I had a house in Cape Town...

Yesterday Christian moved out. He was supposed to find a replacement for him in the house, which he tried and thought he succeeded and he was worried about not getting his deposit back, as happened to others in this house before. He asked me to be there, when our landlady came, as support. He was all settled and packed, ready to leave the house. She came and went through the contract with him. Because he didn’t want to loose his deposit, he didn’t pay the rent for September. The deposit he was supposed to get back and the rent would balance each other. He told this to Ray (our landlady) and asked her to check the room, if there is any reason, why he shouldn’t get his deposit back. She agreed with him on the point that he would get his deposit back. Than the whole situation got really weird and pretty much out of hand.

Ray said he hadn’t paid, and therefore needs to give her the money for this month. And because he didn’t find a replacement (the one he thought he had didn’t show up and didn’t want the room, when we called her), she will keep the deposit as well. Christian said he won’t pay any more, because he didn’t owe her anything. He left the room as he received it and he did his best to find a replacement.

Ray hadn’t arrived alone. She brought someone: a fat guy with greasy hair, a shirt with big flowery print and a parrot in his shoulder. She didn’t introduce him, he didn’t say who he was, he came, sat in the kitchen and let his parrot pick his face.

When Christian refused to give Ray money, she turned to him (still didn’t give us a name) and said, well that is why she brought a detective. She called him and showed him the leasing-agreement ant repeated her point over and over again. They both started to go against Christian, who got even more nervous, loud and angry. Somehow I felt like they had a point, Christian should have paid the rent. And maybe he could have tried harder to find a replacement than having an email saying someone wants to secure the place (that someone never contacted Ray). But I did understand Christians position as well. He didn’t do anything wrong, she knew that he was moving out early and he tried his best.

From that point on they didn’t really communicate at all any more. Everyone was talking and trying to make a point. Christian, nervously wandering around the room already all the time started getting his last things together and decided to just leave.

That made Ray and “the detective” come up with jail, Interpol and the German embassy. The said they would call the police, he would be arrested and they would through him into jail. Ray was also going on about how nice the last German tenants used to be and she couldn’t see that coming, and she just wanted to be nice by letting him stay for a shorter period and that he had such a good live here and so on.

Christian actually left the house just like that - Luckily for him the safety-door was open, other ways his departure wouldn’t have been so dramatic.

The whole scene felt like hours. Ray stayed a little longer, to once more explain, how she wants people find replacements and how lucky Christian was to have lived here. When she finally left nearly all my housemates were there. We discussed the situation for a while. Many strange things came up. No one really believed that the fat man with the parrot was a real detective (I asked Christian about that later, he said, he had seen the man and the parrot before, when Ray fetched a fridge from the house). I was pretty scared and worried about Christian, but no one really believed she would actually go after him at all. Gavin, Christians roommate wanted to open a bank account with the leasing contract and couldn’t, because the bank said, the contract wasn’t legally approved. He used to pay the money to a Nedbank account, but had to switch to Capitec, because the Nedbank account was supposedly shut down. Armand (another housemate) still put his rent into that account. They also told me stories about people living in the house without ever signing the contract at all. David (housemate, living downstairs) said, that the whole house runs as a business, but Ray doesn’t pay any taxes for it.

These and a lot of other weird stories came up and all of us are pretty sure, nothing Ray does is legally correct. Which gives me the impression that all landlords here have some skeletons in their closets. My friend Andrea, which I spend Saturday with told me, that her landlord rents out several houses throughout Cape Town, but doesn’t own any of them. He rent them out, collects the rent, but never gives it to the rightful owners. He doesn’t pay the cleaning lady or does anything he says he will do for the house. He pretty much lives a wealthy live with the money he gets from his tenants.

Seems to me there is a lot of criminal energy even in the lending sector here.