So i've just spent the weekend in the mother city. I went over for one of my best mates birthday parties. I was really looking forward to spending some time in the fairest cape, in spite of my hatred for Cape winters. I've always had a jol in the Mother city! My favorite clubs remain Rhodes House, and Fez, even though neither of them exist anymore. Although I've heard Fez has made a combeack, so I must be sure and check it out next time I'm in the 021!

The most appealing thing to me about jolling in CPT was the cosmopolitan nature of the jol. There weren't from my view point white clubs or black clubs. There were simply nightclubs. That said, Bassline and Fez did generally have more caucasian revellers. Whereas Rhodes House seemed to have revellers of a darker hue. But everyone mixed and mingled quite comfortably it seemed. I never encountered any incidents of a racial nature while partying in the fairest cape. I was always welcomed in to whatever nightclub I wished to attend, and never felt victimised or marginalised by my fellow revellers.
I have a multi racial and ecletic circle of mates. Whites, blacks mixed race boys and girls doing their thing together. The barmen served you as quickly and efficiently as the demand allowed them to.

So it was good times.

I have been hearing for some time now, about racial incidents occuring with increased regularity in Cape Town. I was always shocked, but assumed that they were isolated incidents perpertrated by over zealous bouncers.
So, when on Saturday afternoon somebody suggested that a place called The Reserve would be 'poppin off'' I immediately exclaimed "Sounds like jol! Can't wait".
Well was I in for a surprise! A group of about ten of us had assembled. Nine blacks, one caucasian. We walked passed Reserve before actually trying to enter, and observed that there was no queue. We went to draw cash and came back fired up! Ready to jol! We had agreed that as this was a special occassion, it was necessary to buy a couple of bottles of vodka, and perhaps even some champagne.
As we walked toward the door, the bouncer enquired as to whether we had our tags to which we answered we didn't. The bouncer then informed us that we wouldn't be allowed in because we didn't have tags. Somebody enquired whether we couldn't just buy tags there to which the bouncer responded "Sorry gus, you needed to have bought them earlier".
During the period that we were having said discussion with the bouncer, three maybe four caucasian people arrived at the door. I think one of them had a tag. A group of three caucasian gents then arrived, and not one of them had a tag. The bouncer and now door lady assured us that they were "regulars here and would drop about 20k tonight". I was astonished! It didn't seem real! In fact, my exact words were "Surely these guys don't wish to play into the negative stereotype".
But they did. We were in party mode and so didn't care to get into a fight or exchange words with a beef cake, so we left. But it did leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

I'm not entirely sure what one does about something like this. I've written about it, but others may have a better solution. But what's for sure is we've got to alleviate this kind of behaviour! Let's get back to jolling like we did in the Bassline, Fez, and Rhodes House days. Lets get cosmpolotan again, and lets revel in each others differences!