’s status as part of a World Heritage site, is richly deserved,” says the pamphlet.