This is a recollection of my personal journey and association with Karel, through which I would like to pay tribute to a giant who championed the cause of heritage conservation far beyond the borders of the country where he lived, worked and passed away.
It was in 2001 when I met with Karel for the first time face-to-face, thanks to another formidable heritage practitioner, Gerhard-Mark van der Waal, or ‘GM’, as he was often known. He was preparing to immigrate to his country of birth and wished to restructure Cultmatrix CC, a heritage consultancy that he had helped to establish in 1997. The new ‘triumvirate’ of partners was an interesting one and worked well, possibly partly of our common Dutch origins. It was the beginning of a journey with Karel.
Although I had never met and worked with Karel up to that point, I knew about him from a newspaper photo published in the December 1975 Pretoriana (the bulletin of the Old Pretoria Society) edition. This showed him and a fellow student (Recht Hiemstra) brandishing placards to voice their opposition against the demolition of some of the historic buildings on the western side of Pretoria’s Church Square [see main picture]. They had joined a mass protest on the square, which took place the 26 July 1975, against the destruction of what Karel later often referred to as ‘shared built heritage’ and, as in the case of the most effective demonstrators, they were apparently threatened with arrest by the police. From...
