Cape Town has no shortage of reasons to go into the city.
There are galleries to browse, restaurants to try, shops to wander through and, if First Thursdays is anything to go by, plenty of people willing to put on comfortable shoes and pretend they are not tired by 8pm.
But getting people into the Inner City is one thing. Getting them to stay, connect and feel that the space belongs to them is another.
That is the thinking behind The Mission for Inner City Cape Town, which is marking its first anniversary with a free public concert on Greenmarket Square, bringing together music, food and the kind of communal evening that asks Capetonians to leave the house and actually spend some time in the city.
And if anyone knows what it means to have a long-standing relationship with Cape Town, it is Zolani Mahola. The former Freshlyground frontwoman has lived in the city for 26 years and has performed on Greenmarket Square many times. For her, the historic space has an energy of its own.
“There is something so alive about the space,” she says, describing it as a place of “trade and connection”.
It is an appropriate place for a conversation about reclaiming public space. Greenmarket Square has been part of Cape Town’s story for more than 300 years and is South Africa’s second-oldest public open space.
It developed as a market where produce from the Company’s Garden and surrounding farms was sold, eventually becoming a busy meeting place for farmers, travellers, Khoekhoen, free Black people, enslaved people, Company officials, soldiers and sailors.
Its history is also inseparable from the uglier parts of Cape Town’s past. The square was used for slave auctions and public punishment, while the Town House overlooking it was used to issue orders concerning enslaved people.
That history matters because public spaces are never simply somewhere to put a bench and call it urban renewal. They are shaped by the people who use them and by who feels comfortable, welcome or entitled to occupy them.
UN-Habitat describes public spaces as important to social inclusion, economic exchange and civic life, saying well-planned and managed spaces can strengthen community cohesion, support local economies and reduce spatial inequalities.
It also links inclusive public spaces to a greater sense of identity and belonging.
For Mahola, getting people physically back into these spaces matters. “When people show up in numbers they reclaim the streets,” she says.
There is something almost instinctive about that. A street feels different when it is full of people. A square feels less like somewhere you hurry across when there are people sitting, eating, talking and listening to music around you.
Mahola’s set will draw on 17 years and six albums with Freshlyground, alongside music from her post-Freshlyground career, with The Feminine Force accompanying her.
The bigger idea, though, is not really about one concert. It is about whether a city can feel like home when you are actually in it.
Cape Town is easy to love from a postcard, a mountain lookout or a restaurant with a nice view. The harder question is whether we feel equally at home when we put our feet on the pavement, share a public square with strangers and realise the city is not just something to look at.
For one Thursday night, Greenmarket Square is giving Capetonians a reason to do just that.
bernelee.vollmer@nationalmg.co.za