The ring of fire

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Last Sunday morning at 8am I joined a dozen cyclists at the Rhodes Memorial cattle grid to escort Jean du Plessis on his 200th ride to the Blockhouse since October 1 last year. Jean has been cycling up the slopes of Table Mountain in a gesture of what he calls "slow burn" solidarity with women who have been abused. We reached the Blockhouse an hour later and were joined by hikers, runners and Pilot the Great Dane to mark a remarkable double century of Blockhousing. Jean looked exhausted - determined, but exhausted - and I wondered how many more Blockhouse trips he would be able to endure.

We hadn't seen any flames on our journey up the mountain, but 15 minutes after we arrived at the Blockhouse I saw wisps of smoke in the veld below. We made our way to the bottom and as we climbed up a short hill, I looked to my right and saw some flames.

The fire brought out the best and the worst in people (but mostly the best)

"Ah," I remarked flippantly to the cyclist next to me, "burning down the mountain is probably the only way Jean will ever stop his Blockhouse rides." There was a fire truck and a few firefighters were attending to the fire. It looked like it was under control.

I didn't think much more about it. We live only about a kilometre from Rhodes Memorial, which was where the fire started, but between us and the flames was a large chunk of tar: the M3 highway.

An hour or so after I arrived home the sky was covered by a blanket of smog. Then it started raining ash. I checked Twitter for updates and exchanged nervous chatter with my neighbour. We agreed that as long as the blaze didn't jump the M3 we were safe. I went inside and glanced at Twitter. The fire had indeed jumped across the highway. Not only that, it had gutted SA's oldest working windmill, the 300-year-old Mostert's Mill, and was threatening to engulf homes in the area.

It was time to think about panicking

Dramatic fire photographs were circulating on Twitter, which I was refreshing every two seconds. Perhaps it wasn't time to panic but it was certainly time to think about panicking. The sooty air was filled with the sounds of sirens and the urgent buzz of helicopters flying backwards and forwards with Bambi buckets to dump water on the flames. The sky had turned an apocalyptic pink.

My wife took our children to her sister in Hout Bay. The fire was getting closer and it was time to take stock - literally. I shoved a file of "important documents" - IDs, birth certificates - into a bag and looked around at all the possessions I had gathered in the 50 years I've been haunting this planet. I wondered what I should take in the event there was an instruction to evacuate.

My Billy Bunter book collection? Set in pre-World War 2 Britain, Billy Bunter is the greedy antihero schoolboy who thinks of excuses not to do his homework, steals other boys' food and tries to lie his way out of trouble. One of my earliest memories is lying on my bed reading a Billy Bunter story. A cake has gone missing and all crumbs point to Bunter, who, when confronted, tries to defend himself: "Oh Lor, but I didn't eat the cake when I wasn't in Wharton's study . and anyway it didn't taste very nice."

I'm sure I own Africa's largest Bunter collection, but it would be impossible to save all 187 copies. Maybe I could just take one - but which one? It wouldn't be fair to the others.

I decided the only possession I would take would be my treasured ostrich eggshell. When I was about six I fell in love with the shell in a shop in the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world and I had to have it. I nagged my parents until they caved. My prized possession was placed in a cabinet and every day I took it out and admired it. One day, though, I knocked it over and it fell on the floor, scattering bits of ostrich eggshell everywhere. I howled. My father glued the shattered egg together - piece by piece - like an impossible, jagged, 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Forty-five years later, I still have it and treasure it.

I packed some clothes but the only item I really wanted was the cycling arm-warmer sleeves I had waited to wear for more than a year. I'd ordered them online before the previous winter but only a single sleeve arrived. One sleeve? A mistake surely. No, insisted the owner of the shop. I argued that arm-warmer sleeves are like socks, they come in pairs. After much toing and froing he agreed to send me the other sleeve at a discount, but by the time the sleeve arrived to join its partner, winter was over. The thought of wasting so much time and indignation and never getting to wear the sleeves was too much. I shoved them in the bag. What else? I looked around.

Unfortunately, I couldn't pack the 100kg steel fireplace. We had bought it on a whim soon after we moved into the house 10 years ago and only then discovered how expensive it was to install. For a decade the hulking lump of steel had sat in the corner of the room in judgment of me. It was a constant reminder of the scores of unfinished projects and "great ideas" that had been abandoned. A month ago we finally bit the bullet and had a flue and chimney fitted and the fireplace installed. If the house burnt down, undoubtedly the unused, smug fireplace would be the only thing that would survive. The irony was too much.

The fire was out of control

By now the suburban grapevine was buzzing with talk of evacuation. The wisps of smoke I had seen just a few hours earlier had become a raging inferno. The fire was out of control. Strong winds had fanned flames across the mountain, destroying the Rhodes Memorial tearoom, and had rolled onto the University of Cape Town's campus. Thousands of students were evacuated from residences; another massive disruption for them, after having to deal with ongoing issues around fees and pandemic disruptions.

News also filtered through that the fire had ripped through several of UCT's historical buildings, including the Jagger Reading Room, which forms part of the UCT Libraries' Special Collections. Irreplaceable original material, first-edition books, films, photos and other unique prized and priceless material were destroyed. Ujala Satgoor, the director of UCT Libraries, confirmed that valuable collections were lost, but said shutters prevented the fire from spreading to other areas of the library, including small fireproof rooms underground. Some good news, though centuries of knowledge have been lost to the world forever.

The UCT community is still reeling, and even though the university announced that it has begun mopping up, it does not have any concrete details yet about the rebuilding of the library or any other affected buildings. It will take a long time just to count the cost and assess the damage - and it will take many years before the piles of rubble have been restored.

The razing of Ancient Egypt's Great Library of Alexandria is the symbol for the destruction of places of knowledge, several examples of which have shaken the world in recent times. In 2012, for example, rebels took occupation of Timbuktu, the spiritual capital of Sub-Saharan Africa, and hacked the shrines of Sufi saints and burnt manuscripts that dated back to the 13th century. Some of the manuscripts had been housed in a special climate-controlled facility that SA was instrumental in building in order to preserve this African heritage.

Five years ago, protesting #FeesMustFall students destroyed artworks and rare books as they set laboratories, libraries and buildings alight on campuses across the country.

The physical destruction of libraries is not the only threat to knowledge. There's a more subtle danger, which is caused by governments cutting libraries' budgets and shifting priorities away from research and education. This is the knowledge we will never have.

Cape Town's fire brought out the best and the worst in people (but mostly the best).

The worst included finger-pointers, rumour-mongers and xenophobes, whose misinformation spread like, well, wildfire, as they looked for someone to blame: homeless people, student activists, invasive alien trees and foreign nationals.

There were also those who cheered on the fire and applauded the cleansing of colonialism - and then there were "fire tourists", who prevented emergency vehicles from getting to the blaze, in their burning quest for selfies at Ground Zero.

A homeless person who lives in a makeshift shelter on Table Mountain appeared in court this week on a charge of arson, sparking fears among activists of a backlash against the homeless. Lorenzo Davids, a social development activist, told CapeTalk radio that there are about 100 homeless people living on the slopes of Table Mountain - and accused the City of Cape Town of failing to provide adequate shelter for them.

"Safety drives people to the mountain. They're tired of being harassed, urinated on, assaulted . They sleep on the mountain because they are scared," he said. Earlier this month a group of homeless people represented by housing activist organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi took the city to court, arguing that some of its bylaws criminalise homelessness.

Fortunately, the good outweighed the bad. There was an outpouring of compassion - and not only in the form of "thoughts and prayers" - as communities rallied to tackle the crisis. People mobilised and their response was swift and generous, offering to accommodate students, donating money and dropping off food, energy drinks and eye-drops for firefighters.

Residents placed water bowls in their gardens for animals that might come down the mountain to escape the fire. Restaurants, though hard hit by the pandemic, opened up their doors and hearts to students and firefighters - and the remarkable Gift of the Givers sprang into action and prepared thousands of meals for students. There were so many volunteers who came to make sandwiches that many were turned away. South Africans unite not only in triumph (Rugby World Cup victories or Caster Semenya gold medals), we unite in tragedy too - well, some tragedies.

Then, of course, there were the super heroic efforts of the men and women who put their bodies in the line of fire, spending 10-hour shifts in hellish conditions to douse the flames. Their courage under fire is staggering, and with increasing temperatures and ongoing droughts, they will continue to have their hands full. Mammoth bushfires in Australia at the beginning of last year and catastrophic fires in California have caused untold death and destruction.

A rash of recent fires around SA knocked Covid-19 and the step-aside resolution off the news pages last week. On April 16, two days before the Cape Town fire, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was engulfed in flames. No-one was injured in the blaze that took firefighters more than 12 hours to extinguish. The hospital's 700 patients were transferred to other facilities in Gauteng.

According to health minister Zweli Mkhize, the stock lost due to the blaze was estimated to be worth more than R40m.

While the world's eyes were on Cape Town, another fire was raging at the Marikana informal settlement in Cato Crest, KwaZulu-Natal.

I went to bed on Sunday night, waking up every 30 minutes to check Twitter and to see if the flames had breached our home, which would have seen me tearing out the door in arm-warmer sleeves, clutching an ostrich eggshell. The wind had turned overnight and the fire was charging towards Vredehoek. The fire was contained by Tuesday.

The fire was out but SANParks closed the Rhodes Memorial area to cyclists and walkers, saying there were too many hazards, so Jean du Plessis is waiting patiently to make his 201st climb to the Blockhouse. He has been speaking to men he encounters on his "slow burn solidarity" rides to encourage conversations about gender-based violence - and the role men can play to help bring this scourge to an end.

We need to talk about this

It's an ongoing conversation. The rash of fires should also spark ongoing conversations. We need to talk about the consequences of climate change, and the steps we can take to mitigate it. We need to talk about our heritage and history, and how to make sure we protect and preserve irreplaceable material. We need to talk about vulnerable homeless people - some of whom live on Table Mountain - and how to properly accommodate them.

We need to talk about 38-year-old Nomasamson Dlamini, whose life was lost in the Cato Crest fire, a blaze that turned 50 shacks in the settlement into ashes. Cato Crest residents were woken by Nomasamson's desperate screams. She was burnt beyond recognition. The residents lost everything. They did not have the luxury of packing what little they had in a bag. They also had no place to go for safety and no insurance that will help them rebuild a home. They will have to remake their shacks in the same place but in worse conditions and with even less.

The Cape Town fire is no longer trending, but it would be a shame if we miss out on an opportunity to have conversations, meaningful conversations, that lead to solutions.