Yesterday was the most chaotic day I have seen in Camps Bay in 20 years of living in the suburb.  We know that New Year’s Day is busy, and is a stay-away zone, due to the thousands of Cape Town residents who come from other areas and take ownership of the beach in the suburb, without the City of Cape Town sending any reinforcements to secure the suburb.  What was experienced in Camps Bay yesterday may be the deathknell for tourism in Camps Bay and Cape Town.

We warn our guests to stay away from the Camps Bay beach on 26 December and 1 January, but nothing could have prepared us for yesterday.  One should have known that chaos was coming, when all the restaurants on the street level of the whole beachfront strip, with the exception of health food franchise Kauai, were closed for business!  When I was advising my guests about alternatives of things to do and places to eat, I had to admit to them that most restaurants in Cape Town are closed on New Year’s Day, despite the city teeming with tourists!   I drove down Kloof Street, and was pleasantly surprised that about half the restaurants on this popular restaurant street were open for business, a few proudly Tweeting that they would be open until about 22h00 last night, which is a whole lot better than last year, when only the franchise restaurants were operating.   Manna Epicure, Da Vinci’s, Arnold’s on Kloof, Vovo Telo, Hudson on Kloof, Knead, Mozzarella Bar, and newly opened The Black Sheep are some of the restaurants that were operating, and should be commended for feeding the many tourists in Cape Town.  The restaurants in the city centre were all closed.

In Camps Bay I needed Bay Response at my guest house, but they had to cut short their service when they were called to assist Pick ‘n Pay Camps Bay, of which the front door was being broken down by unruly beachgoers!  We heard sirens throughout the day, especially early afternoon, when there was a near-drowning on Camps Bay beach, despite lifeguard services offered.  The beach is just too full, and often inexperienced bathers and unsafe rip tides can lead to loss of life.

I had driven to town for a quick coffee break in the early afternoon, and it took 15 minutes to travel 250 meters from Hussar Grill to our guest house on Camps Bay Drive!  Part of the hold-up was a sedan taxi dropping its clients off in the street, not pulling over to let them get out safely or to allow the rest of us to move forward.  He then did a U-turn then and there, blocking the traffic in both directions.  We saw one traffic cop in a car ahead of us, not reacting at all when a minibus taxi decided to jump the traffic blockage, and travel against the oncoming traffic down in the right hand lane!  We wonder what our tourists think of the lawlessness on our city roads, which does not receive attention, as there never is active policing in Camps Bay from the City of Cape Town’s traffic department! We had been promised that minibus taxis and Golden Arrow buses would be removed from our suburb once the MyCiTi Bus service was introduced, but it seems as if more taxis operate there now, and that barely anyone is using the city’s bus service!  One wonders who had the ‘brilliant’ idea to place MyCiTi Bus stops in the street lane, instead of building bus stops in the parking areas, such as is used by the even bigger Hop On Hop Off buses, given that no traffic can move until the buses move!  We observed two days ago that the MyCiTi Bus driving from the Whale Rock to Camps Bay stops was not parking properly, using even more of Victoria Road than is designated.

The taxi anarchy led to a major traffic blockage out of Camps Bay yesterday afternoon, when a minibus taxi rolled on its journey into town.  Traffic was backed up from Geneva Drive until everyone had seen the taxi at the side of the road, with its windscreen and a door lying some distance away.  A number of passengers had to be treated for injuries, as this flippant Tweet from the City of Cape Town informed us: ‘ @WhaleCottage Taxi overturned. 10 patients no serious injuries. Emergency and enforcement agencies on-scene #CCTAlert@wilfredsolomons‘.  They had no clue what was happening to us trying to exit Camps Bay, with many cars stuck on the way, due to engine overheating, just adding to the chaos.  The ‘best’ was that the traffic officials who had done duty at the traffic circle connecting Signal Hill and Table Mountain at the top of Kloofnek Road went off duty as we drove past, at about 18h00, clearly knocking off despite the terrible traffic chaos happening at that time!  There were no traffic police to be seen all the way from the bottom of Camps Bay Drive into the city, not even where the accident had happened!

A meeting between the businesses of Camps Bay, its residents, and the City of Cape Town is urgently required to prevent another repeat of yesterday’s mess.  Our recommendations to bring normality back to Camps Bay are the following:

1.   Close off Victoria Road between Camps Bay Drive and Kloof Road leading to Clifton, to make it pedestrian use only.

2.   Force all taxis and buses to park at Maiden’s Cove, where there is ample parking, and force them to travel back and forth via Sea Point.

3.  Institute a road block into Camps Bay, near the top of Kloofnek Road, and confiscate any alcohol in cars and taxis

4.   Close off all entry to Camps Bay from Camps Bay Drive when the number of persons on Camps Bay and its beach gets to be unmanageable, for the police, security, and lifeguard numbers available.

5.   Allow an emergency exit in/out of Camps Bay in case of a disaster, which was required yesterday with the near drowning and the taxi that rolled.

6.  Have traffic police control traffic from the top of Kloofnek Road already, if traffic gets backed up at that point already.

While we understand that it is not PC to request that Camps Bay be controlled on Boxing Day and on New Year’s Day, it is in the interest of the safety of all beachgoers, the owners of businesses in the suburb, and of the reputation of Camps Bay as one of the pinnacles in our Cape Town tourism crown.   There is no point in marketing Camps Bay if the City of Cape Town does not live up to its slogan of ‘This City works for you’!  For example, the rubbish removal van did not arrive in Camps Bay on Tuesday, which was not even a public holiday!

POSTSCRIPT 2/1:  Today, whilst Cape Town is at its fullest, the City of Cape Town decided to disrupt the traffic between Camps Bay and the city centre by fixing a vicious pothole which has been there for weeks already, using a stop/go system, with one lane of traffic only!

POSTSCRIPT 2/1:   The Cape Argus front page headline today was ‘New Year’s Day Chaos‘, with photographs of overfull Muizenberg and Camps Bay beaches!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter: @WhaleCottage