As we circle out into Table Bay and back towards the mountain, the pilot welcomes us to Cape Town – and warns us about the burgeoning violence. For the first time, locals are talking about it too. ‘We all know people who have been raped and murdered,’ says one friend who delivers me to my guesthouse after a meal and watches until I am safely inside. She rings her security company and arranges for a guard to meet her at her door if she is coming home late. So do my other female friends.
I’m staying at Kalk Bay, a seaside village a little way outside the town centre, where you can buy freshly caught fish on the quayside and which has the shabby chic of parts of Notting Hill. It has the best bookshop in the city – chosen by Justin Cartwright for a recent book launch – and it has the guesthouse I’m staying in, which looks out over the harbour. I’ve never had an office with a better view.
It’s worth the drive, even though I discover that far from the area being free of all but the pettiest crime, a couple of men had recently tried to smash their way in through the guest house door to steal a television. And two pretty shop assistants in India Jane tell me there have been six armed robberies in neighbouring Fish Hoek in the past two weeks.
On my last night there is a disturbance outside my room in the early hours; someone is crashing about and shouting. Should I ring the police? Is he about to break into my room and rip my laptop from my arms? I decide instead to phone Florian, the young Swiss owner, who sensibly doesn’t live on the premises. He doesn’t sound best pleased.
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