Day 268 - Cape Town, South Africa - 1st May, 2005

We spent some of the time last night looking for a church on the internet and we found one located in Hout Bay, about 20 minutes out of Cape Town going east. We organised with the resident cab driver, Manni, to collect us at 9:15am to take us to the 10:00am service.

We knew it was the right church for us as soon as we entered. We were spotted as newcomers from about 50 feet and were immediately welcomed. The worship band was tuning up and Matt Redmond was about to be unleashed. There were a bunch of grey haired oldies like us and a cross section of other ages as well, perhaps 200 in total.

The service was brilliant. After the service we were invited to the guest room and we met some of the congregation. The church was set up in Hout Bay in order to build a christian school for the local shanty town (now know as informal settlements). The whole church had this as a core purpose. The school also educates the kids of the church and you immediately felt that these guys were up to something. We then learnt that they had planted 6 churches in UK and 3 in India. We couldn't believe it. I thought we were supporting churches in South Africa! Here they are building new churches in UK. Why don't we do that?

There is something very "Garden of Eden" here. The physical environment gives you the impression that this is the end of the world (you can't really go anywhere south of here) but also that this is where a new world is being created. It looks like life itself would have started in a place like this. But things went wrong in the Garden of Eden and they went wrong here too.

We walked from the church, on the outskirts of Hout Bay, into the harbour itself. In doing so we went through an affluent residental area. Every house was surounded by a high wall with barbed wire around the top. As we went past each house the guard dog started barking. By the time we were at the end of the road the whole area was reverberating to the sound of Dobermans slobbering over the prospect of having a boy for lunch. The dogs would actually have prefered for one of us to break in to their property just so that they could have tasted our blood.

Every house had signs outside warning of immediate armed response teams who would be at the place in nano seconds if you even thought about breaking in. Talk about security.

In fact no one walks around here at all (too dangerous!?) so the dogs were right to be very upset. We surely were up to no good and they were doing their jobs. But it is a strange way to live. The whole community is under siege, or at least they think so. We spoke to some people who said that most people are just paranoid and the risk is minimal but if one of them has armed response security then they all have to have it. There has never apparently, been a security company here that has gone bankrupt.

I was also right about the man/woman thing. The men are macho, macho, hard drinking sorts and the ladies are all nip and tuck and push it all out all over the place. There is a general sense of hedonism and promiscuity that I have never come across anywhere else. I don't know why it is but I seem to have a nose for this sort of thing (it probably takes one, even if it's a reformed one, to know one). The vibe is electric.

If the world was going to end in 6 months time it would feel like this. The rich white folk are all about now. The drink and drug culture is pervasive and we have heard of stories about middle class, middle aged family people behaving like teenagers in front of their teenagers. How for instance did mum and dad's and all their friends, underwear find it's way into the school lost property locker after a party one Saturday night?

It is difficult to determine if this culture is imploding or re-generating. Most people agree that it will take several generations before the black people are moved on from the place where they have been left. They have no culture of work, responsibility or of wanting to improve themselves or their circumstances. Moving from slavery (virtual) to freedom doesn't help if you haven't got the tools to deal with it.

The businesses here are all working towards employing 25% black staff by 2007 but alot of them, if they are indigenous south africans, are a burden that end up costing the business dearly. None of them wants to work and none of the employers want to employ them. So where do you go from here? The only blacks it appears, that are prepared to do any work here are the refugees who come mainly from the Congo.

We were so impressed by the church and what they were up to that we immediately started asking ourselves if this kind of life style (total commitment to a cause outside our own aggrandisement) was what we hankered after. There is so much kingdom work to do here and so much opportunity to do it but it's like living in the cauldron of temptation itself. I'm like: Yes, NO, oh Yes, don't be silly, lets do it.

We met someone here today who had actually met Rudolf Steiner. We were talking about Waldorf education. There are many Waldorf schools here. Then we looked at the property prices. Oh dear this really would work ................