• Joburg is where fortunes are made and Cape Town is where those fortunes are spent
Image: GARETH JONES
Cape Town and Johannesburg, two of South Africa’s largest cities, have been rivals for as long as they’ve both been around.
Cape Town, also known as the Mother City, since it was the first to be founded, likes to claim it can relax and stimulate people at the same time. Having lived here for most of my time in South Africa, I have to agree.
However, Joburg, or Jozi, where I lived when I first moved here in 2011 and also the city I visited the most often before then, always reminded me fondly of Nairobi with its speed, hustle and bustle.
I guess if asked I would say that Johannesburg is the city where fortunes are made and Cape Town is the city those fortunes are spent in.
Nevertheless, denizens of both cities seem to always be engaged in one-upmanship. And after the events of recent weeks involving baboons and hippos, I don’t think this contest will be ending any time soon.
Let me start with explaining the baboon. If, like me, you grew up and lived in Nairobi, you will no doubt have heard stories of lions leaving the Nairobi national park and terrorising people in the suburbs of Langata and Karen mainly. That said, in the early 1990s, there were reports of a lion spotted in Umoja.
If you live near the Nairobi Arboretum, or City Park, you have probably received visits from the resident monkeys.
In Cape Town, particularly in the Cape Peninsula area close to the Table Mountain national park, there are troops of baboons roaming around. These have often been in conflict with their human cousins, who have usurped all the land where baboons once foraged to build homes and shopping centres.
Last year, one of the baboons, officially SK 11 but fondly referred to by some Capetonians as Kataza, shot to notoriety when he went rogue in the upmarket suburb of Tokai.
By the way, Nkatazo, the root of the baboon’s name, means “trouble” in isiXhosa — talk about nominative determinism.
In a textbook example of the type of human-wildlife conflict conservationists such as Kenya’s David Western have been talking about for decades, Kataza split the community in two.
There were those who see him as lovable, “a daring baboon revolutionary, constantly outwitting the City of Cape Town-appointed rangers employed to keep him out of urban areas. A guerilla, if you will,” as one writer put it.
They argue that baboon protocols in the Western Cape need to change to accommodate the primates.
And then, there are those like the authorities and certain scientists who argue that Kataza needs to be returned to his troop.
Meanwhile, as Capetonians to and fro over Kataza, Johannesburg, which was not to be left behind in the roaming animal stakes, said the immortal line: Hold my beer.
The City of Gold, Egoli, just had to show it is bigger and better, and seeing Capetonians have fun with Kataza, they came up with a hippo roaming the wealthy suburb of Fourways.
The hippo was spotted in Chartwell, a farm area only minutes from Fourways, 20 minutes from Sandton City, 35 minutes from OR Tambo International Airport.
In the words of a Jozi estate agent: “The Fourways neighbourhood is an exclusive, upmarket area in which property is always in high demand.”
For those who may not be aware, Johannesburg is not built on a river, but its streams are the source of two of South Africa's mightiest rivers, the Limpopo and the Orange.
It would appear the as-yet unnamed hippo left its usual riverine habitat of the Jukskei river determined to tour the shopping malls, office parks and hotels of Fourways.
For now I’d say Johannesburg is winning, but don’t be surprised if Cape Town stages a comeback.