As per appointment, at exactly 16:00 Mustafa picked me up in his old model VW for dinner at his house in Berea. But first we were going to meet a group of 20 or so children in Cato Manor, a poorer section of Durban city, KwaZulu-Natal. Mustafa had waited for me in the university visitors' car park, playing Busi Mhlongo's superb Afro-jazz album Urban Zulu. The rhythm thumped mellow and steady, evoking a relaxed 'Zuluish' mood in me. The feeling was nothing like the discomfort I experience on seeing leaping, stamping, assegai-wielding Zulus in skins on Shaka Zulu. The movie has never been my favourite, even when recuperative liberation romance is rubbed into those flayed skins and glistening spears. Busi Mhlongo's husky voice just sounded right in the old model VW which was nearly bare, except for the simple upholstery and the CD player. There was a big fruitcake on the back seat. Mustafa said it was a present for the kids he was going to do a visionary drawing project with, the following morning in Cato Manor township. 'Cake brings the right vibes; it'll sweeten everything the first time we meet,' said Mustafa. Mustafa is an architect. He told me that an international conference was being planned to discuss the envisioned city spaces of the future. Thus, for him it was only sensible to include the impressions of the likely citizens of those places and times--today's children. On the day of our first visit, Cato Manor children were going to be told what was expected of them, then they would go home and sleep on it, and the following day they would draw on three separate sheets what they wanted their future town to look like. I quietly wondered whether the VW would feature in the imaginations of the future. As the car droned beetle-style up the hilly tarmac I marvelled at how it has smoothly fused into the early 21st-century landscapes without seeming archaic or incongruous. Would the children's imaging of, say, 2030 or there about, when they are in their prime, accommodate such a model on the freeways, I asked myself. The landscapes of the future were likely to be determined by the taste, style--and, of course, politics--of the coming times and how the remaining functioning relics from the past are viewed. If the social purview was going to be inclined towards greenness (a likely 'leftist' inclination of the future alongside the perennial quest for economic equity), use of environmental pollutants such as gasoline or petrol would be prohibited and contemporaries would drive only hydroelectric cars, or something better. But that day, as we drove in the VW, it remained classy and trendy, especially on the township roads sandwiched by plain and squashed semi-detached houses without gardens. The VW has always induced in me the feeling that driver and passengers are whiling away time in the hood. They seem to be cruising lackadaisically from shops to pub to friends to wherever ... mingling easily in the city. The car simply looks unsuitable for rugged dirt roads with the way its chassis lies so low. Mustafa's car reminded me of the many times we drove around Gweru town in a similar car back in Zim. My friend Carlo had bought it from a local antique car dealer. Carlo's was painted a bright, jovial yellow, but Mustafa's was cool pale beige. Yes, cars too have character and the VW beetle is entirely genial. You can't imagine anybody sensible looking morose driving in such a jalopy. The front profile looks as if the car is actually smiling at you. It is like something taken from a kids' cartoon. At traffic lights, when you wait for the light to go green, it is not unusual for the driver in the next lane to smilingly stick their head out. 'I love that, dude,' they'd confess with a face-wide grin. 'Are there any left where you got that one?' It is all kind of playful. The kids in the townships in particular wave and scream in delight: 'Beetle, beetle-e ... !' as they chase after the disappearing car. …
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Jul 24, 2024
Jill E Kelly 
Open Access
