FREE
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
A PROJECT OF THE CAPE TOWN PARTNERSHIP Molo | Hello | Goeiedag
What’s your most treasured possession? We asked, you answered. PAGE 12
Map: Sea Point in colour Discover the delights of Main Road. PAGE 3
How then do we make a city ...? You start with your own two hands.
Photo: Lisa Burnell
Njabulo Ndebele
The heart of Cape Town in
50 OBJECTS What’s your Cape Town object?
The secret lives of everyday artefacts
PAGE 9
PAGE 3
Lost and found In search of the city’s missing icons and found objects. PAGE 10 & 11
www.capetownpartnership.co.za
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MOLO NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
Molo. Hello. Goeiedag. Molo is a free community paper, focused on the people of Cape Town, and published by the Cape Town Partnership. Created by: Alma Viviers, Ambre Nicolson, Judith Browne, Lesley Hay-Whitton, Lisa Burnell, Sam Bainbridge Designed by: Infestation T: 021 461 8601 www.infestation.co.za Published by: Cape Town Partnership 34 Bree Street T: 021 419 1881
How can I be a part of Molo? We are always on the look-out for compelling stories told by ordinary residents of Cape Town. If you or someone you know has an interesting story to tell, mail us at molo@capetownpartnership.co.za (no press releases, please). Every month, we’ll be continuing the conversations we start in the print edition of Molo online: Join us at www.capetownpartnership.co.za for more stories, more profiles and more citizen perspectives on this place we call home.
Where can I get the most recent edition of Molo? Molo is a bimonthly print publication, available in the January, March, May, July, September and November of every year (starting in September 2013). In the months it is not on street, it is supplemented by stories online. If you or your organisation would like to receive or distribute the print publication, please mail us at molo@capetownpartnership.co.za, including your postal address and the number of copies you’d like to receive.
Contact the creators of Molo:
@CTPartnership #Molo
Handmade cities
diverse as the people who live in them
Photo: Lisa Burnell
WELCOME
When I first heard about the theme for this next edition of Molo – the many stories of Cape Town, told through just 50 objects – I began thinking about the everyday items in our lives and the stories they could tell about us, if someone thought to listen. The objects we collect, or preserve, or protect. Those we’d rather lose, or the ones we search for every day.
Y
ou see, I’m a collector of sorts. I collect dolls. And not just any dolls, but ones from my travels that, for me, typify the places I’ve been. I’m very choosy about these dolls. They’re often handmade by ordinary people, in materials typical to that part of the world – like one from Bermuda made out of banana leaves, or a flying angel from the Philippines made out of small strips of string. Or the Himba doll from Namibia, rubbed red with ochre. I find them so interesting because they also say something about the way the people who made them see themselves and the way they want to be seen. Some are standing. Some are working.
When you see them in my house, it’s like a United Nations – an extraordinary diversity of human culture. Seeing that variety of human experience makes me humble. It reminds me of the folly of the imperial project, to think you can impose a single vision of life on peoples around the world. We all make up a human tapestry, and for me, these many different dolls made by many different hands affirm that there is no single human reality. There is a kind of comfort in knowing my collection can never be complete. I was asked recently if there was one doll that represented the people or the city of Cape Town. There isn’t yet, at least
not in my collection. Which begs an interesting question. I’d be interested to know if the readers of Molo have a doll they think could represent Cape Town. If you had to make one, what would it look like, and what would it be made of? How would you want to be seen? In imagining the many dolls that might make up the United Nations of Cape Town, I find myself wondering about the life we make for ourselves every single day. And how those individual days make up a day in the life of the city. And with people, so it is with cities: many days make many years, and many years soon make up a life. How then do we make a city,
or make the life of a city? It’s not dissimilar to making a doll, or a tapestry, or a meal. You start with your own two hands. You begin where you are, with what you’ve got. For me, that’s how you make a life. That’s how you make the future. The question is: What do we want it to look like? How do we want to be seen?
Njabulo Ndebele Professor Njabulo Ndebele is a respected South African writer and academic and the chairperson of the Cape Town Partnership board
CAPE TOWN PARTNERSHIP OBJECT
Email: molo@capetownpartnership.co.za Tel: 021 419 1881 www.facebook.com/molocapetown
Cape Town Partnership vision Some say cities are the future We say people are the future This is our home This is our hope This is our chance
Believing
there is more that connects us than divides us
Speaking
the language of hope
Working
together for the common good
Building
from the ground up
Sharing
the spaces in between We can plant our tomorrows shape our future, heal ourselves We can make our city warm, open, welcoming, rich in opportunities for all
Cape Town A city with a past. A people with a future
Photo: Lisa Burnell
Molo, Cape Town Partnership, 10th Floor, 34 Bree Street, The Terraces, 8001
can a PAINTING Say
a THOUSAND WORDS? Text: Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana
This idea that objects have lives, and tell you stories, was interesting not just in terms of pulling together this edition of Molo, but also in the context of how we think about our own organisation: What one object best represents the Cape Town Partnership (the organisation that produces and publishes Molo), its history and its journey?
Shoes were suggested (given how important “walking the talk” is to staff as well as the importance of an effective public mobility system for the Table Bay district – the space our mandate covers) as was the veggie garden growing out on our balcony. While these items ground us on the street and in the earth, they didn’t seem to speak
enough about our past, and how we’ve changed as an organisation, shifting our focus through the years on what will make Cape Town a vibrant and liveable African city. Instead, we chose the largeformat Jackson Nkumanda artwork, commissioned by the organisation in 2005 and displayed in our reception area at 34 Bree Street. Why? It reflects projects we’ve been involved in – from ensuring that the basic systems of urban management are in place (establishing and working closely with the Central City Improvement District) and facilitating development and investment in the CBD, to looking at the activation of public space and the interconnection of transport corridors. It considers the city’s diversity of users: You can see CCID trash trucks, informal traders on the station deck, children playing in the Company’s Garden. Trains, taxis and tourist buses.
The Castle, the CTICC, the Signal Hill kramat and the quaggas on Devil’s Peak. It sets the scene for a vivacious city that has, at its core, people as the focus. Anchoring it all is a sign, “Cape Town: a place for all” because it is only once we consider the needs of all the people of Cape Town that we can call ourselves a truly liveable African city. Coded into the artwork itself is a language we hope permeates through all our work: Jackson’s 3D artwork is handmade out of found objects – crushed sand, brick, rubber, stones, tin and cardboard – suggesting a local aesthetic, but also a much more sustainable way of doing things: using what you’ve got. This artwork has greeted many visitors that have walked through our doors in the last eight years. If it could talk, it would probably tell a story of the people and conversations it has seen and heard.
in SHorT
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CoLumn HedLeY TWidLe
THE LIVES OF OBJECTS
“J
ews are to history,” Philip Roth once wrote, “what Eskimos are to snow.” I have often thought that the remark could just as well apply to South Africans. Ours is a country of epic struggles over land, of major political fault lines, oppression and struggle. It comes to us in iconic images, familiar shapes and famous moments. And the weight of this kind of history is so strong that many of the students at the university where I teach have a real reluctance to hear about it again. “Yes, yes, we know all about that,” they say as soon as the word “apartheid” is mentioned. They tell me that it has been done to death in school, that we should change the conversation, that our traumatic past is, well … past. It is at this point of history fatigue, I think, that the lives of objects can be so important, and so intriguing. Tracing the biogra-
phies of ordinary things rather than great men may allow us to tell the past differently – with a sense of texture and imaginative purchase. “No ideas but in things,” wrote the poet William Carlos Williams. Stories, like objects, have contours and patterns. And certain objects might allow us to tell stories that are shaped more irregularly, that are more interestingly patterned, than the vast, overarching narratives that we are often saddled with: whether of truth and reconciliation or of economic growth and development. Grand sociohistorical sagas like these generally require some kind of steady
progress and end point; but objects resist that kind of “closure” – as a psychologist might say. They just keep on being things, in all their thingness. They are stubborn like that – skittish, uncontrollable and unpredictable in the way they navigate through time. The makers of this edition have adopted a suitably creative and fluid idea of what an object might be. There are edible things that don’t hang around for long – the samoosa; our Cape variation on the koeksister; the extraordinary foodstuff that is the Gatsby. There are noisy things, like the Noon Gun or the minibus taxis, startling to the newcomer but soon working their way into the texture of daily life. Then there are more abstract things: the messaging service Mxit; the Cape Dutch gable that migrates from building to building, trying to project a façade of rural calm, but also carrying with it
objects resist that kind of ‘closure’ ... They just keep on being things, in all their thingness.
a dissonant counter-history of slavery – it was, after all, artisans from south Asia who brought with them the skills to invent this quintessentially Cape tradition. Then there are the lost and vanished things: objects that still exist in the mind and haunt the memory, even when they are physically extinct. The heart of Denise Darvall, which lived for only a short while when transplanted into another body by Dr Chris Barnard. On the slopes just above that hospital, zoologists once tried to breed the quagga antelope back into existence. And, from still a bit higher up on Devil’s Peak, thousands of people watched the Athlone cooling towers come down: two massive landmarks that vanished in a second, so quick that half of us missed it. And, finally, the vanished Khoi words that still linger in
the geography of our city, the linguistic artefacts left in the cavesite of our mouths, as the poet Jeremy Cronin once imagined it, by thousands upon thousands of years of the human presence: Hoerikwaggo, Camissa. Hedley Twidle is a writer, teacher and academic based at the university of Cape Town. at the moment he is teaching and thinking about life-writing, essays and literary non-fiction in africa. More of his work can be found at www.seapointcontact. wordpress.com.
3 TANGA FRISBEE, R80
dooby Scoo, 20 regent rd
SEa POinT in COlOUR
HAZEL WIENBURG: “The store has been owned by alan watson for 17 years. i work here part time and it’s a fun place to work because coming in here makes people happy. i love living in Sea point; after 25 years living in the northern suburbs i love that i can walk everywhere and enjoy my view of the sea.”
Sea Point is one of Cape Town’s most cosmopolitan neighbourhoods. It’s the kind of place where on any given day you can hear accents from Umtata, Berlin or Kinshasa, taste the flavours of bagels, curry or dim sum and see locals, immigrants and tourists all enjoying the delights of Main Road.
denise’s delights, 12 regent rd MAISY MZONKE: “Denise’s has been here for 23 years. people come here for our cakes and for our cupcakes especially. over the years we have had some strange requests for cakes, some of them are very rude … i’ll leave them to your imagination but let’s just say they were anatomical!”
4 booK, r50 caFda, 18 regent rd
3
reGent
4
Texies, 196 Main rd ROCHELLE STEMMET: “This shop has been here for 19 years, i have worked here for 10. Yes, you see some crazy things here. Just the other day i saw rod Stewart, ja, you don’t believe me but i swear rod Stewart is living in Sea point these days. he’s a nice guy.” r’s rd arthu
2
d hns r st Jo
ANGELA MEYER: “CafDa has been going since 1945 and this store has been here for at least 20 years. in this shop we have a special group of regulars, especially some of the older people in the area, they come here every day and many of them say they don’t know what they would do without us.”
Compiled by ambre Nicolson
1
5 GranadiLLa HoT MiLK SPonGe, r85
7 cHiPS WiTH vineGar and SaLT FroM TeXieS, r17.50
8 7
main
6
5
reGent
STEPHEN PAUL: “for 20 years we have sold all sorts of items related to Jewish life, not just religious stuff but also just cultural items and artefacts. and we don’t just sell to Jewish people, we have lots of gentile folk who come in here. i would say the thing we sell the most of is our tallits, the fabric shawl that Jewish men wear to Shul.”
Church rd
Judaica gift shop, 72 regent rd
Clarens rd
1 car MeZUZaH, r75
of KLo
2 PeTUniaS, r24 Sea Point nursery, 56 regent rd NEIL LOURENS: “we get all sorts of people at this nursery, locals, foreigners, and we have regulars who always come back. i like Sea point because it feels like a community, although i don’t live here myself. The one thing i could do without is people asking for artificial flowers – you won’t find any of them here.”
6 dreSS, r150 informal trader, near abSa bank building on Main rd HERMANN KETCHOAU: “This dress comes from india but i come from Cameroon. i was trained as an accountant but i couldn’t get my qualifications validated here in South africa so now i work here as an informal trader. i came here for a better life but it’s hard here because there is so much gangersterism – just yesterday i had all my documents stolen, now i might have to travel back to my country.”
8 cHineSe LanTern, r50 Wellsave r5 shop, 182 Main rd ROBERT CHEN: “This lantern is lucky because it’s red, a lucky colour for Chinese. it also represents peace. i have lived here in Sea point for quite a couple of years although originally i come from fujian in China.”
MOLO NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
Compiled by: judith browne, ambre Nicolson & alma Viviers Photos by: lisa burnell
50
CaPE TOWn in
OBJECTS 01
afriCa
Love it or hate it, Brett Murray’s “africa” remains a talking point 15 years since its installation on St George’s Mall. Brett won the commission put out by public competition in 1998 but it nearly did not happen because of objections by the city council. Today he reflects on the iconic piece: “i am delighted that the work now seems to have been accepted favourably, and has been embraced by locals and travellers alike. every time i walk past the sculpture there are tourists taking pics, climbing all over his work. i love this. it remains quite a playful and irreverent sculpture with a serious undertone, which questions the relationship between western and african cultural paradigms.”
n Find “africa” at the intersection of St George’s Mall and the Fan Walk
03
Goema drUm
02
KoESISTER “You know it’s a tradition in our culture – Sundays mean koesisters. i learnt how to make koesisters from my mom, the traditional kind with five spices and naartjie peel in them. She used to make them daily to sell and as she got older i took over from her. That was more than 10 years ago. now it’s me who makes them every Sunday and i think i will always be doing it. people wouldn’t let me stop now; the regulars arrive at all hours looking for their koesisters. even if i say there are none left they say, ‘But please, Soraya, don’t you have just two?’ But i don’t mind. i grew up in District Six, and now that i live in woodstock it feels a bit like you are part of it again, you know? i start on fridays already, and i make 3–4kg each Sunday, so at least 800 koesisters. now my daughter helps me too; in fact it is a whole family affair, we mix the dough and fry it in batches together.” - Soraya essop
“if you take a pinch of Khoisan lament, a dash of Malay spice, a bold measure of european orchestral, a splash of Xhosa spiritual, a clash of marching bands, a riff of rock, the pizzazz of the Klopse, some driving primal beat, and a lot of humour and musical virtuosity, what do you get? Goema Goema Goema!” This is how the documentary film Mama Goema: The Cape Town Beat in Five Movements describes the sound of Cape Town. although goema is as much an attitude as it is a genre, at its heart lies the beat of the hand-held goema drum, which originated in Khoisan culture and today is often associated with the Kaapse Klopse.
Photo: iZiKo museums of south afriCa soCiaL history, soCiaL history CoLLeCtions
4
n Find Soraya essop’s famous koesisters at 10 Walmer Street in Woodstock on Sundays between 07h00-09h00
04 THE WIND 07 AJAx WHO: ajax Cape Town, the “Urban warriors” WHAT: Cape Town’s best-known football club WHEN: formed in 1998 when two local clubs, Seven Stars and the Cape Town Spurs, merged, under the parent club of ajax amsterdam WHERE: watch them at the Cape Town Stadium DID YOU KNOW? The ajax player who scored the highest number of goals in a single season is Mabhuti Khenyeza who scored 23 goals in 2008/09 n Learn more about upcoming match fixtures at www.ajaxct.com
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buCHu Buchu is found only in the Cape floral Kingdom, the smallest, and richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms. (The second most diverse, the rainforests of the amazon, has 400 unique species per 10 000km2, contrasted with 1 300 species per 10 000km2 of Cape fynbos.) Buchu has been used since ancient times: the San prized it as a medicine, deodorant and insect repellent, while these days it is most often drunk as a tea. however you consume it, its health properties include anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal benefits. happily, with a flavour reminiscent of blackcurrants and mint, it also tastes good.
05
The Sudan has its haboob, northern California its Diablo and in Cape Town we have the Cape Doctor. The southeaster, which arrives in early spring and often stays for summer, has long had the reputation of purifying the air of the city and blowing away “pestilence”. while it can be a hazard for unprepared pedestrians, it also fulfils an important ecological role, aerating the water of lagoons and river mouths and ensuring the condensation that feeds the fynbos on our mountain slopes.
GoLDEn’S FLoWERS Golden Sonwabo is a soft-spoken man with a shy smile beneath his moustache. he arrived in Cape Town in the early 1990s, where, despite his best efforts, he could not find work. it was only after he had had the same dream – of finding flowers at a rubbish dump – three times that he acted on what he believes was a message from God. Using tin cans, Golden started to create flowers from this waste material. first daisies, then roses and later lilies too. Today Golden has a thriving workshop in Khayelitsha where his children help him in painting the flowers. people come from all over the world to see an example of how an environmental problem can be turned into art, through ingenuity.
FeaTUre
08
GATSbY So just how did Cape Town’s signature fast food, the Gatsby, get its name? according to rashaad pandy, owner of Super fisheries fish shop and self-professed inventor of the foot-long chips-and-everythingelse sandwich: “i came up with it when i didn’t have anything else to give some workers who were helping me clear a piece of property. Using what i had, i combined a portuguese loaf with chips, polony and atchar. when froggie, one of the workers, tasted it, the first thing he said was, ‘hey, larney, that’s a Gatsby smash!’ at the time the film was showing across the street.”
n Find Super fisheries at 63 old Klipfontein road, athlone.
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09 mxIT
WESTERn LEoPARD ToAD
750
for just a couple of nights around august each year, Cape Town’s most famous amphibian, the western Leopard Toad, goes looking for love. at this time, thousands of toads, palm-sized and beautifully marked, converge on breeding ponds, where (according to www.leopardtoad.co.za) “the males snore and fight for the females. The females lay their eggs and depart, migrating back to their gardens. The exhausted males follow later when no more females arrive at the pools.” none of which would be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the toads have to cross roads and highways to get there. To avoid the carnage that would otherwise ensue, Capetonians have formed themselves into volunteer toad groups, which man the roads, control traffic and rescue toads.
*Mxit was in fact created in Stellenbosch, but as africa’s largest free online chat platform, with almost 50 million users, we figured it deserved a mention.
MilliOn* The total number of messages sent each day using Mxit (written on Post-it notes, they would stretch around the earth).
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For just a couple of nights around august each year, Cape Town’s most famous amphibian, the western leopard Toad, goes looking for love.
CAbLE CAR TICKET
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GAY FLAG oF SouTH AFRICA
Launched in Cape Town in December 2010 and designed by eugene Brockman and henry Bantjes, the gay flag of South africa is a symbol of freedom, diversity and pride. Skye Grove, a member of the local LGBTi community, explains; “here, as in the rest of South africa, people who identify as ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ still face extraordinary challenges: corrective rape and other forms of gender-based violence are very real. even within the LGBTi community, there are still divides to be bridged. what the flag does is hopefully point to a time when the diversity of people who make up this place, whoever they are and whatever life they choose, feel welcomed and recognised and safe, to be who they are, without fear.”
n discover more about the volunteer group in your area by calling the Western Leopard Toad hotline on 082 516 3602 and visit www.leopardtoad.co.za to find out what to do if you come across one of these endangered toads in your home or garden.
5
when the cableway was built in 1929, 200 people attended the opening event. By 2011 the cable cars had conveyed more than 21 million visitors to the top of Table Mountain, a figure that has increased dramatically since Table Mountain was recognised as one of the new 7 wonders of nature in 2012.
n Take advantage of the Sunset Special when all return tickets are half price from 18h00. The special runs from 1 november to 20 december 2013, and from 6 January until 28 February 2014.
12 SHACK PAInTInG Zakhile athumani spends two days making the small paint and tin bas-relief of shacks, in the style of Jackson nkumanda, with a painted silhouette of Table Mountain in the background. he sells it on Greenmarket Square for r600, mostly to foreigners, “people from Germany, Switzerland, america, everywhere”. Zakhile came to Cape Town eight years ago from Tanzania to “make a life” and, when i ask him if he thinks the painting shows Cape Town as it really is, he cheerfully assures me, “Yes, here is the mountain, here is the sea, here are the people. See, Cape Town.”
Bashew’s, Cape Town’s beloved cool drink brand, was started in 1889 by two brothers who delivered their drinks by horse cart. while their early success was with their ginger beer flavour, Bashew’s was soon producing seven cool drink flavours. factory manager abdul omar remembers the ginger beer from his own childhood, and wants to help preserve the memories of Bashew’s in Cape Town. “everybody’s got a story about Bashew’s, and a favourite memory. whether it’s a happy occasion or a sad one, Bashew’s was always there. we’re inviting people to write to us at admin@bashews. co.za with their stories.”
everybody’s got a story about bashew’s, and a favourite memory. whether it’s a happy occasion or a sad one, bashew’s was always there. abdul oMaR
Photo: suPPLied
15 bASHEW’S
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THE oLDEST VInE in 1785, the owner of a townhouse on heritage Square in Cape Town noted in his journal that he had drunk wine “under the grape tree”. This Crouchen Blanc vine, thought to have been planted in 1771, still exists today, making it the oldest grapevine in the southern hemisphere. Thanks to the attentions of winemakers Jean Vincent ridon and Kyle anthony Zulch, the vine is also still producing enough grapes for about 20 litres of wine per year. “Today the vine produces the grapes for our special 1771 heritage wine,” confirms Jean Vincent, owner of urban boutique winery Signal hill wines.
n visit Signal Hill Wines at 100 Shortmarket Street for wine tastings and sales.
one of Cape Town’s postal stones with the following dutch inscription: “Paul Steur Sommer / P.S ueIS dIC / N 1614 deN 20 NoV”
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iZiKo museums of south afriCa, Carina Beyer
PoSTAL STonE
it’s human nature to want to “make your mark” on the world, to let others know that you were here and that your life meant something. engraved bones found at Blombos or present-day graffiti; we’re all trying to etch out a living. So too with postal stones, found where the Golden acre stands today, and used as early as 1527 (some 26 years after the first letter was “posted” in South africa – slipped inside a shoe and hung in a milkwood tree near Mossel Bay). These stones were engraved with the names of ships, officers or dates, and some were used to weigh down letters until another ship came to shore. They can be found in the iziko Social history Collections (at the Slave Lodge).
Sources: www.ancestry24.com and www.francofrescura.co.za
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17
Bicycle
Recorded in the winter of 1974 by the artist then known as Dollar Brand, now Abdullah Ibrahim, together with Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Monty Weber and Morris Goldberg, “Mannenberg” helped define a new Cape Town sound and became the city’s unofficial anti-apartheid anthem –almost 10 years after the destruction of District Six and forced removals to “new suburbs”, of which Mannenburg was one. The original song title, “Mrs Williams from Manenberg,” was inspired by Abdullah Ibrahim’s vision, which he had while playing the song, of an elderly woman walking down the street of one of South Africa’s townships, and Morris Goldberg’s visit to his family’s former housekeeper, Gladys Williams in Manenberg. While the title might’ve been shortened later, Gladys is still present: she features on the original album cover, in a photograph taken by Abdullah Ibrahim himself.
Seen here is an Ubuntu Bike decked out in artwork by Atang Tshikane
Rising fuel costs, more environmentally conscious commuters and the implementation of integrated transport plan of Cape Town, which includes cycle lanes that make it easier and safer for bike commuters to get from A to B, has given rise to an increasing cycle commuting culture in Cape Town. Capitalising on this trend for the good of a greater community is Ubuntu Bikes, a social enterprise that sell second-hand bikes customised by local artists and homegrown bike accessories. www.ubuntubikes.com
Source: The Making of Mannenberg by John Edwin Mason, published by Chimurenga magazine in 2008.
18 It was driven by an infectious danceable beat. And it was an intriguingly unfamiliar combination of familiar ingredients – the groove was marabi, the beat resembled tickeydraai (or perhaps a lazy ghoema, depending on who was listening), the sound of the saxophones was langarm, and the underlying aesthetic was jazz. John Edwin Mason
24 Wild almond hedge In 1660 Jan van Riebeeck had a hedge planted as a defensive barrier along the eastern boundary of the newly established Dutch settlement at the Cape, which lay in the path of traditional Khoikhoi grazing routes and resulted in conflicts. The hedge of indigenous wild almond trees and thorny shrubs was planted along the section between the Liesbeek River and Kirstenbosch. Remnants of the hedge can still be found in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden.
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Minibus Taxi While minibus taxis are a common sight throughout South Africa, the ones you find in Cape Town have a unique feature, namely guardtjies. With cries of “Seeeeeeeeeeeeeea Point! Seapoint-my-lady. Sea Point!” these men seated at the passenger door of the taxi, vie for customers. What makes a good guardtjie? A booming voice and some serious whistling skills along with the necessary clout to extract payment from commuters.
Seeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeee eeeeeea Point! Sea point-mylady. Sea Point!
photo: Supplied
photo: Supplied
Mannenberg (Is Where It’s Happening)
21 Catamaran
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ADDERLEY STREET FESTIVAL LIGHTS
One of the largest free open-air events in the country, the annual switching on of Cape Town’s festival lights in Adderley Street is also a cherished family memory. Many an adult remembers coming in to town as a child each year to watch the lights being switched on, and the excitement of the countdown. Nowadays more than 80 000 people gather and, in addition to the lights, there is also a free concert, parade and the delights of the Cape Town Summer Market (14 to 30 December) on offer.
n This year the switching on of the festival lights take place on 1 Dec.
Cape Town is a port city and, with its bustling harbour, it is little wonder that the city is a global player when it comes to boat building. Cape Town is recognised as the number one global manufacturer of luxury catamarans. While these multi-hulled vessels originated centuries ago in Polynesia, the modern vessels have been perfected by local boat builders Robertson and Caine, who are currently the second largest manufacturer of cats in the world. They are also the only manufacturers of Leopard Catamarans, producing about 130 of these fast, smooth sailers every year. According to sales manager Daniel Snyman, this number is set to double over the next two years, due to increased demand.
THE Noon Gun
207
The number of years that the Noon Gun has been fired.
2
The number of cannons loaded for the time signal. A back-up is at the ready, in case the first misfires.
3.1kg
The amount of gunpowder used every day.
19 Samoosas These triangular pasty filled with a variety of savoury fillings originated in the Middle East in the 10th century and travelled to the Cape with slaves from India and Indonesia. Today they are regarded as a staple in the Cape Malay culinary tradition and have resulted in local twists on the classic ground beef or chicken with fillings of smoked snoek and crayfish.
n Five spots to have great samoosas: Bibi’s Kitchen – smoked snoek samoosas Medi Centre, Broad Road Wynberg T: 021 761 8365 Café Ganesh – crayfish samoosas 38 Trill Road T: 021 448 3435 Al-Haq – beef samoosas 52 Harrington Street T: 021 465 1900 Mariam’s Kitchen – chicken samoosas 101 St. George’s Mall opposite the Cape Argus building Vandiar’s Indian Cuisine – potato samoosas 16 Dunkley Square Barnett Street T: 021 462 6129
Photo: Steve Gordon of an album loaned by DJ Jumbo
MOLO NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
FeaTUre
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MObiLE hEaLth sOLUtiOns
how can cellphone technology, which is so widely used in South africa, help to create health solutions? This was the question posed by a group of local academics and interest groups in 2000. The result was Cell-Life, a local nGo that harnesses the power and accessibility of mobile technology to try to change behaviour and provide people with health information, particularly around hiV, TB and maternal health. The project has been recognised around the world for its innovation and dedication to using new technologies to create positive social change.
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DAAR Kom DIE ALIbAmA
Photo: Courtesy of the shaKesPeare BirthPLaCe trust
ISLAnD bIbLE in the 1970s, prisoners on robben island were briefly allowed to have one book other than a religious text. The african people’s Democratic Union of Southern africa’s (apDUSa) Sonny Venkatrathnam chose The Complete Works of William Shakespeare – which he passed on to 31 other political prisoners, who marked, signed and dated passages they thought were meaningful or significant. among them were eddie Daniels from the Liberal party; Saths Cooper and Strini Moodley from the Black Consciousness Movement; neville alexander from apDUSa; Govan Mbeki, walter Sisulu, ahmed Kathrada, Mac Maharaj and nelson Mandela from the african national Congress; and Kwede Mkalipi from the pan africanist Congress. when book allowances changed and the text was compounded, Sonny Venkatrathnam convinced a warder that it was “the Bible by william Shakespeare”, and disguised it with Diwali greeting cards.
n Go to the Folger Shakespeare Library online and look under What’s on (Folger exhibitions) for “robben island Shakespeare”: www.folger.edu n Theatre director Matthew Hahn has written a play based on the robben island bible and interviews with former political prisoners. www.robbenislandbible. blogspot.com n interested in the way Shakespeare was read and used on robben island? read ashwin desai’s reading revolution: Shakespeare on robben island
1884 mAP
a popular afrikaans folksong and often heard at Tweede nuwe Jaar, as one of the many well-known songs sung by the Cape Minstrels, ‘Daar Kom Die alibama’ commemorates a moment of american war history. The lyrics refer to the CSS Alabama, a cruiser of the Confederate States navy which visited Cape Town in 1863 during the american Civil war. The ship managed to evade a Union blockade off Cape point only to be sunk on 19 June 1864 in the english Channel.
Photo: suPPLied
... there are no houses on the slopes of Table Mountain and no tall buildings creating a city skyline, and the highways have yet to be built.
SEQuInnED SuIT
33 RobbEn
27
“daar kom die alibama, die alibama, die kom oor die see, daar kom die alibama,”
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every year seamstresses across Cape Town sew 15 000 to 20 000 glittering costumes for the Cape Minstrel troupes. The troupes follow the unwritten code for uniforms that include jacket-and-pants suits, with a panama hat and umbrella as accessories. asked what happens to the suits once the competition is over, Cape Town Minstrels Carnival association Ceo Kevin Momberg says, “Some costumes get donated to prison programmes but a lot of people keep their suits in the cupboard as memorabilia from every year’s competition.” Costumes are serious business and the best dressed get awarded at the annual competition. in 2013 the Shoprite pennsylvanians (pictured here) were triumphant.
n To enjoy this colourful spectacle on 2 January 2014, be sure to claim your spot early along the route from district Six to cape Town Stadium.
31 JIVE with funky flavours like pineapple Spike, Cocopina, razz rasberry and Mango Tango, the soft drink, Jive is a real Cape Town original. Jive was started in 1989 by local entrepreneur Sharief parker and production takes place right here in epping. Jive has also added its stamp on the urban landscape with handpainted signs decorating retailer’s shopfronts across the city.
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mEDoRA Medoras are objects of ritual and rites of passage: they are the headdresses worn by Cape Malay women on their wedding day. Made from a very fine cloth and heavily embroidered with symbolic patterns – originally in real gold or silver thread – they are often family heirlooms. weaam williams, who is the granddaughter of the late Saeed hartley and the fifth generation of her family to reside in aspeling Street in District Six, explains: “My greatgrandmother hadji Gadija Shadley awaldien was the only woman in Cape Town who could make medoras woven with real gold or silver thread. as a young girl, she visited Mecca in the 1920s, and was taught this skill. She was taken to the Kaaba where she swore to keep this craft a life secret. for me, history is documented from a male perspective; the medora is a chance to tell the more ephemeral story of women. The medora represents the history of people who trace their roots to the Malay archipelago, brought to South african soil by Dutch colonials and, in generations to follow, moved from their homes via the Group areas act.”
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in 1884, when this map was created by richards and Sons of Castle Street, Cape Town looked very different from the city we know today. imagine walking towards the city from Green point. if you look to the left you will see the Green point Common, where, instead of the stadium, there is only green vlei. During winter this area filled with water and residents used it as a venue for water sports. as you continue on your imaginary stroll you will notice that the city is tiny compared to its size today: there are no houses on the slopes of Table Mountain and no tall buildings creating a city skyline, and the highways have yet to be built. horses, not cars, travel down familiar streets like heerengracht and Buitengracht, and horsedrawn trams make up the bulk of public transport. But perhaps the biggest change, geographically at least, is the fact that the ocean reaches almost all the way to the Castle. That’s because building of the foreshore wasn’t completed until 1945, when 400 hectares of land was reclaimed from the sea, and woodstock beach ceased to exist.
DAISY CAPS Like a scattering of the flowers that heralds the start of spring, red bottle caps litter the urban landscape of Cape Town. But where do these red caps come from? The source is the plastic one litre bottles of cheap liquor called “Daisy” that many Capetonians who’ve fallen on hard times turn to for solace.
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mRS bALL’S CHuTnEY originally from india, chutney is a relish made from fresh fruits and spices. The recipe travelled from here both through colonisers and slave traders to various parts of the world including South africa. Locally the most famous of these must be Mrs hS Ball’s Chutney, originally made by amelia Ball from a chutney recipe she inherited from her mother, who produced “Mrs henry adkins Senior Colonial Chutney,” commercially from around 1870. amelia took up the chutneymaking trade when she and her husband herbert Saddleton Ball retired to fish hoek, Cape Town. amelia’s husband would take a few bottles every day by train into Cape Town to sell. it was on one of these sales trips that he met fred Metter, a food importer who started making the product, which resulted in increased production. Today the brand is owned by Unilever.
MOLO NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
Photo: suPPLied
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36 ToILET
“Throughout history the issue of sanitation has been a political one (London’s Great Stink of 1858, when parliament came to a standstill due to the stench emanating from the river Thames, is just one example). in a case like Cape Town, where many people live in close proximity and have to share toilet facilities, having an enclosed, modern porcelain toilet can become a powerful symbol of a citizen’s rights to privacy and dignity; for this reason portable toilets are seen by many informal residents and political activists as unacceptable. This issue has sparked the so-called “poo protests” that have recently occurred in the city.” Prof. Steven robins
34 Shine Shine was started in 2007 and is the brainchild of Tracy rushmere and designer heidi Chisholm. The distinct tongue-in-cheek designs of the fabrics and products that make up the Shine Shine range celebrate the iconography and bright colours of africa. “The designs evolved from my love of commemorative, religious and political fabrics that i have collected from all over africa,” says Tracy. “Shine Shine is a more contemporary urban take on this tradition.” www.shineshine.co.za
Photo: VLadimir tretChiKoff foundation
SHInE SHInE
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mISS WonG bY TRETCHIKoFF
Photo steVe Gordon
One of the city most famous artists, Vladimir Tretchikoff, was born in Russia but called Cape Town home for more than 60 years. It was here in the Mother City that the artist painted some of the women that he would be famous for including the Chinese Girl and Miss Wong. According to research conducted by Tretchikoff biographer Boris Gorelik the sitter for Miss Wong was Cape Town resident Valerie Howe. According to reports the Port Elizabeth-born beauty was 18 when Tretchikoff painted her at his Bishopscourt home in 1955. At the time, she lived in Cape Town and walked her dogs in Camps Bay, where she met Tretchikoff by chance.
37 hEart
41 uDF T-SHIRT
on 20 august 1983 the United Democratic front was launched in Mitchells plain. The UDf mobilised hundreds of community-based organisations in the struggle for a democratic, united, non-racial, and non-sexist South africa. Steve Gordon, a member and the sound engineer at the launch, recalls the importance of emblems during this time: “organisations like Community arts project, which still exists in Chapel Street, trained communities and civic groups in producing independent media. remember that this was the era pre-digital technology; if you look at T-shirts from that era, they were silkscreened in small batches with little blemishes and nuances that almost make them like artists’ prints.”
The udF mobilised hundreds of community-based organisations in the struggle for a democratic, united, non-racial, and nonsexist South africa.
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DRuGS whether we like to admit it or not, Cape Town ranks poorly when it comes to substance abuse. Drug use is also directly related to crime, with police statistics showing a 45.3% increase in drug-related crime from 2008/2009 to 2011/2012. often drug use, especially the use of “tik”, is also related to risky sexual behaviour and sexually transmitted infections including hiV.
if you know of someone in need of help, contact the South african national council of alcoholism and drug dependence on 021 945 4080/1 or t he cape Town drug counselling centres 021 447 8026 or 021 391 0216. if you witness drug-related activities call SaPS on 10111.
38 GRAnITE KERbSTonE In Cape Town you literally have history underfoot. The granite kerbstones that you find in the central city have been part of the city fabric since the late 19th century. The granite was most likely quarried at the Bellevue Quarry on the slopes of Table Mountain, in the vicinity of the present day Bellevue Street. Because many of the kerbs fall within a heritage overlay zone on the City’s planning scheme, any construction that affects the stones needs to undergo scrutiny by the heritage resources department and in most cases needs to be preserved as part of the fabric of the city.
according to the organ Donor foundation of South africa, twenty-four adults and three children received heart transplants in this country in 2012. almost fifty years ago the radical procedure – to replace the heart of one person with another – was pioneered in Cape Town. on 3 December 1967 the first human heart transplant took place at the Groote Schuur hospital, tying the city to this ground-breaking medical triumph. The surgery was performed by Dr Christiaan Barnard, who headed up a team of thirty surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, and technicians, including his own brother Marius. This took approximately nine hours and Louis washkansky, who received Denise Darvall’s heart, lived for eighteen days, with full heart function, before succumbing to pneumonia.
register as an organ donor at www.odf.org.za.
39 TATTooS
Tattoos have a long maritime connection, and even the word tattoo comes from a Tahitian word, tattau, introduced to the west by the crew of Captain Cook’s voyage to the pacific islands in the late 18th century. in Cape Town, tattoos have not only been the province of sailors, however, but also of gangsters. prison tattoos related to the number gangs of the 26s, 27s and 28s are specific to Cape Town and include a huge variety of symbols and pictures which represent a gang member’s criminal history and gang alliances. Ruan Scott, who works at deluxe Coffeeworks, sports a tattoo which says “lekker by die see” on his forearm”.
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42 CA PLATE There was a time when CATs came from Cradock, CARs came from Clanwilliam and CEOs hailed from Grabouw – if you’re talking about vehicle registration plates, that is. Nowadays, Cape Town’s number plates still feature CA, which once denoted Cape Town as the oldest/ largest city in the province (at the time Port Elizabeth was CB) . n don’t want to ride solo any more? consider a car pool. it can save you time (work or read while stuck in traffic) and money (shared fuel costs and less wear and tear on your car).
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4SECS ConDom APPLICAToR Condoms are recognised as the most effective barrier against the risk of hiV/aiDS infection, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). with approximately 5.26 million people in South africa living with hiV (mid-year population estimates by Statistics Sa, May 2013), encouraging condom use is important. not only does the 4 Secs Condom applicator designed by …XYZ Design ensure safe, correct and quick application, but the cheeky packaging also seeks to subvert some of the resistance to condom use. The 4 Secs Condom applicator has won several design awards and was included in Cape Town’s world Design Capital bid book – certainly a testament that good design can not only transform life but also save it.
45 CAPE TAbLE
49 CAPE
from the time of Jan van riebeeck, 1652 until the end of the 17th century, furniture made in Cape Town workshops was influenced by the styles in holland. Three centuries later Cape Town-based designer Gregor Jenkin reinterpreted the Cape Dutch furniture with his design Cape Table that is constructed from flat sheets of laser-cut steel. not only did he express the style in a new material but traditional details like turned wooden legs and joints are reinterpreted through the steel. The table resulted in international acclaim for the designer and is stocked at the famed Conran shop in London. www.gregorjenkin.com
ARGuS nEWSPAPER The first issue of the “argie”, as it is affectionately known, was published on Saturday 2 January 1857 at 63 Longmarket Street, Cape Town. Today the Cape Argus, which was named after the hundred-eyed giant of Greek mythology, is still produced within shouting distance of this original site, at newspaper house on St George’s Mall. in between, the paper became the first to use telegraphs, made its reputation as a politically liberal publication, and remains unapologetically aimed at the middle to upper income earners of Cape Town. By far the best anecdote related to Cape Town’s oldest daily paper was overheard by this writer when a local, seeing a heavily tattooed fellow citizen, quipped: “hy lyk soos hy was geslat met ’n nat Argus” (he looks like he was slapped with a wet Argus).
n The cape argus has recently appointed a new editor, Jermaine craig. Find out more at www.capeargus.co.za.
SuRFboARD
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with names like razorblades, washing Machines, and Thunder Dome, surf spots along the coastline of Cape Town are varied, challenging wave riders like few others. it is little wonder that the art of shaping the right board for these epic conditions has resulted in several local producers. anton Butler, founder of ferral, who’s been in the business of boards since 1985, explains that we have both reef and beach breaks, so surfers often opt for multipurpose boards. “My bread and butter is high-performance boards, which are CnC machined and then hand finished, but there is also a retro movement that is gaining momentum. These old-school boards are 100% handmade, which requires time and craftsmanship.” www.ferral.co.za
48 SnoEK what does Cape Town taste like? for many the answer is snoek. This long bright-silver fish is synonymous with the city, and a source of sustenance and livelihood for many. in and around Cape Town you can buy freshly caught snoek directly from fishermen on quays in hout Bay and Kalk Bay. But it is often salted and airdried, or smoked for later use in the hearty classic Cape Malay dish smoorsnoek (a local interpretation of kedgeree), which combines onions, tomatoes, potatoes and spices with rice.
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GAbLES The architectural style commonly referred to as Cape Dutch is an inheritance from the settlers in the early years of the Cape Colony. although ascribed to the Dutch, the style also reflects influences from italy, france and portugal. The style is typified by thick, whitewashed walls, a thatch roof, small-paned windows, and ornate gables. Various gable styles can be seen through the region, including scrolled, curvilinear, pedimented Baroque and neoclassical gables. one of the most famous gables in the Cape is the Groot Constantia manor house gable. The wine farm was established in 1685 by Simon van der Stel, one of the first Dutch governors of the Cape. The manor house, built in 1692 and altered over the course of time was destroyed by a fire in 1925. it was restored to its current state by architect frank Kendall in 1926-27.
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47 bEER while the Cape region might be well known internationally for its fine wines, beer brewing actually predates wine production in the Mother City. The Dutch settlers who arrived in 1652 brought with them their native beer-drinking culture, and soon a local supply was needed. The fresh-water springs of the eastern slopes of Devil’s peak and what is known today as newlands provided the main ingredient, and home breweries were established here as early as 1656. The newlands Brewery, the oldest commercial brewery in South africa, was established when Jacob Letterstedt built the original Mariendahl Brewery in 1820. More recently, home breweries and microbreweries have been popping up, establishing a craft
iLLustration: etienne BritZ
WHAT IS YouR CAPE ToWn obJECT? WRITE TO US
beer culture. one such brewer, Devil’s peak Brewing Company, celebrates a sense of place in its name: “we chose the name because we wanted the name to reflect the place where we brew our beer. Devil’s peak is an iconic landmark and it is steeped in myth,” says sales manager Mitch Lockhart.
We would love to hear your suggestions of other objects which represent Cape Town to you. Drop us a line or send us a photo at molo@ capetownpartnership.co.za or come and find us on Facebook.
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MOLO NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
lOST...
Sometimes the absence of things can be more telling than their presence. In Cape Town’s case, the city can be defined not only by what is here, but also by what is not – by those things that our city has lost during its more than 300 year history. Text: ambre Nicolson
Today, the two ends of the uncompleted highway, hanging in mid-air over the central city’s Foreshore area, have become Cape Town icons, used by protesters, artists and film crews alike.
iLLustration: infestation
THE unFInISHED HIGHWAY
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ome people say it was an engineering error, some people say it was the fault of a recalcitrant property owner who refused to sell his land, some people say the City of Cape Town decided at the time that traffic volumes didn’t warrant further work and others claim it might even have been a Hollywood conspiracy to ensure a good film shoot location for highway chase scenes. Whatever the case, in the 1970s work on the Foreshore freeways, as they came to be known, abruptly ceased. Today, the two ends of the uncompleted highway, hanging in mid-air over the central city’s Foreshore area, have become Cape Town icons, used by
protesters, artists and film crews alike. Now, thanks to the City of Cape Town’s research partnership with UCT, there has been renewed interest in the Foreshore area. The hope is that with further research the City will identify possible new uses for the unfinished highways and some of the land that surrounds them.
THE KHoISAn LAnGuAGES The Khoisan language group is defined by its use of clicks as consonants (one of the languages within the group has 48 distinct consonants!). The group of languages can be divided into the Ju, Khoe, Taa and !Ui language families and subdivided into many local dialects, like the ones spoken by San clans who originally in-
habited the Cape Town area. The languages all contain at least four different kinds of clicks which are represented by symbols, including the dental (|), palatal (!), alveolarpalatal (‡), and the lateral (||). The Khoisan languages are also richly metaphorical. Megan Biesele, an anthropologist who studied the Kalahari Ju|’hoan, describes how Khoisan languages have many “respect names” for the same object. “For instance, one of the respect words for python is g!utzum-g|a’a, ‘water-nose-eye’, feet are called ‘sand-pressers’, water is ‘soft throat’ and lion is ‘night’, ‘moonless night’, ‘night medicine’, ‘cries in the night’ and ‘jealousy’”. Sadly, today many of these dialects are either extinct or spoken by less than 1 000 people, a reflection of how local Khoisan clans themselves were decimated and displaced through disease, slave trade and the encroachment on their lands by colonial expansion. n Find out more about local Khoisan culture at !Khwa ttu cultural centre near Yzerfontein on the r27. call 022 492 2998.
THE TWo LADIES oF ATHLonE At 11:56:23 on 22 August 2010 the Athlone power station’s two water cooling towers, known as the two ladies of Athlone, fell to the ground. The planned implosion took less than 10 seconds and happened 4 minutes early, taking many of those assembled by surprise. The water towers had been a Cape Town landmark for decades, after being built in 1962 as part of Cape Town’s main coal burning electricity power plant.
DISTRICT SIx Perhaps Cape Town’s most visible absence is also its most heart breaking: District Six. This piece of land, stretching from the sea to the mountain between the central city and Salt River, was already known as a crowded, cosmopolitan area in 1867 when it was named as the sixth municipal district of Cape Town. Closely connected to the life of the port and home to locals, recent immigrants and people of all colours and cultures, District Six was a busy, energetic and happily diverse inner-city area with a strong sense of community. On 11 February 1966, District Six was declared a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act. Forced removals started two years later, and continued for the next 15 years. By the early 80s over 60 000 people had been evicted from their homes and moved over 25km away to the Cape Flats. Along with the people, the sense of community, culture and solidarity built up over a century was endangered. While it is hoped that the area will be returned to its former residents, the recognition that District Six can never be recreated as it was is summed up in the words of former activist who fought against the forced removals, Vincent Kolbe: “The Land Restitution Act deals with people who were thrown out of their homes. What we need is something to deal with people who were thrown out of their souls.” Today, under the Land Restitution Act, the push to return former residents, or their descendants, to District Six continues.
A mAGICAL RInG The story of the washerwoman’s ring goes something like this: Once upon a time in Cape Town, there lived a man who owned a magical snake-shaped ring. The ring allowed no harm to befall its wearer, especially from sharp objects. The power of the ring was discovered one day when the man tried to have his hair cut. No matter how sharp the barber’s blade, it couldn’t cut even a single hair on the man’s head. One day the man gave the ring to his wife, a washerwoman who wore it when she went to wash clothes at the Platteklip stream on the slopes of Table Mountain. According to legend the ring slipped off her finger and was lost in the stream, where it remains to this day. It’s thought that this legend might be related to local Imam, Sayed Abdul Malik of Batavia who was said to have arrived in the Cape as a slave with a serpent-shaped ring in the late 18th century. What’s more, in 2006 archaeologist Elizabeth Gryzmala Jordan unearthed just such an unusual-looking ring at the site where the washerwoman once worked. Could the ring have been found at last? n visit Sayed abdul Malik’s shrine in upper buitenkant Street in vredehoek
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& fOUnd in Cape town
iLLustration: infestation
From gold coins and a 300-year-old cannon, to a handwritten Arabic-Afrikaans manuscript, here are a couple of Cape Town’s recently found objects.
THE FAmE’S GoLD CoInS
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n 1822 an English wooden merchant vessel, the Fame, travelling from India and bound for England, was forced onto the rocks just outside Table Bay by a stormy north-westerly wind. Although all but four of those aboard were saved, the ship itself broke into two and sank without trace. Almost 150 years later, in 1965, some local divers discovered the wreck, lying a little south of Graaff’s Pool on the Sea Point promenade. Not only did the divers find some gold Mohur coins, but they also got to keep the loot, since at the time there was no legislation in place to protect wrecks.
A 300-YEARoLD CAnnon On 3 September this year, workers digging a trench on Orange Street discovered buried treasure: a cannon cast in Sweden for the VOC 300 years ago. “Cannons were used by the Dutch for coastal defence. Other cannons came
from shipwrecks, or were brought to South Africa by the English or donated by the French to the Dutch,” explained Gerry de Vries, Chairperson of the Cannon Association of SA, in a subsequent interview. At the time De Vries suggested that the one found on Orange Street had been used as a bollard. “There was no gun battery near Orange Street. The reason that the cannon was found there is most likely that, when it became obsolete, it was erected vertically on the street corner as a bollard, to prevent ox wagons from cutting corners and scattering pedestrians.” The find brings the number of cannons found in South Africa to 980.
QuAGGA It is thought that the quagga, that strange hybrid-looking animal with what looks like the head of a zebra and the body of a horse, used to roam the plains around Cape Town in herds of between 30 and 50 animals. That is, until colonial settlers started hunting the quagga in earnest. By 1878 all quaggas in the wild were extinct and the last remaining captive quagga, a female who lived in a
zoo in Amsterdam, died in 1883. So why is the quagga considered found? In 1984 the quagga was the first extinct animal to have its DNA mapped. The results showed the quagga was not in fact a distinct species, as had been thought, but was actually a subspecies of the plains zebra endemic to South Africa. This led, in 1986, to Reinhold Rau, a Germanborn conservationist, starting the Quagga Project, a South Africanbased breeding back scheme that attempted to recreate the quagga by selectively breeding southern plains zebras displaying reduced striping on their backs and legs. The project now has a herd of 89 animals, which show highly reduced striping and a brownish tint to their coats, although it remains to be seen whether the project will be ultimately successful in reversing the “extinction” of the quagga.
AJAmI SCRIPT The Ajami manuscript, found in Cape Town in early October 2013 by Turkish academic Dr Mustafa Yayla, is written in Afrikaans using Arabic script and provides direct evidence that Afrikaans
originated in the slave population of the Cape. It was by chance that a community member, after hearing a talk that Dr Yayla did on the heritage of Timbuktu, organised by the Cape Family Research Forum (CFRF), contacted Dr Yayla to look at some Arabic–Afrikaans documents she had in her personal library. Dr Yayla immediately realised that the document was in fact a rare example of a handwritten Bayaanud Deen, written in 1873 by students of Sheik Abu Bakr Effendi, a Turkish judge who had a huge impact on Islam and linguistics in the Cape. According to CFRF researcher Mogamat Kamedien, the manuscript has prompted Dr Yayla to invite more Turkish researchers to come to Cape Town to study the document. According to Kamedien, the document will remain safely in the possession of the family who own it. “I can assure the community that the document is still on South African shores and still in the hands of the family. The family themselves realise that this particular document is part of South Africa’s history.” Source: article originally published on the VoCFM website on 4 october 2013
In 1984 the quagga was the first extinct animal to have its dNa mapped. The results showed the quagga was not in fact a distinct species, as had been thought, but was actually a subspecies of the plains zebra endemic to South africa.
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MOLO NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
YOU SAY
STREET TALK
Some of your favourite things Photos: Lisa Burnell
From food to photos, cars to passports, you gave us some unexpected answers to the questions: “What is your most treasured object?” and “What object represents Cape Town to you?”
Patrick O’Gorman
Fish and chips from Lusitania! My favourite object is probably my grey MotoMia scooter because it gets me from A to B. Does she have a name? Well, sometimes I might call her Baby …
David Kigoa
That’s a hard question. Can I say God? No? Okay, how about snoek? I like snoek. Braaied with some salad it’s very good.
Dayyaan Adonis “That’s easy, my favourite object has to be my pick-up truck; I take good care of that thing. And an object that represents Cape Town? That’s got to be the Gatsby for sure.”
Sharon Chamboko (left)
Vuyo Noyce
Terry Pheto
Sarah Masson
“My most prized possession is this gold bangle that I received from my husband and my two children for Mother’s Day. I would say a typically Cape Town object is a narrow street; there’s lots in town.”
“My favourite object is my South African passport and being from Joburg I would say a good object to represent Cape Town is a vintage fashion item – I always find something interesting when I come here.”
“I’m from LA in the States and I would be lost without my Moleskine notebook. For an object specific to Cape Town I would choose one of those bracelets made out of a South African coin.”
Khaya Kwelemtini “My cellphone is my favourite object because I can listen to music on it, that and WhatsApp my friends. I come from Queenstown in the Eastern Cape, but I’ve lived in Cape Town for four years now.”
“An object that symbolises Cape Town is its people … I know it’s not an object really, but I think its amazing how people always greet you here in their own language on the street. Oh, and a treasured object … um, oysters? I love shellfish.”
Thantaswa Nokhenke (right) “My favourite thing is a photograph of my son taken when he was in grade one – it’s so cute! Something that is very Cape Town for me is the wind; it can really drive you crazy, especially when you have just done your hair.”