ABSTRACT

Climbing overhead, the aircraft banks left towards Johannesburg, and levels off

as it outruns the roar of its takeoff. Tracking across the sky, it is now nothing

more than a droning whistle. Other sounds drift over rooftops and up through

the cats’ cradle of power lines, carrying a more human tempo. Music and radio

talkshows are intermittently drowned out by the gusting south-easter; down at

street level singsong conversations, schoolkids on mid-morning break and the

rush of water filling bucket after bucket at the public standpipe tell the ordinary

story of another day in Khayelitsha.