Dr Wamuwi Mbao: “In NewThingFontein, things are on the up and up”

Every so often, an estate agent is seized by a bolt of what passes for inspiration in that profession. You’ll see them calling themselves Property Experts (beware of vaguely titled sociopaths bearing advice) and telling you with a knowing earnestness about how all the clever people are selling their houses where you happen to be and moving to NewThingFontein.

Oh? You haven’t heard of NewThingFontein? All the best people have recently bought houses there and are at this very moment enjoying unprecedented levels of whatever congeniality is currently missing from your own lifestyle. The pace is just right in NewThingFontein. The audits are clean. All the streets are wide, and you and your family can enjoy the very best in quaint historical architecture and storybook houses sympathetically renovated (while the town was waiting for a new building inspector).

In NewThingFontein, things are on the up and up. The gin distillery with whose product you pickled yourself at the height of the gin craze is still there, making gin for the stalwarts who refuse to hop on the Aperol train. And what’s more, that famous chef is rumoured to be opening their latest restaurant there, with a menu that boasts Karoo-lamb prosciutto and waterblommetjie ice cream. How did you ever live without waterblommetjie ice cream?

Assuming that you work in the digital fashion, living in NewThingFontein will leave you with plenty of time for the new hobbies you’ll acquire. The Property Expert says connectivity is rapidly improving, which means that there is no internet signal in any meaningful sense but that you’ll have plenty of time to watch your homemade biltong do whatever biltong does while you wait for The Internet to appear.

I imagine that the zeal for finding the next untapped real-estate boom town must be somewhat akin to gold-rush fever. If you can forecast the new trend, you can get people to run after it, especially if you convince them that they’re getting in early, before all the property, schools, and waterblommetjie ice cream are spoken for.  It sounds incredibly beguiling, especially when the Property Expert reminds you that you could be lazing on your porch in NewThingFontein instead of raging at the dozy driver ahead as they ignore that critical green turning arrow.

You might imagine, with some justification, that you’re quite content where you are. After all, you know your local potholes like old friends. Even though you have to wake up at the same time as the navy does to get to your local coffee shop before it spills over with cyclists and digital nomads, you might think that you have it pretty good. You probably think that you’re as unlikely to sell up and move to NewThingFontein as you are to take up competitive hobby horsing. But the Property Expert is relying on that nagging feeling you have that, no matter how well things are going, there are better things somewhere else.

It feels like it was only a few hours ago that the Property Experts were extolling the virtues of semigration (beware, too, the awkward buzzword), and how avant-garde and forward-thinking you would be if only you would just pack up and move your life to the Cape. But that’s all passe now, replaced by the hitherto-unknown joys of life in a folksy Landcruiser-and-lambchops town. Even the most ardent cityphile would admit that the long-enduring fantasy of cosmopolitan life has devolved into an endless tedium of queuing and booking and lining up for things.

It’s thus very easy to idolise NewThingFontein and everything it purports to stand for. But it’s a bit like those hapless English pensioners who for years were lured into swapping their grey and cloudy British existence for the allure of Mediterranean splendour on the Costa Blanca. The reality — wonky houses, bleaching heat, and only scraggly goats for company — looks rather a lot like NewThingFontein, at least from where I’m standing.

From the May edition of Wanted, 2025