I spent an enjoyable two hours yesterday walking the streets of the city and talking about the history of Cape Town and South Africa with Lucie Pagé, an award-winning French-Canadian writer and journalist. Impatient with many travel guides to South Africa that still persist in starting with “In 1652, Jan Van Riebeeck founded a nation…” Lucie is collecting material for a new French-language South African travel guide, to be published in 2011.
Lucie Page
I enjoyed introducing her to the stories of Cape Town over the past 500 years that also tell the history of our nation: conquest and dispossession, stratification and exclusion, struggle and triumph, redevelopment and growth. she was particularly interested in the role of water in the making of the city, and the transition from Camissa, the place of sweet waters, to modern-day Cape Town.
The walkabout was also good fun because Lucie’s husband, Jay Naidoo, tagged along. Jay, a former trade unionist and SA Cabinet Minister and outgoing chairperson of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), is an old colleague and friend.
Jay is now involved in the global struggle for better nutrition as chairperson of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) an international organisation head-quartered in Geneva, Switzerland, committed to addressing malnutrition facing two billion people in the world. Jay, who also writes a popular blog called The Just Cause was in town to launch his new book Fighting for Justice.
Lucie, a law-abiding Canadian citizen, was particularly troubled whenever we ignored the traffic signals while crossing the streets. “What’s with the jay walking?” Lucie wanted to know. “In my country, we get a stiff fine if we don’t wait for the little green man”.
My response was that, as part of our city philosophy of planning for people, not cars, we regularly engage in acts of civil disobedience by walking across the streets in defiance of the traffic laws. I’m not sure whether she bought my argument…
Bulelwa Ngewana (CTP), Andrew Boraine (CTP), Jay Naidoo, Lucie Page, Terri Carter (CTP)
