Cape Town is in a state of serious dislocation because of next summer's football World Cup. The huge new 68,000-seater stadium at Green Point is virtually complete but there are roadworks everywhere, as the city tries to fulfil its public transport plans on time. Except that there is now no hope that it will, because it has belatedly discovered that the vaunted Bus Rapid Transit system, which was supposed to cost 1.5 billion rand, will cost close to three times as much, which the city does not have, so the whole project is being rolled back up, with unforeseeable consequences for those who want to get to the stadium for the games. In one way the cancellation of the BRT is something of a relief, since the black cab associations, seeing it as unwelcome competition, had declared war on it. This is not a metaphor: judging by their previous efforts the war would have involved petrol bombing buses, drive-by shootings and occasional hand grenades thrown into bus queues.

LRB 17 December 2009 | PDF Download