Western Cape

Try turning away when the Kaaimans River Railway Bridge comes into view. You can’t; it is the very definition of eye-catching. You’re intrigued. Located between George and Wilderness in the Western Cape, the bridge crosses the Kaaimans River as it enters the Indian Ocean. Whether you spot it from the river below, the Dolphins Point viewpoint above, or the N2 as you navigate its curves, the bridge and the undeveloped forested hills as they rise above both sides of the river mouth present an awe-inspiring picture. Together, they reflect the past era of railways as well as the challenging natural landscape through which the rail traversed.

The famous bridge from the river below (Wikipedia)

So in February 2021 I was surprised to learn that there was an application to construct a home on the hillside next to the bridge. The request was seeking permission to clear vegetation and undertake earthworks in order to build a dwelling, two guest rooms, and associated infrastructure on the property. For this, the owner needed an OSCA permit. The Outeniqua Sensitive Coastal Area process is the most significant tool to protect the environment in delineated parts of the Wilderness area. OSCA, however, does not cover all properties in the area by any means; in fact, it excludes many oceanfront and other properties that need such...

Malagas is named after one of the last Khoekhoe ‘kapteine’ who was based near the (Breede) river. On 26 January 1791 the farm ‘genaamt Malegaas Craal geleegen aan de Breede Rivier aan den landouwer ene Adriaan Odendal toegeken is’. He remained until 1837.

Joseph Barry was born in England on 1 April 1796, one of 16 children. His parents died when he was young, and he joined two of his brothers in Spain and Portugal, studying the wine trade. In the path of Napoleon after his escape from Elba, Barry was arrested as a spy, but proved his innocence with a certificate from Lyons showing he was a commercial man.

Joseph Barry

After a short visit to the Cape in 1817 as an export agent for a London wine house Barry & Wilkinson, he returned two years later, just 23 years old, to settle. He became a partner in the company Norse, Christiaan & Co, but a year later it was bankrupt.

That year he also met the granddaughter of Dirk Grysbert van Reenan, but had to wait five years until she was ready for marriage. He considered her ‘the secret of my success’.

The years 1819-1822 were ones of drought and starvation (hongersnood) in the Overberg. A tender was sought for the transport of grain and rice to the...

It is with shock, disbelief and sadness that the Heritage Association of South Africa learned of the fire that engulfed the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town on 2nd January.

The damage is a tragic and devastating loss for all South Africans. We mourn with all South Africans. A building of this stature lives through and for its past, its present and its future.

This heritage building came into its own after 1994. As the legislative capital of the country, Parliament represents the essence of democracy.

It was declared a National Heritage Site by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and given a Grade 1 national status – the highest grade possible. It is a neo-classical building and compares to the official dominion buildings that evolved in Canada and Australia.

The building is filled with treasures of the past of all South Africa’s communities.

Old photos of the Parliament Buildings

In recent years great effort has been expended on ensuring that the building in all its dimensions speaks for all South Africans. Our Parliament is the custodian...

In the spring of 1941, the first ten thousand Italian prisoners of war (POWs) from the fronts of Ethiopia and Eritrea were brought to a camp, Zonderwater, near Cullinan [Ball, 1967]. Many of these POWs were responsible for the construction of passes like Chapman’s Peak and Bainskloof Pass. At Keerwater Camp, Worcester, 1500 POWs were used for construction of Du Toit’s Kloof Pass.

Record of Italian POW camps during Word War II (Zonderwater Museum)
 

Despite local folklore, no verifiable evidence exists of an Italian POW camp on the outskirts of Pringle Bay for road construction. No documentary evidence from authoritative sources confirms the existence of an Italian POW camp at present-day Glen Graig Conference Centre [Ball, 1967; Delport, 2013; Gorgatelli, 1989; Horn, 2013; Somma, 2013; http://www.zonderwater.com/en/].

Example of a common radar station access road (Bernard Price Institute)

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Nedbank’s history is an assemblage of 15 entities that merged into the group throughout the past two centuries allowing Nedbank to trace its origins back to 1831. This collective consists of entities such as the Board of Executors (BoE), Syfrets, the Permanent Mutual Building Society, the Cape of Good Hope Bank Savings Society, Boland Bank, UAL, the Natal Building Society, and of course the Nederlandsche Bank en Credietvereeniging.

Pretoria roots

The first South African branch of the Nederlandsche Bank en Credietvereeniging was opened in Church Street, Pretoria, in 1888. By 1897, the bank’s presence had grown exponentially, and a larger building was built. The structure, designed by WJ de Zwaan, was completed in 1897 and still stands today, and is in use by the Tshwane Tourism Office and is still known affectionately as the Old Netherlands Bank Building. This sandstone masterpiece served as Nedbank’s head office until 1953, when the bank moved into its third, and final, Pretoria-based head office, designed by Norman Eaton. It is still in use today, on what is now known as Thabo Sehume Street.

The first South African branch of the Nederlandsche Bank

Old post...

Tiervlei on the outskirts of Cape Town is my hometown where my great-grandparents moved from Ceres during the 1930s. Six of my grandmother's children, including my mother, were born in Tiervlei, on the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town now known as Ravensmead. Apartheid has shattered our family; my great-grandparents as well as my grandmother lost properties in the process. My grandmother and mother were eventually forced to Belhar.

Initially, I researched my family history and was disappointed with how little of the history of Tiervlei, including the section later renamed Ravensmead, was recorded while a rich history lives in the memory of the seniors. This encouraged me to write about the history of the area from the perspective of the memory of my community, supplemented with other sources. This was my encounter with Hardekraaltjie, where loved ones and friends were laid to rest. The youth mostly went to the forest for wood or recreational activities close to the cemetery in the area where Stellenbosch University's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and Tygerberg Hospital is situated.

The article is dedicated to my Tiervlei and surrounding communities who do not know what happened to their loved ones who were buried in the cemetery. It is emotionally exhausting to realize how successive state institutions have neglected the cemetery and offended those buried here and their families. Our deceased were first placed in the forest, classified as the poorer coloured class and later marked and removed as unknown persons and eventually just removed...

Some time ago, in a galaxy very far away, someone contacted me from the USA and told me that he was putting together a list of people who put together lists. As I had just published a "List of 19th Century Mission Stations in Southern Africa" he thought I qualified for the honor, and would I mind if he included me in his List of Lists or, more accurately, his List of Listers. At first I was a little put off. After all lists are boring, and who wants to be on a list of boring people, but then, after thinking about it for a little while, I eventually wrote back and said that, as he seemed to be harmless enough, he was welcome to my blessings. I have never heard from him since then, nor did I ever find out what did happen to his "List of Lists", but as no such book has ever made it onto the CNA's Best Seller List, or the Shortlist for the Booker Prize, I have always assumed that it never got published. Which fact made me very sad as I eventually came to realise that lists are the very foundation of a structuralist research methodology, a system of gathering data which seeks to find common ground between seemingly disparate snippets of information. I also came to realise that even telephone books have their place in a research library, and that the Directories published by the Likes of Donaldson & Hill before the...

This article "Slave Sales and Cape Town's Slave Tree Memorial" by Jaqueline Lalou Meltzer was previously published in the Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa volume 73, number 1 (June 2019): 17-36 and is reprinted with the permission of the Editor of the Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa. Click here to download the original article containing footnotes.

A quaint custom was observed in the Cape in the old days by the less inhibited citizens. They used to “bury the old year” a few minutes before midnight and immediately afterwards they greeted the New Year with shouts of: “The year is dead – long live the year!” That was in the days when New Year revellers of Cape Town belonged mainly to sporting clubs, and the Afrikaans name for them was klopse (clubs). The ceremony was preceded by festive marches to the yew [sic] tree that used to stand on Church Square. There they gave the old year, with all its disappointments, its fears and its sorrows, a symbolical burial, and one old writer describing the event in 1888 said that their torchlight processions with “impromptu bands innumerable” added “to the grandeur of the rites of the dead year.” Cape Times - 29 December 1979

Located on the traffic island in Spin Street in Cape Town is a memorial inscription which, built into the paving, is now almost illegible owing to the heavy flow of pedestrian traffic. It is just possible to make out the apartheid-style...

During the Royal Visit to South Africa in 1947 Princess Elizabeth celebrated her 21st Birthday. In a famous speech broadcast to mark the special occasion, and frequently re-broadcast since then, the Princess dedicated her entire life, "whether it be long or short" to the Commonwealth and Empire "to which we all belong".

Princess Elizabeth delivering her famous speech (Pathé News)

The media always mention that the speech was broadcast live from Cape Town on the day - but fail to note that the actual recording was made on the 11th April 1947 - ten days before her actual birthday - in the grounds of the Victoria Falls Hotel, Rhodesia, and not Cape Town's Mount Nelson Hotel.

Old postcard of the Victoria Falls Hotel

The speech was recorded, and flown by special flight to Salisbury, where it connected with a London-bound commercial flight, and rushed to Pathé News offices in the city. It was then copied and flown to Commonwealth countries to be screened in cinemas on the actual day of her birthday, 21st April.

On the occasion of her actual Birthday, the Royal Family were back in Cape Town, and another, identical broadcast was made...

Born in England but one of South Africa’s most famous architects, Herbert Baker flourished in South Africa from 1892 to 1913. He and his practice were responsible for numerous grand buildings including our Union Buildings in Pretoria, our High Commission in London called South Africa House (still in use) and other monumental government buildings. When he left South Africa it was to go and work in India, the 'Jewel of the Empire'. There he designed more monumental government buildings of which today the Indian government is very proud, and finally he littered Britain with war memorials and other Imperial Statements. He was a Big Deal in his time, a serious name.

Herbert Baker

An old photo of the Union Buildings from the air

Baker built a holiday home in Muizenberg, Sandhills, one of a group. In 1899 he designed Rust en Vrede for Cecil Rhodes, probably our grandest house, which Rhodes never saw built. He also built Vergenoeg, the house in the sand dunes and a national monument...