Greetings from the Strand neighborhood in Capetown! The team has been staying in this area for 2 days, but I forgot to mention it in my previous blog post. Right now, I am staying with my teammate, Sarah, in a great guest suite area in the home of Lynette and Koos Stassen. Lynette is a Rotarian and is very active in the community - she has been a wonderful host to us. Strand means beach in Afrikaans - true to its name, Strand has a beautiful beach area.
In addition the nice guest suite area stocked with its own supply of food, I have really enjoyed staying here and having another GSE team member in the same house. Since we are rather formal all day long, it is nice to come home and relax and chat with another person my own age.
Today was another vocational day (more on that below) followed by some lunch and shopping and then a walk on the beach. I am just relaxing now before we head out to another presentation tonight to a couple different Rotary clubs from the Helderberg Basin area.
My vocational visit was one of the best yet today. I had the opportunity to meet with Alderwoman Gisela Jespersen from the Capetown City Council. We met at the home of a very nice couple (whose names I forgot to write down). Gisela and I had coffee and milk tart (a South African custard-tasting pie - very good!) and chatted about local government in South Africa.
Gisela is from the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party and she was very pleased with the results of Wednesday’s National and Provincial elections. The DA appears (not all of the votes are counted yet) to have won an outright majority in the Western Cape Province (where Capetown is located), which means that their party will control politics in this Province for the first time - previously, the ANC had the majority. From what I understand, this means that Helen Zille, the DA leader and current Mayor of Capetown, will become the leader of the Province (similar to being Governor of a State).
In addition to talking about the current National politics, we also talked about how the City is structured and how Gisela reaches out to the public. One of the notable things is that the City has 200 City Councilmembers! Half are elected by Wards and represent a specific area (Gisela is elected by a certain Ward) and the rest are proportionately selected by party. As compared to Tucson, the Capetown City Council only works on certain issues - other issues are decided by the Mayor and the Executive Council/Committee, which oversees the City’s major departments (I.e. community services, planning, utilities).
As for public outreach and involvement, each Council member that represents a Ward has a group of 19 citizens that serve in an advisory fashion. The citizens are selected amongst their peers to represent various constituencies (I.e. business, churches, non-profits). The advisory group meets monthly. I thought this was a good way of providing for public involvement. Gisela also has an extensive email list and regularly sends updates to the paper.
After the meeting was over, Lynette, Sarah and I spent some time at the Somerset West shopping mall. Apart from the different accents and stores, it could have been a mall in any part of the U.S. - funny how I can be across the world, but a shopping mall still looks very similar! I guess shopping malls in the U.S. don’t have biltong kiosks - biltong is a South African beef jerky that is very tasty.
Tonight’s Rotary presentation should be interesting, as it is our first time presenting with the other GSE Team visiting from Frankfurt, Germany. I am curious to see how our presentations match up! Okay, and I admit, a tiny bit of group rivalry is setting in, as I hope to make the U.S. proud and do a super job tonight. We spend the weekend hanging out with the German team and I am looking forward to getting to know people my own age and learn more about them.
That’s it for now - happy Friday all!
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