After The Bell: A Swartland Grand Prix? Now isn’t that grand...

Plans for a privately funded Swartland Formula One Grand Prix could boost tourism, investment and jobs, while avoiding the financial and governance risks of government-funded hosting.

Over the last few years I have come to realise that some of the people I most enjoy spending time with are part of a tribe I did not grow up in.

Those are given over to their devotions, communing with the high priests of their chosen group, along with the strange sounds and voices that are both instantly recognisable and entirely unfathomable.

I’ve tried to join them from time to time. To do what they do on a Sunday afternoon.

I must confess, despite my great love for this group of people, I don’t think I will ever be one of them.

I’m not sure what drives their addiction to Formula One, but it is absolutely in their blood. It is something they grew up with, that keeps them going from Sunday to Sunday.

I think my first memory of this sport was back in 1993. Everyone was talking about strange names, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna, the singularly named and clearly exotic Kyalami…

I was, I think, on a scout camp doing something that felt immensely useful to somebody at the time.

Well, members of this tribe might soon have a new weapon with which to convert me.

It was a statement confirming that Neal Froneman’s effort to host a Grand Prix here (I still don’t understand that spelling) is now planning to host Africa’s first Formula One race in the Swartland area of the Western Cape.

I have to say, while I’m sure there were people more informed than I about these things, I did not see the idea of the “Swartland Formula One” coming. But the idea of hosting the thing in the Western Cape has all sorts of appeal.

It’s in the province that is rapidly becoming more and more different from the rest of the country, it’s becoming richer and, as hard as this may be to believe, in some places, safer.

Also, the Western Cape provincial government has been paying the salaries of extra Home Affairs immigration officers, to reduce the queues at Cape Town International Airport for foreign tourists.

I have become much closer to Kyalami since then. Twice I’ve gone around it at less-than-roaring speed on my bicycle.