RANDOM AT LARGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32005, 4 June 1969, Page 21

RANDOM AT LARGE

SIGN POSTS

Cape Town must surely rank among the loveliest cities in the world. Calling there the other day no more than reaffirmed this belief, formed many years ago. Perhaps its appeal is based on the fact that nowhere is there room, between Table Mountain and the sea, for huge urban areas to bring their blotches and blemishes. Table Mountain can hardly be likened to the neck of a beautiful woman: but the city at night is a lovely string of pearls. The coast road offers breathtaking views, and attacks of vertigo, but the swiftly-changing seascapes are magnificent. From Signal Hill at night. Cape Town looks like something from a Walt Disney production, and as the coast curves in the east, the visitor can see lazy surf tumbling and surging

smoothly into the bright lights of Sea Point. Cape Town does not have the distinctively holiday resort look of Durban, the frenzied pace of Johannesburg, but no doubt there are ample opportunities for Europeans to make a very good living. A day in the city suggests that a young man starting out could do far worse than become a signwriter. Even with an army of helpers he would never, if he won the proper contracts, be anything but busy. Every street sign in English and Afrikaans, every seat labelled white or non-white, every bus stop and station similarly marked, all the business houses with two names, all the display cards in the shops in both languages: everywhere, evidence of twice as much work as a sign-writer in New Zealand could hope to attempt.

We had an Afrikaner taxi-driver for half an hour in the evening. He was a most helpful and courteous man, but when we mentioned to him the vast amount of sign-writ-ing the apartheid system demanded, he became a little pensive. We thought, perhaps we had touched a tender spot, that an Afrikaner would see no need for any but his own language, That was not the way of It, however. He said he would not be happy until there were at least three languages used in sign-posting and -writing, to make provision for the Coloureds or the natives of particular areas. His assurance that there was a need for sueh an arrangement was a little surprising, but it was obviously sincere. And it bolstered the belief that in South Africa, a brush could bring in as much as a mining share.