Ilham Rawoot, The Con
“The struggle of man against
power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” - Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting
A few months ago, untroubled,
the green signboard at the top of the Searle Street off-ramp used to read
“Woodstock: left; Zonnebloem: right”. One morning, something was different. In
the night, a ghost of the past had pasted over the sign, and it now read
“District Six: right”. A few days later, Zonnebloem was back, only to be
replaced again later that week by District Six. People in the area and
commuters who were aware of the controversy being played out enjoyed the tit
for tat, the back and forth. For many, it was exciting to know that someone was
taking note of the fading history and the socioeconomic implications for those
who have been left behind. The fight is on – resistant remembrance versus
persistent change.
The battle for keeping strong
the memory of District Six began even before the razing of the houses and the
forced removals of its 60 000 inhabitants in the 1960s, before the changing of
the name. The battle still rages, but the fierce commercial sprawl over the
historically significant land, aligned with lack of action in land restitution,
has set off a new wave of repulsion to this eradication of the memory of
oppression.
In the East City Precinct, the Fringe,
known as a “design” district, has encroached further on to the land of District
Six; it’s land that has been promised to be returned to the former residents
who were kicked out.
“The Fringe issue is about
wiping out a complete memory of the people of District Six,” says Shahied Ajam,
who lived in the neighbourhood until he was 18. On the walls of his office in
the centre of town are black-and-white A3 prints of what District Six once
looked like – pictures of the famous Seven Steps and the fish market. He now
heads up a group called the District Six Working Committee, which works with
late claimants who applied for a claim to the land after the cut-off date of
the 1995 to 1998 window. “There was such a diverse and multicultural
environment in District Six. Now they don’t want people to remember where they
come from. They want to write that off and tell us you are going to build a few
houses and come up with some gentrification to keep us out even more, as the
rates and taxes go up and we can’t afford it in a few years’ time.”
It was this diversity that
scared the government – the fact that Indians, coloureds, Portuguese, Greeks
and Jews were living and working side by side as immigrants, labourers,
merchants and slaves. District Six is not the only area that faces this “issue”
of the disregard for memory; other areas like the Bo-Kaap are bearing the
brunt, too, but in different ways.
District Six is usually the
area that is first raised in discussions of memory, likely because of its
violent history of systematic exclusion that falls very obviously into the
apartheid government’s concept and implementation of racial segregation. It has
also been the subject of a tedious and protracted civil and legal battle for
land restitution since 1994. The first forced removals from the area were of
the black inhabitants in 1901. More than half a century later the
infrastructure was destroyed during the 15 years following 1966, when the area
was allocated to whites only under the apartheid Group Areas Act. More than 60
000 people were forced out, and most were sent to newly constructed ghettos on
the Cape Flats, where they remain today.
Today, discussion continues
about the growth of “the Fringe” – the renamed area between Roeland and Darling
streets, Buitenkant and Canterbury streets, and connecting land between the
Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Longmarket and Tenant streets. This
area forms a large part of District Six. With the area not yet declared a
heritage site, the City of Cape Town has no official means of, or interest in,
halting commercial growth.
Another player in this complex
game of ‘guess who’s responsible’ is the Cape Town Partnership (CTP), which,
according to its website, was initiated by the city in 1999, and formed as a
non-profit (section 21) organisation to mobilise and align public, private and
social resources towards the urban regeneration of Cape Town’s central city.
“The Fringe brand was born as a
way to talk about and market this particular area in order to unlock its
economic potential as a design hub. Over time, the Fringe was successfully
established as Cape Town’s fledgling ’design and innovation district’,
particularly among creative and business stakeholders in the area and beyond.”
The CTP recently acknowledged
that there have been controversies and misjudgements regarding the naming of
the Fringe. Now, the “placemaking” projects will be incorporated into the work
of the CTP, and not as a separate entity. The Fringe website is yet to be
updated.
It has been eight years since
the District Six Museum applied to the South African Heritage Resources Agency
(Sahra) for District Six to be declared a heritage site. It has not yet been
given that title. The Restitution of Land Rights Act was one of the first to be
signed into law after the founding of the Constitution, but it has been one of
the slowest to be implemented. District Six is now unrecognisable from what it
was before its destruction. Locals and visitors who are not familiar with the
city’s history (including many South Africans) are likely unaware that what was
once part of the designated area is now either a dry, overgrown, empty space
along the highway or home to Wembley Square, an apartment block and office park
with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and gym, and one-bedroom flats that go for
R1.5 million.
According to Ciraj Rasool,
director of the University of the Western Cape’s African programme in museum
and heritage, and trustee of the District Six Museum, the fact that the area
has not yet been declared a heritage site is why it has continued to be freely
open to the market.
“The city didn’t understand the
history of D6 and now sees it as a playground for designers,” he says. “You
cannot impose on the area without taking into account the history of forced
removals. You cannot do that to a landscape of war. The experience of violence
gives the land certain significance.”
He says that the city started
realising very late that it was dealing with something “untenable”. But
hopefully the city and the CTP have realised that this is unacceptable, he
says. He says the first thing Sahra needs to do is create a map that describes
what D6 actually is. “One of the failures of land restitution is that it is
treated as a problem of housing when it’s a problem of memory. When you return
people to land, you don’t just put up houses willy-nilly – you do so within a
framework of memory.” Rasool says that in order to safeguard D6 from
“inappropriate development”, there needs to be a management plan that will
“preserve the history of survival”. “You wouldn’t put up casinos and hotels on
Robben Island,” he points out.
Ajam feels that the Cape
Peninsula University of Technology, which is built over 50% of the land that
has now been renamed Zonnebloem, needs to return much of that land to the city.
Initially called the Cape Technikon, it was built for white students during
apartheid, and the area was to be a new residence for white people. But this
anticipated influx didn’t happen.
“It’s not just buildings,” he
says. “It’s making people remember, putting up a memorial to the fish market or
the famous Star Cinema in Hanover Street – not forgetting something because it
has been covered for a building that aimed to educate white children.”
But it is also about
recognising that many of the people the city does not want spoiling the scenery
– the homeless – were displaced from the city centre during apartheid and have
not yet been given the houses many of them were promised. The removal of
homeless people from the city centre is a topic that has been prevalent in the
media in the past few years, as the Cape Town Central City Improvement District
(CCID) became increasingly notorious among activists and NGOs for its
enthusiastic and unrelenting effort to pick homeless people up off the streets
and drop them off either somewhere far out of the city or at the municipal
court. In a darkly humorous way, it is amusing that every time this happens,
these people are back in town two or three days later.
This culture of removals of the
unsightly and unwanted began with blatant unashamedness in the run-up to the
2010 World Cup. A few hundred homeless were relocated to the Symphony Way Temporary
Relocation Area, better known as Blikkiesdorp, which lies 30km from the central
business district. They still remain there. What locals and activists have
termed a “concentration camp” is made up of 1 300 3mx6m corrugated iron
structures, fenced in by barbed wire. City councillor JP Smith said at the time
that most of the people had volunteered to move there after three years of
counselling, even though residents claimed that it was unsafe, dirty and
drug-ridden, according to the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.
Another example of this culture
of sweeping things under the carpet also occurred soon before the World Cup,
when the residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement, a 10-minute drive from the
CBD, who had lived on the land for more than 10 years, were sent packing to
Delft, on Cape Town’s furthest peripheries, where many of them still live. The
land had been allocated for “low-cost housing” – apartment blocks that none of
the informal settlers could afford. Joe Slovo was directly along the route that
tourists take from the airport to the city centre and the prettier parts of the
southern suburbs, such as Newlands and Constantia.
One person who’s been removed
from the city centre more times than he can remember is Elias Edwards. He’s 62
in October, he thinks, and was evicted from District Six in the mid-70s, after
which he moved to Lavender Hill, on the Cape Flats. The ghettos of the Cape
Flats were created upon destruction of D6 and given names like Grassy Park and
Sea Winds. Elias’ father died when he was 16 and his mother disappeared a few
months later. He dropped out of school in grade 10 and began working in a
bakery in Woodstock. It was too expensive for him to travel to and from
Lavender Hill, so he began sleeping at work. This soon led to a life of
migration between the street, the Cape Flats and the CBD. Work was few and far
between, and now, because of his age, years of too much alcohol and a number of
accidents that have left him with a largely broken body, he stays in and around
the Fringe.
“I used to live here, and now
they won’t even let me stand here,” he says. “These people in these yellow bibs
come and take what I have and put it in a truck and then I never see it again.
Last time they took my ID book.” He has been removed several times by the CCID,
which is mandated by the city and co-funded by property owners in the area.
It’s become a cruel joke for him.
While some have compared the
expulsion of the homeless with the forced removals during apartheid, these
actions are also contrary to the Constitution and the law. According to
constitutional lawyer Pierre de Vos, section 26(3) of the Constitution limits
property rights by prohibiting anyone – including a municipality – from
evicting someone from their home or having their home demolished without an
order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances.
“The Prevention of Illegal
Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE) gives effect to this
right, but extends the right to protect all those who unlawfully occupy not
only homes but also land. An unlawful occupier protected by PIE (and who can
therefore not be evicted from either land or home without a court order) is
defined as ‘a person who occupies land without the express or tacit consent of
the owner or person in charge, or without any other right in law to occupy such
land’. In South Africa, only a court can order the eviction of any human being
from either land or from a home.”
But trying to find out who is
responsible for these forced removals is not easy. The CCID’s response to
questions about the legality of their actions is: “The CCID – as with all 26
City Improvement Districts – falls under the mandate of the City of Cape Town.
We do not conduct any operations of this nature on our own, but rather under
instruction to assist from either the city’s law-enforcement department (or the
SAPS), and in conjunction with the city’s department of social development and
its displaced peoples unit.”
Priya Reddy, the city’s media
manager, says, regarding the forced removals: “The city does not engage in any
forced removals (unless a by-law has been contravened) and so cannot comment on
any such comparison.”
The city’s official line
regarding the homeless is that “the ultimate goal is to reintegrate street
people into their communities of origin. However, in cases where this is not
possible, clients will be referred to one of the city’s care facility partners.
Where clients have an addiction, they will be referred to the city’s
rehabilitation centre partners.”
Advocate Paul Hoffman is the
director of the Institute for Accountability in South Africa. “The problem with
this approach is that there is no incentive for or aspiration on the part of
the homeless to return to their ‘communities of origin’,” he says. “All too
often, the dysfunction there is what drove them to homelessness in the first
place. Why they would want to return to the site of that dysfunction – the
grinding poverty, joblessness and the bottom end of the scale of inequality –
is difficult to fathom.”
But this, it seems, is not
taken into account when orders are given to evict the homeless. The CCID budget
for the city centre is made up of taxes and levies paid by property owners. It
is those paying who then decide how the budget is allocated. In the past year,
the CCID spent 50% of its budget on safety and security. It employs 250 safety
and security personnel, including eight members of the SAPS. It employs three
social workers and 352 urban management personnel, who undertake tasks such as
street sweeping, graffiti removal and rodent baiting. But surely if there were
more social workers and urban management employees, there would be fewer
homeless people on the streets?
Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana is the
chief executive of the CTP. She says that although the CTP’s mandate is limited
to initiating dialogue, she hopes that stakeholders – government, the private
sector and NGOs – will come together to create a joint vision for the area. But
she also acknowledges and understands the desire of the private sector in the
Fringe to spend half of its CCID budget on security.
The rates and levies businesses
pay are collected and transferred into the CCID budget. “I dare you to go to
any other commercial entities and their primary interest will be to let their
building be able to make money first. That is the nature of business,” she
says. “And then, of course, if there is someone outside my door who is
homeless, I would like to take a little bit of my money and help him, but it’s
not my primary responsibility to ensure that. My primary responsibility is that
when I open my doors, I should feel safe to be able to come in and make my
transactions. But I’m still putting a little of my money into the city’s budget
to resolve the issues of homelessness.”
Also, it should be noted – and
this usually goes over the heads of the people creating these structures and
systems – that most of the homeless on the streets of the city came from the
city centre before the forced removals under the Group Areas Act. It is because
they were removed, and District Six is now unmarked land, that these business
owners, who pay these taxes to the CCID, are there at all, and can then decide
who comes in and out of their neighbourhood.
In this case, design and the
Fringe are working to the detriment of these people. They are being sent
straight back to the Cape Flats, to ganglands that were allocated to them
through apartheid ‘design’, and their children and grandchildren will likely be
there 30 years from now.
Urban researcher Ismail Farouk
explains the issues with the Fringe very clearly. Very basically, he says that
the Fringe proposes to alter the built fabric of this part of the city through
the use of urban design and landscaping techniques in the establishment of a
design precinct. This is as the flagship project for the World Design Capital
(WDC) 2014, which proposes to use design as a tool for social transformation
and to deal with structural inequality.
The World Design Capital 2014
sprang from this proposition. The CTP spent R6 million just to apply. The
initiative has been met with excitement by most quarters, but few people
actually understand what its point is, and even fewer people had heard about it
before its alleged awesomeness was thrust down their throats. “The central
theme behind the city’s successful bid – ‘Live Design. Transform Life’ –
focuses on the role that design can play in social transformation. This theme
sets the tone for the programme of design-inspired events and projects,” claims
the website. Whatever that means, it is not happening.
“In this moment, the central
city remains divorced from the Cape Flats and the sprawling informal
settlements, both discursively and materially,” Farouk says. “The discourse of
creative cities promotes this segregated imagery, and the current branding of the
city maintains the status quo of the central city as divorced from the rest of
Cape Town. When the notion of ‘world class’ is being used, it is not in
reference to Bonteheuwel.”
This statement is backed up by
a drive through Bonteheuwel, Langa, Valhalla Park and Nooitgedacht (and that
barely makes up 10% of the Cape Flats) – it clearly shows that the benefits of
the Fringe and the WDC are not going much further beyond the city. Regardless
of “job creation” – which comprises sweeping streets and cleaning toilets –
those affected by this history of Cape Town’s geographical apartheid design
still have to pay R100 a week to get into the city using public transport. The
MyCiTi bus doesn’t go as far as the Cape Flats, and Metrorail is a no-go after
dark, even on the rare occasions it runs on time
Rasool explains clearly: “The
city thinks of District Six as a koeksister and samosa place, a land
restitution theme park. It has no clue that D6 begins and ends within certain
boundaries. The Fringe is part of the way the market has balkanised the history
of D6.”
In a paper by Bonita Bennett,
director of the District Six Museum, she says that the “idea to define this
part of District Six as the Fringe, and to include the Cape Peninsula
University of Technology campus and not the area of return, smacks of apartheid
thinking: a bantustan approach to the mapping of spaces. Key sites that should
become important spaces for innovation and design are located in the area that
is being cut off from the city centre symbolically and geographically.”
For example, the celebration of
the famous Charly’s Bakery (Oprah had cake there) as innovation when in fact it
stands on the site of a Jewish bookshop, Beinkenstadt, is part of the Fringe’s
modelling to obliterate this, and other, memories.
Makalima-Ngewana says she
recognises the difficulties and issues that have come with the Fringe project.
“Let me put it this way: success always comes with intended consequences,” she
says. “What we can commit to is that
every time an unintended consequence has been identified, we hope we can
address it. The Fringe is exclusionary – that is what has been said. District
Six was the whole of the Fringe, including Woodstock. Why would you take down
the space and call it ‘the Fringe’? That’s the question being asked. We need to
go back and address that. So we can always continue to have dialogue with
people who are able to give us feedback and are able to indicate where there
are consequences that we didn’t intend.”
But her power can go only so
far. Although the CTP initiates dialogue between all stakeholders, no one is
doing much to dismantle a system in which the disempowered are exploited to the
point of the loss of livelihood and dignity.
Her job is not easy. “We are
not ineffective and we have not given up hope, because who else plays this kind
of role?” she asks. “But are we being lambasted from both sides – of course we
are. No one is ever able to take initiative without at one stage all the
partners pointing at the mediator, saying ‘we need to do something faster’.”
The hard question is: What if
D6 is declared a heritage site? How can we be sure something different will
happen? It is an imperfect comparison, but once Bo-Kaap was declared a heritage
site, the area became extremely sexy, and while there are benefits to this,
mostly for traders, it comes at the expense of many of the original inhabitants
who made the space what it is. The rates in Bo-Kaap have gone up dramatically
in the past few years, as the property value has risen. Its location on the
mountain, a five-minute walk to the city centre and an eight-minute drive down
to the beaches of Clifton, as well as its breathtaking view, makes it highly
desirable for both property owners and tenants alike. The rates in Bo-Kaap are
now comparable with those in Camps Bay, and with this comes inflated rent.
Heritage is hot. Young middle class newbies to the area speak of the
“diversity” in the “multicultural” neighbourhood as an advantage of living
here. And there’s an element of risk as a point of pride (lots of coloured
people, you know).
The personification of this
influx is the writer of a blog called The Only Blonde in Bo Kaap, who published
a post a few months ago about her brother coming to visit from Johannesburg.
She is afraid he might not appreciate the “more shabby than chic appearance my
street’s going for”.
“I wouldn’t blame him. I mean,
it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had a somewhat dramatic reaction to our
’hood. On the contrary, we’ve had a few. In fact, most people think they’ve
taken a wrong turn when they arrive on our street. It’s an endless source of
entertainment and one of the reasons I love living here. “To be fair, though,
most people who come to our house are nervous about parking their cars on our
street. They use the view from our balcony (we have a pretty decent view) as an
excuse to glance over and check if their humble steeds are still awaiting them.
Fortunately for our social lives, all of them have been. Touch wood.”
Other neighbourhoods in the
city centre are not known for their risk and danger. She wouldn’t have written
about it in Oranjezicht, Tamboerskloof or Green Point, all direct neighbours of
Bo-Kaap.
Many members of the historic
community of Malay and coloured residents have made the great trek to the other
side of the mountain. Some in the area believe that the city saw this coming
and let it happen, and even encouraged it. Khadija Isaacs lives in the council
flats at the highest point of the neighbourhood, at the top of the steep hills.
She doesn’t even notice the tour buses anymore. At least 20 of them drive
through the neighbourhood every day, slowly, with their lightly tinted windows.
The flocking tourists are clearly fascinated by the attached houses, the
turquoise next to the green next to the fuchsia. With their cameras in hand and
proudly wearing their hiking boots in the city, the tourists have become
something for the neighbourhood locals to snort and shake their heads at. They
come, they click, they leave, and they write about the “Malay quarter” on their
blogs. But they never really come further than the top of Wale Street. They
never get to where 70-year-old Isaacs’ home is, an area marked by the
pink-beige colour of all of Cape Town’s council flats. Isaacs bought her flat
from the city council for R8 500 in 1999,
unaware that she would then have to pay rates and levies of R795 a month
on a flat that is now worth R590 000.
“My pension is R1 200,” she
says, sitting on her floral couch, next to her 90-year-old mother, Ayesha.
Every space in the small lounge is covered in artificial flowers, framed
photographs of the weddings of daughters, nephews, grandchildren, and on the
walls hang an image of the Kaaba in
Mecca and framed Arabic script. “But I’m not going to sell this place because
it is my home since 1958. Everything is here – there are mosques around us, I
can walk to town. But now these new people sit with bottles of alcohol on their
stoep and I have to see this when I walk down to the mosque.”
The term “Cape Malay” is
insulting, says Osman Shaboodien, head of the Bo-Kaap residents’ association,
sitting in the legendary Bismiellah Restaurant. It was a classification made by
the apartheid government under the Group Areas Act. The slaves who were brought
to Cape Town by Dutch colonisers in the 1700s and who lived in Bo-Kaap were
mostly from Malaysian, Indonesian and other South Asian countries.
“Since the 1990s, when the act
was abolished, it has been an uphill battle for us,” says Shaboodien. “Property
owners are now paying the same rates as those in Camps Bay. Of course people
want to live here,” he says, “this place is a gem. But we will do our damnedest
to stop this gentrification.”
But, ultimately, Shaboodien and
others who feel the same way in this community have little power to stop these
changes, as the city’s willing buyer-willing seller principle, a fundamental of
the capitalist system, doesn’t make room for historical significance and
empathy in its policy.
Anton Groenewald, executive director
of tourism, events and marketing at the City of Cape Town, says the city met
with the association twice in the past two years when the association
approached the city about the issue of new residents.
“Concerns were raised that
traditional ‘Malay’ families that have stayed in the Bo-Kaap have left. It
transpired in all those instances that families that have had an association
with the Bo-Kaap for generations have opted to sell willingly to external
buyers. In most (actually in all) instances, the other buyers were generally
not ‘Malay’ or of Muslim origin. It also transpired that these families sold at
very high prices relative to the size of the house or plot.
“The consequent financial
impact is that the city continues to have a home owner who pays rates and
complies with the heritage status of the property … Admittedly, the property
market for residential housing in the city centre has seen very high prices
being reached. However, the private property market is not regulated to ensure
that ownership is restricted to one racial or ethnic or historic grouping.”
City of Cape Town media manager
Reddy says that properties are valued at “market value”, which is defined by
law as “the amount the property would have realised if sold on the date of
valuation in the open market by a willing seller to a willing buyer”. She adds
that property owners are provided with the opportunity to object to the
property values as published in the valuation roll during the official
objection period. “If the property owner has financial circumstances that make
it difficult to pay the rates, they are encouraged to contact the city’s
revenue department to make the appropriate arrangements.”
Makalima-Ngewana says she is
aware of the difficulties facing the people of Cape Town. But her sway only
reaches so far. “We are not ineffective and we have not given up hope, because
who else plays this kind of role?”
A discussion on all of these
issues – the Fringe, District Six, Bo-Kaap, gentrification – leads to passing
bucks and shifting blame. The CTP refers questions to the CCID, which refers
questions to the City of Cape Town, which in turn refers questions to the
Fringe and to Sahra. And nobody answers them. Everyone has a different
“mandate”. And it’s easy to maintain this lack of accountability when the
structure of the city and its partners and projects is highly complex and
bureaucratic; some are partly funded by the city, some are fully funded and
partly fund others. Dialogue, capitalist system, market, improvement, vision – it’s
all rhetoric for justifying the further whitewashing of city.
If District Six and Bo-Kaap’s
heritage were given the respect and clarity they deserve, these current illegal
forced removals, once again making sure that the poor black and coloured
populations are hidden behind the mountain, would perhaps be not as harshly
offensive as they are. If this were the case, the city and the CTP would not be
able to use design as leverage to whitewash the city’s failure to mend the
broken back of its racist landscape.
Recreating history and erasing
memory when it is convenient is not going unnoticed. But it’s usually the
economically disempowered, who were also those directly affected by this
history, who feel most strongly about it. There are structures and financial
interests in place within the city, often through its joint structures with the
private sector, which make synergy between stakeholders very difficult.
The disadvantaged and
dislocated are shouting at the top of their lungs for the city to pay attention
to them, to spend money on toilets in the townships rather than the R6 million
it spent on applying and being named World Design Capital 2014.
’Design’ has ensured their
voices are too far to hear, just like it did in 1966.
