Cape Town, My City.

Where does it go?

Payday! Whoopee! After days of living on peanut butter and toast there is nothing more satisfying than taking a surreptitious peek at my bank balance only to find it a bit less depressing. One bone of contention, however, is the dreaded bite the Taxman takes out of my modest, yet hard-earned, salary.

I used to get really pissy when taxes were mentioned. As a young working individual, I really felt (and still feel) the loss of those few hundred Rands and for what? To line the pockets of the government fat cats, to keep the gravy train on its rails? Recently, however, I’ve started to notice things going on in Cape Town. Small things, inconspicuous things, but if you start adding you up you get quite a surprise…

For one thing the streets are absolutely spotless. Granted, there’s not much we can do to improve the lacking infrastructure (short of a major demolition project nothing is going to make a difference) but there is not a piece of paper or a scrap of plastic lying around. This begs the question – have the good people of Cape Town all undergone a simultaneous ecological paradigm shift? Or could it be that government is finally getting with the program? Surely not?

But they have, it seems. Helen Zille was recently named the best mayor in the world and I can see why. I daily encounter teams of neatly dressed men and women who are cleaning the streets, sweeping up garbage and cleaning the gutters. At night time these groups are replaced by a neighbourhood watch. I come from a small town with very little crime, my parents sleep with the back door unlatched for heaven’s sake, but I can honestly say I’ve never felt safer anywhere than in Cape Town right now.

Furthermore, during the December holidays when I drove out to Onrus to join my parents over weekends, I noticed road works. You know – those stop/go numbers that irritate the living bejeesus out of everybody. I also noticed increased police presence on the road, which included various road blocks, one of which made me over an hour late for a dinner date. But despite the relative inconvenience of these encounters, I was impressed. For the first time since I can remember I could see my tax money at work and I liked what I saw.

I am cautiously optimistic about the future of our country. Soon it will be 2010 and all the football fans that join us for Cape Town tours from around the globe will be going back to their home countries with pleasant memories of their stay in sunny SA. They will tell their friends and then they will tell theirs and before you know it we may just be able to boost our tarnished worldwide reputation just a little.

It saddens me to see my friends leave our beautiful shores to go seek their fortunes elsewhere. I am getting fed-up of going to a farewell party every single weekend, it makes me mad. I understand their reasons for leaving but I still feel they’re copping out. Why not stay and help us make this country work? Why tuck tail and run at the first sign of hardship? My dad has a saying, “The grass is only greener on the other side because there is more manure over there” and I tend to agree.

Suffice it to say I am here to stay and I’m glad that government has finally joined the party.