Articles by Andreas

Johannesburg, 17.07.2010

Off to Mozambique..

The World Cup is over, the mates are back to Germany, the bike inspected, and after a few days in the cozy comfort of good friends’ guesthouse in Jozi (if you ever make it here, stay at the Lucky Bean) it feels as if the first journey is over, and a second one, different in most aspects will start tomorrow morning, when I´ll head towards Maputo, the capital of Mocambique, which should be a comfortable and stress-free ride of around 500 km.

The last 5 weeks have been dominated – of course – by the World Cup and the visit of my friends, the itinerary dominated by match fixtures and flight plans, and there was little freedom when it came to trip planning, Blatter decided more than I did. Now it will be different, 4 weeks left, and 5-6.000 km to be covered through the southern african states to reach Windhoek in the middle of August for the flight back..

South Africa was an experience I won´t forget. Not only because I met friends that will be with me for good – A big hug, Conway, Moenier, Natasha – and not only because I had a brilliant time during the Cup itself, I also learned a lot, probably more than in most other countries I have visited. My idea of nature has changed, and my perception of what a sunrise, a horizon and infinite width is will always be dominated by what I had the privilege to experience here, in the country of plenty.

More than this I am still touched by the level of mildness and kindness by so many Sourth Africans, most often by those with the hardest living conditions, a mildness that seems to be the only chance to succeed in the tough struggle that lies ahead of the country: to give all citizens access to education, healthcare and living conditions that are not an assault on their dignity, and thus making those fences, alarm systems and patrols that stop this blessed land from being a happy place one day.

I am not sure if this struggle will be successful very fast, and the fact that the privileged winners of Apartheid and century long abuse of black labor show a very often apalling lack of understanding and arrogance does not make it easier..

Nevertheless, this could be the most beautiful place to live on earth one day, I think, and if the struggle ahead should be successful, the whole planet in it´s attempt to overcome the painful and unbearable wealth disparity should and will profit. Here, it is a fight on each others doorsteps, and the fortress we have built around our continent at home is reduced to an electrical fence around ones property..

You have to love the country and it´s people for the courageous journey into unknown waters, it has embarked upon…

A final video, from a Shebeen in Soweto

The madness begins…

Had a day yesterday you can only have at the World Cup. Saw 3 teams, a nation out of their heads and heard the sounds that made Jericho´s walls crumble. Decided to leave Pretoria early morning, since – sorry mates – it was boring. A city of administration buildings and embassies, wide one way streets, no proper city center, and predominantly Afrikaner, so… a Rugby place. I stayed in a neighbourhood called “Hadfield”, so I should have been warned.

Anyhow, I packed, got on my bike, and whilst about to leave the Slovak (or was it the Slovenian) team checked into the neighbouring Hotel. 20 fans were waiting, and the obligatory dancing group.

But I was off to Jo´burg, and on check in the moderator for German national broadcaster ZDF and his team came up, impressed by the Berlin number plate of my bike, before dropping the story they had in their heads when they heard lazy assed me flew the bike over. So I missed my 5 minutes of fame.

Nevermind. Instead, into the city, and…a sound…a noise…THE noise…imagine thousands of elephants at the gates of the city, blowing their trumpets for minutes. It was scary, impressive, and spooky. It turned out that at 12 noon everyone was asked to blow his Vuvuzela, and, man, what a sound. From all corners of the city, a sky filled with a deep fanfare, shooting down your spine and up…Whoohoo!

Then I was getting lost with the bike, heading into derelict areas with ten thousands of African immigrant workers living in shocking war-like conditions, stopping at a small stadium where the Serbian team did a public training and saw Vidic (I guess at least it was him), 200 fans, maybe… before heading off to Sandton, where 100.000 fans gathered to see the Bafana Bafana beng driven around in a bus.

Sheer madness. This must have been the wildest welcome a team 90th in the FIFA rankings ever received. I ended the evening with an invitation to a House Club opening by a South African mixologist, and had a Springbok pie..

Man, what a place. One thing is sure, if Cape Town is the Auntie that knits a cap for her nephew in the national colours because she has heard some sports thing is happening, Jo’burg is the nasty, racous 22 year old that does not miss an away game ever, sits in the Ultra curve,and is ready to give it all.

Any thing else then a win tomorrow against Mexico would be a disaster for the mood here..

Exciting, it is all exciting, in a childish, Christmasy way…

Andreas.

(EDITOR’S NOTE – The following video is Andreas finding out from those in the know exactly who will win the World Cup on the 11th July)

(written on Sunday 6^th June 2010)

Cape Town…

Where to start? Approaching the city one realises early that the setting of this sprawling urban structure must be one of the most spectacular in the world, competing maybe only with Sydney or Vancouver when it comes to expressiveness of location. With the Table Mountain dominating the skyline from any angle and dwarfing everything around it and the city itself squeezed in between the giant and the Atlantic, up its hills and wrapped around.

The hilly streets, 2 and 3 story buildings with strong scents of Victorian architecture, Dutch colonial buildings and faceless 60´s to 90´s business buildings remind me a lot of San Francisco, and the vibe is smooth, the pace doable. As in any multi-ethnic city the food is excellent and diverse, and even now, in the deepest middle of winter, temperatures don’t drop below 12-13 degrees by night and it has all characteristics of a city whose inhabitants grew up in T-shirts and shorts.

So, you’d expect a Barcelona on the southern tip of the world, with street cafes open into the early hours of the morning, some Bossa and Kweito tunes pumping out from pavements at midnight, and a stylish and extremely hip, multi-ethnic young crowd from all over the globe mingling and celebrating youth?

Well, not really…

I thought about this during the last few days a lot, searching for the right word when talking to my friends here, and maybe “controlled” describes it best? There is a certain underlying tension. It is not very obvious at first but it is there. People watch what they do. They give attention to details I am not used to thinking about. Which part of town will we go to tonight? Will we take the car or the cab? It is not very obvious because it became a part of everyday life in the past but, simply put, there is an additional dimension here to life which we Berliners for example, don’t know. A certain level of awareness perhaps.

It does not change the fact that this is a fascinating place full of beauty, but it takes some of the lightness away. Fact is, the city is not only San Francisco, it is also Lagos…and Wroclaw…

As soon as you leave the city centre it feels as if CT would like to display the whole global range of living conditions. Huge suburbs dominated by simple, grey housing from the mid-century; thousands of small warehouses, derelict structures and minor industry; former townships with third world poverty. I have been to other cities with a shocking wealth gap before – say, Marrakech or Beirut – but here there is something different. Wealth and access to all resources with a trouble free, European-style lifestyle is not a privilege of a small, bourgeois upper class of a few thousand people…it is widely distributed and, at a wild guess, is reality for around 20-30% of the population.

But also there is poverty, and it is there for many…far too many. It is in the former townships, and it is in the streets of downtown Cape Town, with the guys selling South Africa flags between cars at traffic lights, and with the glue-sniffing homeless spending the night in agony in the parks of the city. It is a paperbox poverty that should have been erased from this planet by now, and that turns your thoughts into glass.

Very often this poverty is covered in a dark skin, but not always. Actually, one of the most hopeful signs is that the limits of “colour boundaries” – what a fucked up term – are, slowly but visibly, melting and dissolving. Thank God, the homeless white guy is by far not as common as the black couple shopping in fancy designer stores, but there is something moving…
One of the problems that slow the development down seems to be the same lazy fat-ass apathy we Berliners had in the first 10 years of reunification: “What do I have to do in the West/East? Nothing there for me…” People, all groups alike, stick to their old habits, are afraid to be not welcomed in the bars, clubs, shops and restaurants of the “others”, and only the few naive and dumb foreigners like me seem to ignore those boundaries.

No German term has been in my brain so often in the last days than “Die Mauer in den Köpfen.”

Safety? An issue…and a sensitive one. It is like any nation that has not fully developed its identity and self esteem, and yet South Africans are extremely aware of the image of the country abroad – media reports for example – and many here got hurt over the intense security debate around the Cup. But still, it is an issue. A slight nervousness is there in me too, and it originates not in acts or concrete experiences, but in the presence of an army of security staff in the streets at night; the alarm system in my guesthouse going off when I stepped on my balcony at night to have a cigarette; and the relatively small number of pedestrians on the streets in the evenings. The awareness in the visitor is there through reflections, observations that work like a cushion on a billiard table.

The World Cup? If the Bafana performs well, this country will explode. The people will get what they are thirsting for: a symbol to unite behind. A reason for pride. The last preparations are underway, pedestrian streets are paved, every car is flagged, after a series of 11 unbeaten games the optimism is flying high, each and everyone debates what Drogba’s injury means to the chances of Ivory Coast, if Benny McCarthy was rightfully dropped from Bafana because he is fat, and what the Mexican win over Italy really means in the light of the opening game which brings Mexico and South Africa together on the 11th of June…My god, just a few days from now…

The table is set, all ready for unforgettable days. The nervousness and excitement in the people here is growing fast, the spectacle could begin, and the country is ready. Leaving for Pretoria tomorrow, 1.500 km, hopefully in 2 days, and will be based there for 4 days, going to Jo´burg for the opener, to Rustenburg to see the hopes of one Anglo-Saxon team dashed by the other, and then off to Durban, 700 km, to see the kiddy team in Black, Red and Gold trying to run down the ageing kingdom of Oz…

After that the return to this City of Good Hopes…

Andreas