The Great Cape Town vs Durban Face-off… you be the judge!
Right. I know I’ve had a pop at Cape Town’s WC2010 stadium and likened it to a “half-sucked Polo mint” but then, to be even-handed about it, I gracefully accepted that Durban’s new Moses Mabhida Stadium does look a bit like Paris Hilton dropped her handbag in the middle of Durbs.
Fair’s fair, yes? But, no, the Cape Town vs Durban conflict has now gone to a new level since Cape Town’s Amanda Sevasti lambasted food writer Anne Stevens of Durban for her stinging attack on the Mother City.
Yowzers. This is nastiness. Bitterness. Dare I say it, hatefulness. This makes Man United vs Liverpool, Bush vs Osama, Australia vs England, Everybody vs Australia look like a Rotarians’ tea party in a sun-dappled meadow. Next to a gurgling stream. Instead of the gentle thwack of willow against leather, I hear the mega-thwack of a Louis Vuitton handbag against meaty temple.
I say we should get this internecine goading out of the way before our nice foreign soccer fans arrive for the World Cup. We need to work together, guys. Yes? Quite right. So allow me to present the original anti-Cape town article, as written by La Stevens… and then the robust riposte as published by La Sevasti. and then, dear and peaceable Hatpeople, we can put this spat to the vote and put this whole malarkey to bed. OK?
OK. Here is Anne’s anti-Cape Town tirade, as published in the Sunday Tribune (it follows a nice scene-setting pic of Durbs-by-the-Sea, complete with Paris’s lost handbag)…
In the north-east corner... Durbs Pic courtesy of http://allanphoto.wordpress.com/
Cape Town, you can keep your mountain
By Anne Stevens
October 13 2009, Sunday Tribune
“Cape Town sucks.
This may be a harsh judgment of the bedrock of South African history, but with one reluctant foot on the tip of
the continent, its extremities in the water and heart yearning for Europe, this is hardly an African city.
Fuelled by tourist dollars, pounds and euros, it sets itself apart from the rest of the country with a hauteur that is
infuriating. “Oh, but we’ve got The Mountain,” a Capetonian remarked recently when mildly reminded that Durban has good beaches and warmer water. That’s part of the trouble. The bloody mountain is whichever way you turn, making a crow’s flight trip from Rondebosch to Hout Bay resemble the Great Trek.