"On December 9, Deacon Alpheus and I arrived in Cape Town. It was quite a journey from where Fr. Collins dropped us off in Colesburg to here. In all, it was nearly a twelve hour journey, from 10:30 p.m. to almost 10:00 a.m. the next day.
Before I enter into the visit, I wish to give a bit of historical context on Cape Town itself since I think it has a very interesting and important story of its own.
To begin with, Cape Town was for centuries an important stop on the trade route between Europe and the Far East. Seeking another way to trade with Asia after the Silk Road and the path through the Middle East became closed due to tensions with the Arabs, Cape Town (or Cape of Good Hope, as it was called) became an important stop on the sea route to Asia.
It was first sighted by Bartholomeu Dias in 1488 and then again further explored by Vasco de Gama in 1497. These were important first steps in the direction of European settlement of the region, but they did not last. The Portuguese did not take steps to form a colony on the island after they were defeated by indigenous forces a few years later.
In the seventeenth century, the Dutch arrived to set up a resupply stop on the way to the east. This was quickly done, and it was thus that the city of Cape Town was born. Gardens and orchards were planted to meet the needs of the company’s sailors coming through the harbor.
Cape Town’s long history as a Dutch colony can be seen today in the Afrikaans language, itself a variation of seventeenth century Dutch. Additionally, many region and street names are still Dutch.
However, the Dutch’s possession of the colony came to an end after the French Revolution. Having been captured by the revolutionary armies and rendered a French vassal state, the Dutch saw themselves on the losing side of a struggles against their longtime ally, the British. In 1795, Cape Town was captured by British forces. The colony subsequently changed hands during the Napoleonic Wars, but in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, it became definitively British.
The rest of the nineteenth century saw momentous developments for Cape Town and all of the South Africa colony. Slavery was abolished in 1833, and Cape Town began making moves to establish independence for itself, such as obtaining its own parliament and Prime Minister, moves that in the end would not be successful in achieving Capetonian independence from South Africa.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Second Boer War rocked the region, bringing to the fore the struggle between the Boers (Afrikaners of Dutch descent) and the British colonial forces. Incidentally, a young Winston Churchill cut his teeth on this war, beginning a long and illustrious political and military career.
The British won the struggle resoundingly and thus united South Africa. In the years that followed, the primacy of Cape Town was brought down by the ascendency of Johannesburg and Pretoria, financial and political hubs respectively. Maritime trade was not what it had once been, and neither was Cape Town.
During the apartheid era, the very racially integrated Cape Town saw its residents reorganized and grouped according to ethnicity; blacks in well-to-do suburbs were forcibly made to relocate to poorer townships, thereby setting up the income disparities that would plague the black community in Cape Town for many years.
To this day, Cape Town still sees strong income disparities; as we drove through the city, it was astonishing to see an informal settlement where residents live without electricity or running water in corrugated metal shacks just minutes away from chic waterfront neighborhoods where residents pay in the millions of dollars for apartments.
But to get back to our story, our bus, somewhat delayed from when it picked us up, hit traffic on the way into Cape Town, and so we only arrived at the station at nearly 10:00 a.m. The ticket had listed the arrival time as 6:35 a.m.
The driver we had reserved the night before to bring us from the station had passed us off to another driver for our ride. This driver in turn had designated a third fellow to carry out the job. Once this man backed out, yet a fourth driver was selected for the drive. The fourth one turned out to be the driver we would get, and he was waiting for us at the stop.
After some more directions were obtained, we finally found our way to the proper place. The staff had prepared breakfast for us, which we devoured with a hearty appetite. Lunch was already paid for, and so somewhat gluttonously, we went ahead and ate lunch only about an hour later. The whole atmosphere of the place was very pleasing and calm with weeping willow trees and white swans walking through the lush grass and perfectly landscaped shrubs; I remarked to Deacon Alpheus that the neighborhood, green and upscale, gave the impression that one might just catch sight of an English gentleman riding through on his horses with his hunting dogs.
No English gentlemen having made any such appearance to arrest our attention, we decided to go into downtown for the afternoon. Our meeting with the chancery was slated for the next morning, and the proper protocol was to wait to visit any parishes until the meeting had taken place.
Indeed, we were so absorbed by the view that we were quite startled to see the conductor of the bus indicating it was time for us to get off. We had badly miscalculated the closing time for the buses and ended up being stranded on the exact opposite side of town from where we were staying, thus necessitating calling an Uber.
One of the benefits of staying at the sisters’ guest residence was that it was also a retreat center, and there was a group of priests and seminarians on retreat with Mass each morning and morning prayer. Being told we could attend as well, we did. One of the seminarians lent us his breviary, but since it was different from the one everyone was using, we quickly got lost and had to engage in that delicate art of trying to find the right page in a book without giving away to everyone that you you’re completely lost by incessantly flipping pages this way and that.
The meeting was a positive one, one that I think it was good to have in person, and Fr. Renaud was able to delineate certain things he would need us to provide in order to propose the effort to his catechists.
On Thursday, we left for Oudtshoorn, a small diocese to the east of Cape Town. We were supposed to visit another priest in Cape Town before we left, but the coordinating on that visit did not work out, so we went directly to Oudtshoorn.
Since there were no good bus departure times to go from Cape Town to Oudtshoorn, we took a “kombi,” a taxi van not unlike the one I rode in from Antananarivo to Antsirabe in Madagascar.
Heading east out of Cape Town, we quickly came into a very desert-like area. It was hot, sunny, and dry, and as the van sped along at nearly 90 mph, we had to close the windows as otherwise we were smote in the face by a blast of hot air as from an oven. I kept thinking that there was something off about this heat, that maybe I was just getting feverish. Then I checked the temperature; it was 99 degrees Fahrenheit.
It took us nearly six hours to reach Oudtshoorn, and we did not encounter hardly any other town of any size or importance on the way there.
The reason why we were going to Oudtshoorn was that during our trip to Rome in 2022, we had met Bishop Noel Rucastle, the bishop of the diocese, at the World Meeting of Families. We had stayed in contact afterward, and now, since I was in South Africa, we were going to visit him.
For the next day, he organized a visit where we visited the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in town. Those who paid attention to the last post will recall that I also visited the oratory in Port Elizabeth. They will further recall that I said that the Oratorians are not held together by formal vows but by charity. This means that the charism of each community differs. For instance, the Oudtshoorn oratory was the first one in South Africa, and it is occupied with caring for the poor and vulnerable in a very poor black township. The Port Elizabeth oratory broke off from this one and took on a more academic mission. Also, this is an Afrikaans-speaking oratory, and Fr. Mostert, the head of the oratory, agreed to help us with the translation of some of our materials into Afrikaans, which the bishop very much wanted. The deacon and I were very impressed by what the Oratorians had managed to do with their large plot of land in Oudtshoorn, including a large valley that used to be the town rubbish heap; this they had purchased from the municipality for about R20, that is twenty South African rand. For perspective, that comes out to about $1.20. One interesting bit was that we got to watch one of the priests de-feather and clean a peacock he had just killed. I have had very little experience with slaughtering animals, so I found the experience very interesting of watching the peacock go from a fully feathered bird to a cleaned body that one might find in the window of a butcher’s shop.
On Friday, however, it was time for us to leave. The bishop took us down to George airport for our morning flight to Johannesburg. On the way, he told us the story of the George ghost. The story goes that in 1968, around Eastertime, a lady and her boyfriend were driving through from Johannesburg and that there was a bad car accident. Both died, but starting a few years later, drivers passing through would report seeing a lady dressed like someone from the 1960s standing by the side of the road hitchhiking. When she would be picked up, reportedly a short while later, she would be gone, nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, we saw no mysterious hitchhikers and so were spared such a ghoulish experience.
As the bishop dropped us off at the airport, I was sad to wrap up this trip around South Africa, but I knew it had been all we hoped it would be and that I had had a grace-filled experience.
At the end of the day, before going to bed, I joined the monthly Rosary broadcast on Radio Maria to pray the chaplet, Rosary, and Litany of Christ the King. Since the team was short one member, I was able to join in. Thus ended my last full day in South Africa; it was extremely busy but nonetheless blessed as always.
On Sunday, my flight was at 2:30 p.m., so I was able to go to Mass that morning in Rosebank, an upscale neighborhood in Johannesburg. That is the parish of Deacon Gerald Rodrigues, who had been on the Radio Veritas broadcast at the beginning of the trip and with whom we had had lunch right before I left for Aliwal. It was good to see Deacon Rodrigues again and to go to Mass at such a beautiful church.
After Mass we had a meeting with Joseph Simon_ from the parish and a young lady from Pretoria named Manushri_. Manushri_ has designed materials for young kids to help them understand the Our Father prayer, the Hail Mary prayer, and the Mass, and she currently supplies schools and catechesis programs with these materials. She gave some to me, and I must say they are very smartly designed tools, easy to understand and detailed in their explanations. She works a lot with children, and I was so glad we had a chance to meet with her; she is one of those young people who is just on fire with the Lord and who galvanizes you in just talking to her.
This pleasant meeting concluded, Gail and I went to pick up my bags and bring me to the airport. It had been such a good time in South Africa, especially traveling around the country with Deacon Alpheus, that I felt just a little bit loath to leave as I boarded my flight and we took off.
My next stop was Cameroon, and we shall see what became of that leg of the trip in the next post."
To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE
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