…And the aforementioned Tuesday is already upon us.
I did not, as I had previously planned, visit Table Mountain today – instead, I spent all day yesterday on a 9-hour tour that took me to numerous landmarks (including Table Mountain) around the Cape Peninsula! Expecting a van or bus of some sort, you can imagine my surprise when a cheerful, friendly Albert (our driver-guide) picked me up at my hostel in a tiny four seater yesterday at 8am, reaching across to the passenger’s seat to pop open the door for me. I had been in contact with him about pick up time and expectations, and he explained that since we would only be four people total on the tour this morning due to one family rescheduling, they had instructed him to take one of the cars used for private tours from the depot. Amused, I hopped in, and after picking up a middle-aged couple from a hotel around the corner and exchanging introductions, the four of us were off to our first stop.
Albert, despite being originally from the Congo, was an incredibly knowledgeable and a wonderful guide around Cape Town. From connecting a bluetooth headset to the car speaker so that we could all hear his commentary (in no way necessary given the size of our car), to stopping for us at every gorgeous viewpoint along the coast, to being my own personal photographer and instructing me on how to pose at each location, he made the day super fun and educational. From the center of the city we drove south to Muizenberg Beach, then headed West to Boulders Beach to see a colony of African penguins, then continued down to the Cape of Good Hope park and Cape Point, circled back up behind Table Mountain on Chapman’s Peak Drive, and finished with a stop at Table Mountain. The views and natural beauty were incredible, especially from the Cape Point lighthouse and the scenic drive along the coast. I didn’t see much from the top of Table Mountain as it was quite foggy, but I definitely got my fair share of amazing views elsewhere, including a wild ostrich spotting on the side of the road.
The tour was a great way to experience all of these landmarks, as many of them are only accessible by car and it is not always advisable to go alone, despite them being tourist hotspots. Many people have told me I came to South Africa at the wrong time of year (during the winter months), but despite the rain occasionally preventing some exploring, I have really enjoyed the weather and manageable crowds.
V&A Waterfront
Kirstenbosch
I’ve visited a few museums (the Iziko Bo-Kaap and Slave Lodge Museums, as well as the District 6 Museum), walked along the V&A Waterfront, and explored the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens – so beautiful. Unfortunately, the ferry to Robben Island – where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of the 27 years he was imprisoned – was closed for maintenance and will remain so until September. I did manage to stumble upon the Cape Town qualifiers for the Red Bull Dance Your Style international street dance competition while I was walking along the Waterfront, so I sat in the crowd to watch that for a while. One of these dancers might go on to represent South Africa at the global finals in LA later this year!
I met virtually with another scholar from the University of Cape Town on Friday whose work focuses on decolonization and education, and she shared some very interesting insights that echoed my own experiences. Despite her willingness to talk to me, she shared that South Africa (and the African continent as a whole) has a complicated relationship with research, especially research surrounding people, culture, and – adjacently – languages; the land whose natural beauty, food, and culture I find myself enjoying has, obviously, a history of colonization, oppression, and violence on many fronts, and the legacy of such forces is apparent in the way that Cape Town is still very socially and economically segregated today. She remarked that the process of researchers coming here to study race, religion, languages, etc., can be, for people living here, a process of violence, as it involves reliving or unearthing generational traumas and experiences. This is exacerbated when researchers themselves are foreigners, as the so-called ‘findings’ are often then used to create a narrative that fits the researcher’s goals – and, not to mention, published outside of Africa, in a way recreating dynamics that define the area’s historical past. She explained that for these reasons, people might be hesitant or unwilling to speak with me about my research, which is something I have definitely come across. It’s something I didn’t think to consider while planning my project but am grateful to have learned from her. I also realize that perspectives like this are only something you can learn from being here, and it informs how I want to write about my time in South Africa.
I’m very curious to visit Johannesburg, which is generally considered more racially and culturally mixed than Cape Town. I’ll be meeting with a representative from Ditsong Museums, an amalgamation of museums in Pretoria and Johannesburg, within my first few days of being there. I leave for Joburg tomorrow, so here are some reflections from my time in Cape Town:
- Most public signage in Cape Town, especially in the city center, is in English only, even though a wide variety of languages are spoken throughout the city. In areas like Muizenberg, signage is more likely to be bilingual or trilingual, typically in English, Afrikaans, and occasionally Xhosa. Whenever multiple languages are used, it’s almost always these three – a reflection of historical language policy and present-day demographics (see to right).
- A notable pattern is that Xhosa translations often appear only for the prohibitive parts of signs – for example, “No Swimming” might be translated into Xhosa, while the rest of the information is left in English. This raises uncomfortable questions about whose access is prioritized and how language choices may unintentionally frame certain groups as needing to be policed rather than informed. Similarly, crucial safety signage like wet floor warnings is often in English only. In a few cases, I’ve seen the word “Qaphela” (Zulu for “attention”) appear, which stood out to me – especially because I’ve been noticing similar inconsistencies in wet floor signs across the different (rainy) places I’ve visited so far (see below).
Cardiff (English, Welsh)
Cape Town (English, Zulu)
- In the conversation with my contact in Muizenberg, she told me that Xhosa and Zulu are mutually intelligible and should really be considered dialects of the same language. According to her, the split between them was largely colonial – a way of dividing groups artificially by drawing new linguistic boundaries. She said the difference between Zulu and Xhosa is less than the accent difference between Scottish and Welsh speakers of English. When I mentioned how people in Wales sometimes physically correct bad Welsh signage by writing over it with a marker or sticker, she laughed and said that kind of informal language activism doesn’t really happen here – at least not that she’s seen.
- That same scholar has been actively pushing for better signage in Muizenberg, and some improvements have come as a direct result of her complaints. Many of the poorly translated signs around Cape Town stem from one-time translation requests that aren’t proofread or updated – often due to lack of funding or attention. One example she mentioned was a beach sign that was supposed to say “No swimming” but ended up with a message closer to “Bring your food and swim here,” completely reversing the intended meaning.
- The City of Cape Town’s official logo is trilingual (English, Xhosa, Afrikaans), and public institutions like the Muizenberg clinic generally use trilingual signage – though not in integrated formats. Instead, information tends to be printed three times, once in each language. Street signs, on the other hand, are mostly just place names – often Dutch-influenced or an Afrikaans word – and rarely offer language-specific information. Very occasionally, you might see English words like “Way” with Afrikaans equivalents like “Wag” underneath, but this is rare and inconsistent.
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Welcome signs tend to be the most multilingual, often displaying many languages in a word-cloud-style layout, similar to what I observed in parts of Wales. Museums, however, are surprisingly English-dominant. At the Iziko Slave Lodge, for instance, even when signage includes multilingual headings (often for exhibition titles or themes), the actual descriptive content is typically in English only. On the top floor – which was unexpectedly focused on Ancient Egypt – this meant that non-English speakers could understand what the exhibit was about, but not actually engage with the full text, as if the appearance of inclusivity was prioritized over actual access.
Finally, some of my favorite signs from this week:
See you in Joburg!