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Mosaic benches unveiled at Jubilee Square to mark forced removals under apartheid era

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A website and memorial mosaic benches have been unveiled at Jubilee Square in Simon’s Town in Cape Town to mark the forced removal of people under the apartheid era’s Group Areas Act.

Simon’s Town was declared a white area in 1967, although forced removals started taking place two years earlier.

Residents from Luyolo, Red Hill, Dido Valley and Glencairn were forcefully relocated to the Cape Flats.

A place where people from all races lived, worked and played. This is how former residents of areas including Red Hill, Dido Valley, the Kloof, Glencairn and Luyolo Village remember Simon’s Town. That’s until the Group Areas Act ripped them away from the place they called home.

Thousands of people were forcefully moved to various areas across the Cape Flats. These include Ocean View, Grassy Park and Gugulethu.

Today, the Simon’s Town Museum, together with the Phoenix Committee unveiled the benches and also a website, to memorialise the injustice of the forced removals and to honour those whose lives were irrevocable changed.

Simon’s Town Museum and former resident Margaret Constant says, “I was probably 7 or 8 years old when we got forcibly removed out of Simon’s Town. And for me, it was very hard because when we moved to Ocean View, we had no freedom, into a flat and we stayed in the middle. My dad’s brother still stayed at the municipal cottages, and every holiday, I used to go back because I couldn’t handle the fact that I was forced out of Simon’s Town which was a community where everybody knew one another. It was safe and everybody knew each other.”

The mosaic benches, which depict specific streets from which people were evicted, were unveiled by some of the former residents affected by the forced removals.

Mzimkhulu Mamptua, a former Luyolo resident: “It was terrible to be quite honest. Because when I noticed good people are being taken into trucks that couldn’t even take everything, people’s belongings, it was the one thing that broke my heart. I was 7 at that time in 1965, I was born in 1958  when I had a tricycle, you know a bicycle with one wheel in the front and two at the back, it couldn’t fit in the bakkie.”

Remembering the forced removal of people under the apartheid era’s Group Areas Act:

Simon’s Town is rich in maritime history and home to the largest naval base in South Africa.

But some believe not enough has been done to preserve the history of the forced removals

Or the injustices of apartheid on communities who once lived here.

Horst Kleinschmidt, Simon’s Town Museum: “I’m appealing to a local community of white people whether they lived here before or not doesn’t matter, that they are part of the community that inherited the burden of the guilt of apartheid and somewhere at some stage I hope hands can be held by accepting the hand that has been extended by the community of those who were evicted from here which at the moment this extended into a void.”

Former residents have been encouraged to contribute to the website to preserve their history.

 

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