By Farieda Khan
Cape Town - Simon’s Town is popular with affluent “swallows” – European visitors who spend several months in South Africa, escaping the northern winter.
Most visitors know Simon’s Town as a charming coastal village named after the 10th governor of the Cape Colony, Simon van der Stel, which has much of its quaint Victorian (and earlier) architectural heritage still intact. The village also boasts a proud naval history dating back to the second British occupation in 1806, when it became a royal naval base, to its present role as host to the only full naval base in South Africa.
But Simon’s Town’s history and heritage is far more diverse than this, and family names such as Kindo, Ncosana and Amlay, long associated with the town, hint at a hidden history far more multi-faceted than that presented by its picturesque tourist façade.
Heritage month is an opportune time to engage with some of the complexities of Simon’s Town’s cultural heritage. It can trace its growth as a modern town back to the completion of the infrastructure for the royal naval base in 1814, which gave the small settlement of sailors, slaves, fishermen, whalers and traders its impetus to develop.
Attracted by business opportunities and the possibility of employment, a cosmopolitan wave of immigrants from a number of countries, including Britain and India, arrived in Simon’s Town, as well as contract workers from West Africa, Muslim sailors from Zanzibar and artisans from St Helena and Tristan da Cunha.
Many of these new arrivals stayed, becoming integrated with the local community from whose ranks the growing town’s labourers, domestic workers, washerwomen and skilled workers were drawn.
They settled throughout the town, as well as in Red Hill, a small, semi-rural settlement of a few hundred people in the mountains near the town.
In the late 19th century, Xhosa speakers from the Eastern Cape were recruited to work on the extension of the railway from Kalk Bay to Simon’s Town. Many remained after its completion, recruited to work in the dockyard.
Since no formal housing was provided, they built dwellings in what became Luyolo location, on terraces cut into the mountain at the northern end of the town.
The population of Simon’s Town in the first half of the 20th century was diverse, and while at first glance it may have seemed remarkably racially integrated and harmonious, the town was in reality a microcosm of the social and racial divisions typical of Cape Town at that period.
While those classified “coloured”, “Indian” and “Cape Malay” lived in the heart of the town prior to apartheid, and the colour bar could often be crossed due to the many families with close relatives across the colour line, racially discriminatory legislation and custom dictated that those not classified “white” occupied a different world to that of their neighbours.
This part of Simon’s Town’s population lived only in small enclaves in a few specific areas in the town, their children went to separate and inferior schools, they were allowed to work only in menial, poorly paid jobs, and in cinemas and certain churches they had to sit in separate, defined areas.
The difference in the position of those classified “African” and the rest of Simon’s Town’s black residents was even greater, as emphasised by the separation of Luyolo location from the town.
Nevertheless, despite the cultural separatism, the mere residential proximity of the various race groups to each other, the cordiality which existed in many “mixed” neighbourhoods and the easy familiarity forged in working relationships in the intimacy of a small town, were enough to offend the apartheid planners.
The axe fell first on Luyolo in 1965, when more than 1 500 residents were forcibly removed to Gugulethu in terms of legislation aimed at curtailing the right of Africans to permanent settlement in urban areas. On September 1, 1967, Simon’s Town was not only declared a “white group area”, but since no provision was made for the accommodation of racially separate areas for anyone else within the town’s municipal boundaries, it meant expulsion.
Those classified Indian were expected to move to Rylands on the Cape Flats, while those classified “coloured” either had to move to the distant Cape Flats or to the newly-declared Slangkop Township (later renamed Ocean View), over the mountains and several kilometres from Fish Hoek, where the nearest transport was located.
At the stroke of a bureaucratic pen, thousands (more than half of Simon’s Town’s then population) were forced to move from the homes many had occupied for generations.
Much has been written about the disastrous economic consequences for Simon’s Town’s black communities – the loss of homes, the burden of transport costs and time spent travelling from the Cape Flats and Ocean View to work, schools, churches and mosques in their former home town. Much has also been written about the psychological costs and emotional trauma endured by families when they lost all that was familiar and dear to them, and had to start life over among strangers in places that lacked the scenic beauty, cultural heritage and public amenities and infrastructure that Simon’s Town possessed.
The cultural impact and loss of heritage are elements that have, however, received less attention.
Many of the historic homes occupied around the Noorul Islam mosque in Simon’s Town, some dating back to the 18th century, fell into disrepair after the forced removals, and were demolished in the 1970s, severely depleting the town’s architectural heritage.
The community’s schools and churches eventually stood empty, with many being demolished or converted to other uses. The mosques remained, but largely bereft of worshippers.
The crowds of families doing their grocery shopping in the main road have been replaced by souvenir-hunting tourists and daytrippers en route to see the penguins. The trek fishermen, who had plied their trade from the beaches of Simon’s Town and Glencairn, have disappeared.
Red Hill today is little more than a cluster of stone ruins, wondered at by passing hikers, while Luyolo has fared worst of all, with all traces of this once vibrant community gone.
The former residents of Simon’s Town, Luyolo and Red Hill, with their diverse faiths, languages and traditions, had left Simon’s Town impoverished by their enforced departure. By the mid-1970s, Simon’s Town had become the culturally homogenous town envisaged by apartheid’s social engineers.
There have been several initiatives aimed at presenting a more inclusive picture of Simon’s Town’s history and heritage. The Simon’s Town Museum’s collection exhibits the cultural history dating back to the pre-colonial era and tells the story of the devastating effects the forced removals had.
In 1996, the museum (under the curatorship of Cherry Dilley) started Project Phoenix which, with a committee of former residents, aimed to recapture and record the history and heritage of those dispossessed.
The artist Peter Clarke recalls that former residents had been motivated to become part of Project Phoenix by a feeling that they had no voice, no presence in the museum, and that the existence of those who had been forcibly removed needed to be acknowledged.
Heritage Day is normally the culmination of Project Phoenix’s efforts, with a programme aimed at remembering the past and paying tribute to the enormous cultural contribution of its former residents, such as Clarke and the poet and writer Gladys Thomas (both now resident in Ocean View), among many others, less well known.
The Heritage Museum was established in 1998 in Amlay House, the home of former councillor DA Amlay. It was Amlay’s daughter, Zainab Davidson, who decided to establish the museum after her return to her family home in 1995. Paying tribute to the strong support and assistance the Heritage Museum received from Cherry Dilley, and continues to receive from the current curator of the Simon’s Town Museum, Cathy Salter-Jansen, Davidson notes that the two museums should be seen as a whole, presenting the full story of the people of Simon’s Town.
There is a moving tribute in the form of a memorial in Jubilee Square erected by Simon’s Town residents in the wake of the forced removals: “In memory of the generations of fellow citizens who dwelt here in peace and harmony until removed by edict.”
The best tribute to the resilience of former residents lies in their refusal to let their history be forgotten, and in their initiatives to commemorate their heritage.
Heritage guardians are working hard to preserve the stories of families such as the Amlays, Kindos and Ncosanas. But the fate of this community’s history and heritage is in the hands of the next generation.
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Dr Khan is an independent social and environmental historian with an interest in heritage matters. - Sunday Argus