Travelers between SA’s urban centres quickly learn one surprising lesson: well-to-do citizens in each of this country’s big cities take inordinate pleasure in contemplating the misfortunes of the inhabitants of the other metros. Such schadenfreude is often accompanied by an unseemly gloating about the successes of the home city.
These sentiments may originate in the late 19th century, when the English-speaking elites of Cape Town and Durban were suddenly supplanted in power and prestige. Johannesburg did not exist in 1880. By 1911 it contained 240,000 inhabitants, and the Witwatersrand as a whole held twice that number.
Johannesburg remained a city of rough edges, but it became the heartland of money and power. Cape Town thereafter was a backwater. As for Durban, elites beyond then-Natal settled on the view that there was little need to take any further notice of it at all.
A shared international schadenfreude partially united the country despite these internal divides. This was sustained by the country’s perverse relationship to the travails of the outside world. From the abandonment of the gold standard, to turmoil in the Middle East, tumult in international affairs raised demand for the safe haven of gold, so boosting SA’s foreign exchange earnings. Between the great depression of the 1930s and the end of the second world war — a period of appalling human suffering — SA prospered as its economy enjoyed an extended export-driven expansion.
In domestic affairs, however, competition between the cities continued. The "gloat balance" has shifted decisively in Cape Town’s favour in recent years. When things go wrong in Gauteng, the currency falls, and the Cape’s tourism and property industries benefit from a flood of dollars and euros — no matter how hard the Home Affairs Department and South African Airways work to keep wealthy foreigners away.
When perceptions of crime worsen in Gauteng, a stream of that province’s citizens makes its way to the Cape. Meanwhile, the perennial governance crises of the Eastern Cape provide Cape Town with a pipeline of young, mobile and ambitious workers.
The Western Cape’s 6-million people now account for 15% of GDP. The province enjoys the lowest unemployment rates in the country, a disproportionate number of registered taxpayers, a young and well educated population, and better welfare outcomes than all other provinces (although Gauteng sometimes runs it close).
Citizens of Johannesburg do not like to show how much this hurts. They still gripe about the social, cultural, and racial limitations of Cape Town. When they come to the Cape — often astride bicycles and disguised in Lycra outfits — they glance only surreptitiously, but nevertheless longingly, in real estate agents’ windows.
One consequence of this extended era of Capetonian gloating is that the residents of the other great cities are always hankering after bad news from the Cape. Fortunately some higher power has delivered exactly such news, and through the appropriate biblical conduits of fire and water.
The city has been struck by thousands of destructive fires that have been attributed by locals to various mystical, magical, and political agencies. Now the dam levels are falling towards 25% of usable capacity. This is all tragic and concerning, but, from the viewpoint of the good citizens of Johannesburg and Durban, it is somehow altogether well deserved.
• Butler teaches public policy at UCT
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.