Safety tips for Table Mountain

Full marks to Cape Town police for advising those brave or foolish souls how to stay safe if they plan on taking a hike up Signal Hill or Lion’s Head these holidays.

Along with the usual self-evident recommendations (go in a group and tell someone what route you’re taking and what time you expect to be back), the police have also urged hikers to take their phones with them and have the emergency number punched in.

All very well if the muggers do not steal the phone, always a possibility given that cellphones top muggers’ Christmas shopping lists.

Meanwhile, City of Cape Town officials are wringing their hands at the recent spate of attacks, saying it will hurt tourism (it will) as well as hikers and tourists who are sometimes stabbed and occasionally murdered.

Then again, there are places on this hulking slab of granite where people should not go and not only because they could fall, get lost, die of exposure or drown. With its deeply wooded slopes, ravines and caves, the mountain has, ever since that first tourist, Jan van Riebeeck, stepped ashore in his clogs, been a hideout for the mad, bad and dangerous. 

Now add a tik epidemic, leavened with hopelessness and rage, and spread it over a vast and easily accessible mountain where no-one can hear you scream and let it simmer, stirring occasionally.

With the army deployment to the Democratic Republic of Congo winding down, perhaps the government could kill two francolins with one stone and deploy those Congo veterans on Table Mountain. 

Defence experts say you should never use an army for policing because an army’s job is war, not peace. But then, where are the police?