It is written that Sir Francis Drake stood on the deck of the Golden Hind as it rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1580 and was inspired to say "This Cape is the most stately thing and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole circumstances of the earth". Without doubt, even today there are few cities in the world with the same visual appeal as Capetown. The bustling cosmopolitan city lies at the southernmost tip of Africa, where skyscrapers brush shoulders with buildings of yesteryear under the shadows of Table Mountain. If you walk along Government Avenue, where the gentle ocean breeze shimmers the leaves on the shady oak trees you could be forgiven for thinking that you indeed had found the very soul of Africa.

Then, as you drive back along the airport road, where the profile of the horizon changes and the Port Jackson trees that grow along the sand dunes provide the only shelter from the intense summer sun, you begin to realise that there are blemishes of your perfect canvas. For here lie the shanty townships of the Cape Flats, where humans wander without purpose through the garbage of a hundred cities and mangy dogs sniff the empty cans that litter the dirt tracks hoping to find a scrap of food to eat. The Khayelitsha Township was also home to Danile, a slender girl with cocoa eyes, whose barking cough and mischievous smile reminded me of the time that I had worked in Capetown as a doctor some years before.

Then, when the air was still warm and a white tablecloth of cloud descended over the city, I would take the cable car to the top of the mountain and watch as twilight descended over the southern tip of Africa. There, on a lichen covered rock, poised somewhere between the heavens and the earth, I would sit in silence as another blood red African sunset deepened into purples of twilight and the lights of the suburbs below me twinkled into life. As often as not, other small groups of people would gather nearby to watch this unfolding spectacle of light. We seldom spoke, for this was indeed a hallowed place where long shadows from the past still lingered, and one sensed that in the order of things they were still the real owners of the night. And then, before the stars twinkled in the evening sky, the lights of the city would start to come on. There was always an order to their appearance. 

First the lights would come on along the outdoor cafes on the Victoria and Albert Wharf, followed by the prison Robben Island and lastly the night fires and bulbs of the Cape Flat Townships would brighten the flickering wastelands to the East.

This shimmering effect stretched as far as the eye could see, for these were the fires of a thousand Primus stoves lighting up the townships, that hotchpotch of corrugated tin shacks and huts where Danile’s family lived. And then in the stillness of the twilight, I wondered what was to be her destiny in life when this long painful African night had finally ended?

Would Danile wander through this city with a Persil box balanced on her head and rear her  young family in a tin shanty wallpapered with as yet unprinted editions of The Cape Times. Or would she take a step on another road, that would lead her to my sacred place at the top of the mountain and watch on another night as yet unborn and see the lights of the Khayelitsha township twinkle into life with the other electrified suburbs of her city.