Become a friend of bolo'bolo

What we're doing at bolo'bolo is a little out of the ordinary. We're the only 100% vegan restaurant in Cape Town and probably one of the only places in South Africa where you'll find lots of books on anarchism, animal rights, veganism, grassroots environmental activism, queer theory, counterculture, psychedelics and other radical ideas (and for a good price too!)

If you're happy that a space like this exists and would like to help us grow, please consider supporting us.


 It's simple: for a monthly donation of R250 (or more, if you'd like) you can become a friend of bolo'bolo. In return for this donation, we'll give you four meals and four drinks every month. You'll get a 10% discount on any other food and drink you order during the month and we'll also give you 10% off any books you buy. Now and then we'll even throw in some cupcakes and special treats :-)

To become a friend, email us at us [AT] bolobolo [DOT] co [DOT] za and we'll send you further info.

You don't have to even be in Cape Town (or South Africa) to support us - you just have to want us to stick around!

There is such a thing as a free cupcake

On Sunday we gave away our 50th pay-it-forward coffee.

Here's how it works, as explained on the little A6 information stands we put on our tables:

"If you’re feeling generous today, or have a little extra cash and would like to do something good, how about paying for someone else's coffee?

It’s simple: when you settle your bill, just pay us for an extra coffee and we’ll use the money to pay for the next customer’s coffee. Who knows - next time you pop in for a perk-me-up it might already have been paid for :-)

PS: If you’re the lucky recipient of a coffee bought for you by a kind stranger you’re welcome to continue the chain of giving by paying it forward too, but please don’t feel like you have to: it’s not a trade, not an exchange but a gift, plain and simple."

While we were optimistic about our little experiment in gifting, we've been really blown away by the positive response - 50-something coffees bought for strangers in less than a month is quite a lot for our modest space. It's also provided us with a great opportunity to observe the contortions of the capitalist mentality - the logic of exchange, quantification, self-benefiting - that is so deeply ingrained in all of us. Several people have become immediately suspicious when told that their coffee has already been paid for by some random person they don't know. Others try desperately to locate some sort of 'catch' in the system while others still attempt to discover its Achilles heel.

"What about freeloaders?...Won't the locals catch on?...But what about...but...Who is this random person anyway?"

Others have responded to this simple gesture with confusion, surprise or utter amazement, sometimes needing the concept to be explained to them two or three times before they finally accept that their coffee is free as in really, really free, a straightforward gift with absolutely no expectation of reciprocation.

In one case, an overjoyed giftee returned the next day just to drop off money for two pay it forward coffees; in another, a regular customer received a free coffee that had been, quite by chance, paid for by her mother several hours earlier.

Perhaps the most interesting part of all this is that it encourages other more random acts of giving: people being told about their gifted coffee and then tipping outrageously generously, or a first-time visitor insisting that he pay forward two cupcakes. No, not the coffee, thanks, I'd like to give the gift of dark chocolate coffee cupcakes.

Today, however, we got perhaps our first glimpse of real, wholly unsolicited giving. The same customer who had by fluke bought her daughter a coffee popped into bolo'bolo with a freshly-baked batch of absolutely gorgeous orange and cherry 'muffcakes' (a cupcake muffin hybrid, we were advised) that were ours to do with as we pleased. While the temptation to scoff them all ourselves was great (we were obliged to sample one or two, of course!) and we were advised that we were welcome to sell them if we so desired, it seemed clear that the only possible course of action was to give them away.

And so the next dozen or so people to visit bolo'bolo today received really, really free orange cherry muffcakes, courtesy of someone they'd probably never met. Their day was brightened, their taste buds were treated and the selfish, nothing-is-for-nothing logic of capitalism was challenged, even if just momentarily, in some small way.

How do we cultivate this? How do we make the idea spread, or resonate with other acts of defiant generosity? How do we begin to live towards a world based on mutual aid and solidarity, where gifting is commonplace and where real communities are held together and strengthened by countless - and uncounted - small, everyday acts of genuine sharing, performed without any expectation of reciprocation or reward? We'd like to start asking these kinds of questions, and experimenting with answers. We hope you'll join us.

If we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

- Howard Zinn