I spent the last few days of my South African trip in Cape Town, absorbing the atmosphere of the harbour and all its fabulous restaurants and shops, visiting the museums, taking stunning drives up the coastline to Pringle Bay, going past the vineyards, the golden beaches and the mountains with their communities of colorful pastel holiday homes.

The Cape, is much more familiar to my Northern European eyes, green and rainy. I felt more relaxed because its more racially integrated than Johannesburg. I could walk after dark, but I still kept my car doors locked when I drove, day or night, but that was to keep out the baboons!

I went to an excellent museum, the Slave Lodge, to continue my cultural understanding. The building was where the slaves brought by the Dutch settlers around the 17th century. The slaves were brought from Indonesia, China, India and Malaysia as well as the West African coast. I now know where the culture of South Africans get their rich heritage, it’s so visible in all the faces of the people here. Add in the British, the Europeans the Jews, Portuguese, Greek, Spanish, French, Eastern European countries and the indigenous Khoi-San, the Zulu, the Xhosa and a few other African communities and you have a city diverse and varied as London.

So, my last impressions of South Africa as I leave my boutique hotel Cape Town, is all the beauty, all the diversity, all the strife and all the joy has made this part of the country a place of hope, a place of opportunities, a place of struggles and most of all, a place I fell in love with. Even with all the segregation and the setbacks, South Africa is a marvellous place to visit.

Most of the beautiful and ancient art in the world today, is in South Africa.  And now, some of the most diverse and exciting new work is being produced by the contemporary and modern painters of this country.  Many of the buildings showcase new work including the restaurants, the government buildings and offices and even the luxury hotels.  Cape Town artists, and artists from the entire region had been focusing on depicting and describing the new world during the times of the colonial era.  Often times as reporters reporting back, such as with Thomas Baines.  He toured the country making sketches and paintings of the natural world, the people, the flora, the landscapes and the fauna, much in the same way a court-room artist records that which the cameras do not see.

Then the artists began to shift their focus during the end of the nineteenth century.  They started to create works for the sake of art in and of itself, not as reports sent back to the city, but as the expression of what life was like living in South Africa, and being South African.  Anton van Wouw, sculptor, and Hugo Naude and Jan Volschenk, two painters, began to give a sense of art that is locally rooted in the culture and the society of their homeland.  And through these works began to gain an identity that is purely South African.

Two of South Africa’s female artists working in the early 1930′s, Irma Stern and Maggie Laubscher, created a bit of a scandal when they began employing techniques of expressionism, using bold colors and strong compositions that expressed their own personal views, which caused them to clash a bit with the more traditional and old fashioned ideologies and subject matter.  And during the years of apartheid, the art sometimes attacked the oppression and the racism, while at other times succeeded in lifting up those who were struggling.  There are many galleries and museums throughout the country of South Africa, wherein it is most suggested one should spend time with the history and the beauty, and tour what was and has been, and what will become for South African art in the future.

In the beginning of 1999, an organization was launched at the South African National Gallery, just around the corner from many of the five star Cape Town hotels and businesses.  A speaker from Ghana, Dr. Ruth Omabegho, gave the inaugural speech for this anticipated event.  The organization launched that day was the Bead Society of Southern Africa.  Much attention has been given to the group over the years as far as coverage by the local and international media, there are more artists requesting to join the group each and every day, from all over the country.  The Museum has been collecting, exhibiting and researching the indigenous art work of beads beginning in the early 1980′s and continuing now to the current times.  This was a motivating factor in the creation of the society.

The working of beads is the means by which the women of the country express themselves artistically.  They have been doing this for the past three hundred years.  This is significant to the political history and the constant transformation that the societies of South Africa have been going through, as well as for the women and their part in the history, socially culturally and artistically.  This is not the only bead society in the world.  They exist in Hungary, Great Britain, Russia and the United States.  In the States there are more than fifty such organizations.

This is the first one for the country of South Africa however, there is one that is located in Ghana, but it does not focus on the wide variety of traditions and those unique qualities that set the bead-work of South Africa apart from that done elsewhere in the world.  This society also has goals to create a networking system between the workers, and the researchers, students, archaeologists and collectors.  Activities are scheduled throughout the year, and the society publishes a paper that outlines events and provides resources for those not living within the city.  The bead-work can be found throughout the markets of Cape Town and during the festivals, and is one of the truly special characteristics of this beautiful South African city.

The Cape Town Festival has occurred each year for the last ten years.  This is a festival that happens each March and for those traveling from other regions, navigating around the city is made easier by any of the rental businesses and car hire in South Africa, and by public transportation, and by just simply walking through the downtown center.  This festival is a celebration of the diverse cultures and art forms of the country.  The festival was started by a man who was the editor of the newspaper, Cape Times,  Ryland Fisher.  His goal was to reinforce the idea that although there are so many different cultures in Cape Town, this is still just one city.  The arts have always been known to bring together diverse talent, which fosters a more tolerant and a more accepting attitude between those from different races, religions and belief systems.  This is certainly a time when a visit to the country would be most memorable.

The festival is catered to be accessible to those of various financial means, and interesting to those of all ages.  Not only is this a festival that draws people from around the country and the rest of the world, this is participated in and attended by the local populations as well.  Music line-ups in the past have included those from the world of jazz, such as Robbie Jansen, Leslie Kleinsmith, and Jonathan Rubain, as well as local musicians such as Coda, The Rudimentals,  Alistair Izobel, and Prime Circle.  The past festival held in March of 2009, was a celebration in and of itself as it marked the ten year anniversary of the special event.  The festival has found a home in the Company’s Garden, the largest public park in the entire country of South Africa.  Fisher states that it has been an amazing ten years, filled with the joy of knowing that this has brought the citizens of Cape Town closer together, artistically, socially and culturally.

In the city of Cape Town, South Africa, hotels, apartment buildings, restaurants and the house of the President, Tuynhuys, are all steeped in the history that permeates this city.  The Tuynhuys has gone through various stages and guises over the years, and is now associated with, and a symbol of the seat of authority.  This has been so for close to two hundred and fifty years.  This structure is stated as having been of modest and simply beginnings.  1674 is the year the site was first referenced, and was at the time, a garden shed used for the storage of the tools of the Dutch/East India Company.  This large garden was planted in 1652, by Jan Van Riebeeck. Thirty years later, the shed was rebuilt and became a guest house for the Governor during his summer time visits.  Records indicate that this has been a traditional summer house for all the governors from Holland throughout the seventeenth century.  This house later became the accommodations provided to international visitors of Simon Van Der Stel, the governor towards the end of the century.

By the end of the eighteenth century this building had been enlarged and reconstructed many times, and was surrounded by the gardens and the Greek and Roman sculptures that had been installed during this small hut’s transformation.  From the perspective of the design elements, this is an eclectic mix that draws from the Baroque style and Neo-Classicism.  East Indian and Dutch influences are also noticeable, and the plans for the building as it stands today were the work of an architect from France, Louis Michel Thibault.

Two of the men responsible for the artistic elements of the building are Jacobus Leeuwenberg and Anton Anreith, from Holland and Germany respectively.  Both artists are known to have worked throughout Cape Town during the late 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century.  The actual construction of the building was done by slaves, native to the country and those from Java, Malaysia and Madagascar.  During this time, most of the artisans and artists creating the buildings of today were slaves.  And their handicraft and skill became so admired, that the settlers often studied and apprenticed under their tutelage.  This is one building with a past and a history that is so common among South Africa and should be part of any tour of the city of Cape Town.