IMAGINING THE CITY EDITED BY SEAN FIELD, RENATE MEYER & FELICITY SWANSON MEMORIES AND CULTURES IN CAPE TOWN F ree download from H S R C Press Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2007 ISBN 978-0-7969-2179-6 © 2007 Human Sciences Research Council The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. Copy-edited by Karen Press Typeset by Jenny Wheeldon Cover design by Fuel Design Cover photographs by M. Emilia Ciccone: (1) ‘Lwando’, Long Street, Cape Town 2006; (2) ‘Sisi’, Kloof Street, Cape Town 2006, with special thanks to Lwando and Sisi for the inspiration. Print management by comPress Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 www.eurospangroup.com/bookstore Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com w T n i T 2 F ree download from H S R C Press Contents Foreword v Preface vii Introduction 3 Sean Field and Felicity Swanson DISRUPTIVE MEMORIES 1. Sites of memory in Langa 21 Sean Field 2. ‘So there I sit in a Catch-22 situation’: remembering and imagining trauma in the District Six Museum 37 Sofie M.M.A. Geschier 3. Between waking and dreaming: living with urban fear, paradox and possibility 57 Renate Meyer 4. ‘The quickest way to move on is to go back’: bomb blast survivors’ narratives of trauma and recovery 75 Anastasia Maw 5. Where is home? Transnational migration and identity amongst Nigerians in Cape Town 93 Iyonawan Masade RESILIENT CULTURES 6. ‘Catch with the eye’: stories of Muslim food in Cape Town 115 Gabeba Baderoon 7. ‘Julle kan ma New York toe gaan, ek bly in die Manenberg’: an oral history of jazz in Cape Town from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s 133 Colin Miller 8. Da struggle kontinues into the 21st century: two decades of nation-conscious rap in Cape Town 151 Ncedisa Nkonyeni 4 F ree download from H S R C Press 9. Changing nature: working lives on Table Mountain, 1980–2000 173 Louise Green 10. ‘Language of the eyes’: stories of contemporary visual art practice in Cape Town 191 Thabo Manetsi and Renate Meyer 11. ‘Die SACS kom terug’: intervarsity rugby, masculinity and white identity at the University of Cape Town, 1960s–1970s 207 Felicity Swanson Picture credits 229 Notes on contributors 231 Index 233 N F ree download from H S R C Press v Foreword We are often told that memory is important. So that we know where we come from as a basis for moving forward. So that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. So that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. And yet, how soon our memories seem to fail us. In the past, we were divided. The majority of people were excluded from the centres of power. It was selected individuals who were deemed worthy of commemoration through museums, monuments, even street names. And now, even though we have embraced an ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ democracy, ‘the people’ still appear to be forgotten all too easily. Not just faceless, voting fodder, ‘the people’ are human beings who laugh, who cry, who hope, who fear, who suffer loss and who have dreams, who experience life and their environment with all of their senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Cape Town is still a city in the making. The question is, whose tastes, smells, feelings, sights and sounds will come to prevail in defining the character and experience of the city? Is our city merely a playground of the rich, with the poor experiencing what the city has to offer – even Table Mountain – merely as a backdrop to their daily struggles for survival? Is our city primarily geared towards tourists so that ‘the people’, deemed to add little real value to the city, may be one-day, trickle-down beneficiaries? The overriding strength of this book is that it places people – ordinary people – at the centre of memory, at the centre of historical and contemporary experience, and thus at the centre of re-imagining and owning the city of Cape Town. It is as they speak – what they choose to say, what they choose to remain silent about, that we become aware of the possibilities of the city, if it really did embrace all its people, in all of their diversity. Among other things, the speakers who participate in Imagining the City highlight the ‘spices and fusions’ of their cuisine, their primal fear of terror (perhaps now transferable to feelings about violent crime), the history and significance of their musical preferences, their experience of Table Mountain as a haven yet also a place of hard labour. In doing so, these voices hint at the extraordinarily diverse, yet incredibly rich textures that flow under the radar of officialdom. Because of its diversity and its history, Cape Town is a complex organism. Its recent political history suggests that those charged with visioning and running the city will inevitably choose the easy, the obvious and the less challenging routes. On the underside of officialdom, however, are ‘the people’ with their diverse values, histories, musical preferences, experiences of nature, languages, cuisines, appreciation of sport and the arts, who will engage in ongoing conscious and t h t t w p b T t t b A t F ree download from H S R C Press IMAGINING THE CITY: MEMORIES AND CULTURES IN CAPE TOWN vi unconscious struggles for hegemony of tastes, feelings, sights, sounds and smells. Democracy and popular culture intersect where people assert what is theirs, when they proudly celebrate themselves, and when they take ownership of their own lives and act accordingly. The value of this book – notwithstanding the limitations of books in terms of accessibility – is that it contributes to public discourse and debate about a vision for, and ownership of the city by affirming the memory (and chosen forgetfulness) of some of its inhabitants, and by hinting at the work that can, and should still be done in foregrounding memory and culture in the re-imagination of our city. Mike van Graan Playwright and arts activist M F ree download from H S R C Press vii Preface Imagining the City: Memories and Cultures in Cape Town traces the histories of people who live, work and creatively express themselves in the city. This book has been researched, written and produced by the staff and students of the Centre for Popular Memory (CPM) at the University of Cape Town. Our initial thinking for this book was partly shaped by the CPM’s previous book, Lost Communities, Living Memories: Remembering Forced Removals in Cape Town. Soon after that book was launched we began to think about a more ambitious book, one that would conceptually interrogate memory, space and culture in the city. During the five years of this book’s evolution our ambitions have been scaled down to the aim of producing a focused academic book that we hope appeals to broader public audiences as well. Nevertheless, our initial vision was not relinquished and this book reflects a commitment to giving young authors the critical space to think and write creatively about the histories of Cape Town. We aim to show that Cape Town is so much more than its physical infrastructure or landscape, or the stereotypes or clichés people use to describe it. As poet Stephen Watson puts it in the anthology of writings about Cape Town that he has compiled, ‘As with any city that has been truly lived in, loved and at times suffered, it is a space coloured by memory, ambivalences, disaffections, obsessions. But this is what is meant by a city imagined…’ (Watson 2006: 9; his emphasis). In contrast to the literary imaginings of Watson’s collection, this book presents oral and visual historical sources to demonstrate the profound significance of interweaving popular memories and cultures of the city. What connects and holds these disparate elements together are people’s imaginative framing and re-framing of the city. Consequently, this anthology is an implicit critique of how urban historians have constructed empirical approaches to the city’s history. Imagining the City is not only relevant to academic debates but also refers to ongoing contestations over city governance and identity. Crude generalisations about Cape Town not being an African city are often located in the hurt and anger evoked by people’s experiences of discrimination. But the undeniable racism and xenophobia that exist in Cape Town will not be undone by the ahistorical Othering of the city. Taking a different view, this book approaches Cape Town as an ambiguously African city. The more provocative question, then, is: what particular kind of African city is it now and can it become in the future? In our view, Cape Town need neither mimic European cities nor copy ‘the image of other African cities’ (Hendricks 2005) and should not be evaluated in these absolutist terms. Cape Town needs to imagine and re-imagine its own culturally diverse way. The process of transforming the city could be happening more quickly than it is, but more than 300 years of colonialism, slavery, segregation and apartheid social engineering will not be undone through a few years of democracy. M w y W W w t h m t t I T F ree download from H S R C Press IMAGINING THE CITY: MEMORIES AND CULTURES IN CAPE TOWN viii Debating how the past shapes the present and future of a city is also influenced by the frequently antagonistic relationship between popular memory and academic history. This relationship is investigated by the CPM in the following ways. Firstly, as our mission statement puts it, ‘People in South Africa have a dynamic, but largely unrecorded heritage. The Centre creates spaces for these stories to be heard, seen and remembered.’ Secondly, as oral and public historians we prioritise the fact that there are significant sites of knowledge outside of official institutions such ‘the academy’ and ‘the archives’. Thirdly, we are committed to recording and archiving traces of popular memory and to disseminating these in narrative and visual forms to diverse audiences, with the aim of supporting the democratic, albeit contested, possibilities of public history productions. The work of the CPM and the production of this book would not have been possible without the support of colleagues, family and friends, so we apologise in advance to those whose names we do not mention here. At the University of Cape Town we acknowledge Richard Mendelsohn’s sensitive leadership of the Historical Studies Department. We are deeply appreciative of the various inputs made by Vivian Bickford-Smith, Bill Nasson, Shamil Jeppie, Maanda Mulaudzi and Lance van Sittert. At the University of the Western Cape, several colleagues, especially Leslie Witz and Uma Mesthrie, have provided invaluable support to the Centre. We also acknowledge the Advisory Board of the CPM and the inputs of Crain Soudien, Valmont Layne and Dumisani Sibayi. As concerns financial support, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, the Mellon Foundation, SEPHIS, the Anglo-American Chairman’s Educational Fund, HIVOS, the National Research Foundation and the University Research Committee have all contributed to the sustainability of the CPM over the past five years. More directly, we acknowledge the generous financial support towards the publication of this book provided by the Arts and Culture committee of the City of Cape Town. We would especially like to thank the HSRC Press, in particular John Daniel, Utando Baduza and Inga Norenius, for believing in this project from the outset and for their rigorous and professional support throughout. Special thanks also to Karen Press for her precise and clear copy-editing of our texts, and to the designer Debbie Poswell for her creative efforts. Finally, all three of us weathered this long process with the support of significant others outside of the work arena. Sean Field, Renate Meyer and Felicity Swanson References Watson S (ed) (2006) A city imagined. Johannesburg: Penguin Books. Hendricks C (2005) Cape Town’s diversity is a challenge, Cape Times 27 May. t t p T w t W V A t w p W f F ree download from H S R C Press INTRODUCTION F ree download from H S R C Press [...]... adjacent to the, to the market, the, the Langa hall…and then they would go down Bennie Street or down Brinton Street to, to the North Barracks or to the Main Barracks (Ms B Nonkonyana) The reception depot was described in this way: In Harlem Avenue, it’s a residence now…when my father was working there, there was 406 and the house next door was 405 That was the reception depot, 405 When they went there,... exclusion by the apartheid government In the present context, the discourse of tourist packaging of t the postcard view is central to selling the city as ‘A Gateway to Africa’ A Another view, this time taken from the slopes of Devil’s Peak just above the University of Cape Town The centre of the view is of sprawling suburbs from the edge of Devil’s Peak and the Cape Flats, reaching as far as the outer... neither the glossy tourist brochure image of the multicultural city nor the ahistorical descriptions of Cape Town as simply a violent, racist and u un-African city The chapters are intended to showcase the experiences of the notf famous, men and women living in and interacting with the city at different times and in different spaces Broad-ranging in thematic content, the common thread t that draws these... who were forcibly removed in the apartheid era are b beginning to return to areas such as District Six in the inner city, and Tramway Road in Sea Point The city has experienced other changes in the form of a property boom, as house prices in the affluent areas have soared And at the same time, sprawling informal squatter camps continue to form at the city limits, forcing the city to grow outwards (see... and the last people were still here in Langa Like in Nyanga they joined in Oh people died because they said ‘OK’ we will send the words, we will give you an answer when you get to the meeting at Langa The answer was the bullet, all the Saracens were ready at the Flats where they started shooting It was sad, it is still sad until now On the evening of 21 March at 6 pm, the crowd gathered opposite the. .. Politically, Langa captured the attention of the apartheid state and the white m mass media with the Langa to Caledon Square march of 1960 This march included thousands of African residents from other parts of Cape Town The p police crackdowns on the same day and in the weeks thereafter were part of the b broader state repression of the period that aimed to erase anti-apartheid resistance movements... download from HSRC Press and then with our parents, they would have, they had a double bed but there was a small bed for other children to have a sleep, to sleep on there My eldest brother there was another bed in this room, a sofa and it would be pulled at night so as to make a bed…And then my sister and I would be sleeping in the bedroom with my parents with other children These congested domestic spaces... limits of Khayelitsha The view is framed at the edges by Table Bay to the north and False Bay to the south, and is b best observed from the vantage point of Rhodes Memorial, the monument erected in h honour of the architect of imperial conquest, Cecil John Rhodes The bust of Rhodes t that forms part of the monument is the most visible memorial in the city, deliberately l located on the mountain slopes... That’s the way Despite the apparent omnipotence of the apartheid state, there were several forms of popular resistance to the pass-law system The iconic moments were the Langa t to Caledon Square march of 21 March 1960 and the Langa march of 30 March in t the same year However the infamous clash between marchers and the police did n not occur near the pass office, but opposite the ‘new flats’, a space... un-African or racist is a form of Othering that says more about the insecurities of the speaker/observer than it does about the city These stereotyped frames also erase the nuanced views that are significant to a culturally diverse city Furthermore, an emphasis on cultural diversity in Cape T Town should not be crudely justified by referring to the fact that the majority of t the city s residents were previously . prevail in defining the character and experience of the city? Is our city merely a playground of the rich, with the poor experiencing what the city has to offer. experience, and thus at the centre of re -imagining and owning the city of Cape Town. It is as they speak – what they choose to say, what they choose to remain