In Cape Town’s Long Street, Lin Sampson meets delectable African boys who lay honey traps for streetwise women from Europe — or is it the other way round?.
They walk down the road, startling in their beauty, pink suit in shot silk, polished hair streaked with henna, the crackle of crocodile-skin shoes, liquorice- coloured lips, skinny vests — a posse of young black men on the town, wrapped in a shield of alpha-male ego.
They know what they want and, luckily for them, there’s a lot available.
Long Street, club land of Cape Town, awaits them, and with it a shine of foreign girls — many from the cold northern countries — with hair the colour of sauce Béarnaise.
This night — the hottest, apparently, in living memory — the street tumbles with single women of all ages, sizes and nationalities. They are nice girls from good homes, many from Scandinavia and Germany; girls who were confirmed in the Lutheran church, who have strict moral codes.
This is about the most exotic place they have encountered in their lives. It is a long, long way from Stockholm.
Some of the women are what is known as mature; many as old as 60. These women are on romance holidays, and this summer Cape Town was the hot destination.
The new Latin lover is a black African.
Prince Gilbert is a smooth-talking Cameroonian, sleekly sexy and a member of his country’s royal family. He now lives in Oslo but witnessed the Cape Town scene when he lived in the city. He says it’s tough on the guys.
“You meet quite a few girls. A young, handsome African like me feels a bit like a meat market, almost like an abuse. You have to think what you want, if you just want to have fun or whether you are really wanting to settle down. People are so horny in Cape Town. I have never seen a place where everyone is so horny,” says Gilbert.
Malick, on the other hand, says he is only looking for love. He is a sweet- faced man, lightly perfumed with something spicy. His father comes from Morocco, his mother from the Congo, and he was brought up in Kinshasa. He lives in a small apartment which he shares with others, and spends his nights in Long Street.
He has tried various entrepreneurial activities; many, it seems, failed. Surviving is a treacherous affair, tricky and often demented, but he lives life with hope and patience and good manners. His English is fractured and our conversation has a strange on-and-off quality, like a faulty electrical device, because we stop frequently for clarification.
Are these girls looking for sex? I ask Malick.
“He can’t tell you he wants sex.”
Do you mean “she”?
“Yes, she, but you can see yourself when you talk with him.”
Do you mean her? “Yes, her.
“I meet lots of girls here. I meet one from Germany. I meet another from Sweden, England, France.”
Why do they come here?
“It is the white man. How do you say? The white man is not being sexy, you can say. Black men very strong, every time they are going on.”
And do you take money? “No, no, this is for love.” Malick looks affronted and puts his hand on his heart.
“It is my dream to marry a white girl; that is what I am dreaming of all the time.”
Like Malick, Eddie, an old Long Street hand much loved by women, says he would never have sex for money. “Never, never.” He reclines in his black-and-orange floral shortie pyjama suit, much in vogue here. “But sometimes you have some financial problems and the woman can help you out, like in any normal love affair or marriage.”
When I say, But you are very sexy, Eddie, he agrees calmly: “Yes, I know.”
Later in the evening we see his black-and-orange pyjama-style outfit, his familiar swagger, batting his way down the street with a pretty blonde girl on his arm.
Biya (not his real name), another Cameroonian and habitué of Long Street, has been dating foreign girls for many years. He is as polished and lacquered as a geisha. His aim is twofold: self-preservation and self-presentation.
His voice sounds like water trickling over ice cubes.
“There are many, many women who are coming here. My friends, they like the blondes. The white skin. It does not matter the girl. It is the skin. They do not care if they are big or small, big fat girls, they do not care about the face. They want the blonde.
“What happens is that in the beginning they [the girls] don’t take it so serious, but they end up by falling in love. Some of them fall pregnant, then the whole thing becomes something else. Most of them who come have boyfriends. They leave their boyfriends behind. You say, ‘So, what are you doing?’ They say pleasure-doing. They end up by going back and dumping their boyfriends and coming back.
“Then these girls get up by getting stuck?” says Biya, pointing to his head.
“Stuck in Africa. Once you have black man, you don’t want other man.”
According to Biya many of these girls are experienced.
“They know what they want. First thing they look at your face and they imagine about size of penis. They are always in group. They sit among them and gossip about size of penis from the way you look. That is how they go for you. There are certain people who they know they have nothing and they don’t worry about them. I was so shocked when some girl greeted me and started folding my hand like this [he makes a fist]. I say, ‘What you looking for?’ She says she looking for size of penis from my hand,” he explains.
Biya says the common age group is between 23 and 50. Money is not initially discussed — that is something that comes afterwards. “With a man,” says Biya, “things are very different. Money is discussed immediately.”
The magicians of these holiday romances are the tour guides.
They are not efficient, blazored men with clipboards who know the history of Long Street, but exotic freelancers with the gift of the gab, dressed in something loudly African. Many of them have contact with the concierges of hotels who use them as taxi drivers or guides.
read the full story on the Sunday Times website here…
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On Saturday, 23 March, I was blessed to attend the stage production of Shirley, Goodness and Mercy by my friend and author Chris van Wyk. Acclaimed director Janice Honeyman adapted and directed the play. There was some tension in the air as most of the people audience was made up of people from Riverlea, a Coloured township south-west of Johannesburg. And since this play is a memoir, set in Riverlea, its very, very personal matter to most people attending.
There is something unique about this book but what it is I cannot say. It reminds me of of 
Write to us: Is Cape Town becoming a sex tourism destination? 
So the question remains…how do I make a significant contribution to the development of the Internet, to be listed on such a list? Maybe a 50 Most Important People on the Internet in South Africa is order. Let me know who you think should be on such a list.
