The Cape Town inner city after dark, and those who enjoy its spaces, outside of the popular haunts in Long Street, remain mostly white, writes Quinton Mtyala.
If you’re young, black living or holidaying in Cape Town there are unwritten rules which often dictate where you’ll go to enjoy a night out on the town. Unfortunately, these rules are often influenced by the racism you’re likely to encounter, whether being denied access at clubs or made to feel so unwelcome that it almost always makes some spaces exclusively white.
The latest recorded incident of this sort of racism happened at the popular Clarke’s bar & dinning room in Bree Street where a group of black patrons were racially abused, not by the owners or managers but by a fellow patron who just happened to be white and drunk.
What subsequently happened in a few minutes illustrates the racism black people often face, instead of the racist being booted from the restaurant, the security removed the group of black patrons. Had it not been for a post on Facebook, which went viral we would never have heard about it, or the belated apology from the owners of the restaurant.
In South Africa, where over 90 percent of the population is black, the Cape Town inner city after dark, and those who enjoy its spaces, outside of the popular haunts in Long Street, remain mostly white. One bar in Kloof Street has become notorious for its racist door policy where it upholds a quota system which restricts the number of black people allowed through its doors on Friday and Saturday nights. The absurdity of it all is that this policy is enforced by black bouncers who live in townships on the Cape Flats.
The fact that black people aren’t seen in these spaces also speaks to South Africa’s continued income inequality and a spatial apartheid which persists, particularly in Cape Town, where over the last decade gentrification has pushed working-class black people out of the city and into ghettos on the Cape Flats.
When DA councillor Shayne Ramsay publicly called for residents to march and forcibly remove homeless people from the streets, and out of Sea Point, it spoke to the arrogance of racists. She apologised only after it was pointed out to her on social media that her comments were racist.
What happened to those black patrons at Clarke’s should be seen in this context, which informs the racism they were subjected to last weekend. It was no accident, and it will continue to happen while people choose to remain silent.
* Mtyala is the News Editor
Cape Times