Although Cape Town has had a port for hundreds of years, it has never been a port city like, for example, Istanbul. It was started as a result of human necessity by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th Century as a half-way house and watering hole on the long voyage to India. However, by the fifties, the richer, mostly white population had moved away from the exfoliating atmosphere of tar and sea- winds of the docklands and made for the more salubrious suburbs with their welter of lush green lawns and stench of privilege.
The docks, the ships, the stoves, the grit, the coal heaving quickly slid beyond suburban view, too raw for the upwardly mobile and the docks soon became a place they visited on Sunday afternoons to wave Union Castle liners goodbye.
There is very little record of this part of town, which is why Billy Monk's photographs form such a vital link, not least because it is here, too, that slaves lived out chained lives and form a forgotten part of the fabric.
The docks became a place of edgy survival and even venality, a place where broken parts were recognised, where you could glimpse the salt mines of grief, depression, narcissistic injury and alienation, as seafarers from around the world searched for a loving touch. The Catacombs nightclub with its under welt of prostitutes, pick pockets and pimps symbolised this world and this is where Billy Monk found his home. A survivor who had crossed...
