As the extraordinary tale of Cape Town City continues to play itself out, and after this remarkable group of footballers had dismantled PSL and African champions Mamelodi Sundowns (for the second time this season), I was rapidly, nostalgically, transported back in time, to a rather desolate place.
Because, essentially, that is what memory does. Rewind the video of your life and you won’t remember all that much, except moments. There are always moments, instances in time, which stay with us forever - and they endure particularly because the moment had a profound effect on our lives.
And, as I watched Eric Tinkler’s impressive squad, it was as if a light was triggered in my brain and I was plunged headlong down the passage of time, reliving one such deep-rooted moment. And as the camera of memory panned backwards, it was to Cape Town City, in its original guise, during the days of segregated football.
It was the 1970s, I must have been around six or seven. My late brother, a football nut, took me along to every game he attended, especially to watch Cape Town Spurs and Glenville in the non-racial Federation Professional League. Naive, and coated with the innocence of childhood, all I was interested in, at the time, was football. Until, and I remember it most distinctly, he took me to a Cape Town City match. The club was then playing in the white-aligned National Football League.
Because we had to sit in the section provided for people of colour, it was, for me, the start of my awareness as the other, my comprehension that the country I lived in viewed me as different. Now it was no longer just football, it was more than that. Football, suddenly, on that night, had lost its lustre. It was no longer just about players exhibiting their talent within a sporting arena; in my developing childhood brain, the seeds of the recognition of a greater, darker political scenario had been planted.
Fast-forward to the present, to the new Cape Town City, a team that is attracting support across the racial and cultural spectrum of the country. And I realise, as I watch this new entity, that I’ve had the bitter-sweet experience of witnessing Cape Town City in two conflicting eras.
Call it the “Tale of two Cape Town Cities”, if you will (and if Charles Dickens will allow me such poetic licence). Because, as much as there is so much that is still grossly wrong with this country, and the road it has chosen to travel, I know which Cape Town City I would prefer to be part of: Certainly not the one where, as a young impressionable kid, I was forced to be less than human, and treated differently to other Capetonians.
The Cape Town City of today is representative of the country, the society, we would love to build. They symbolise the potential, the hope, still so endemic to what we are capable of as a nation, especially when we decide to reject those who always seek to divide us.
The players have come from all over South Africa, and all over the world, in fact - from Cato Ridge in KwaZulu-Natal (awe-inspiring right-back Thamsanqa Mkhize), from Hammanskraal in Gauteng (splendidly gifted Aubrey Ngoma), from Ladybrand in the Free State (goal-poacher Lehlohonolo Majoro), from Strandfontein in the Mother City (deeply committed defender Robyn Johannes) to Klagenfurt in Austria (diligent, pugnacious Roland Putsche).
Life is always a tricky, difficult journey. Through the lens of memory, however, we are able to, especially with the benefit of the circumstances of the present, place things in perspective. And so, in this way, I can look back at my first Cape Town City experience with less regret - and then fully grasp the magnitude of our astonishing change, and the rocky road we had to negotiate to get to this new Cape Town City.