Idioms of Return: Homecoming and Heritage in the Rebuilding of Protea Village, Cape Town

Abstract

This article analyses ‘heritage’ as a conceptual category among current and former residents affected by the proposed redevelopment of Protea Village, a neighbourhood in Cape Town razed during apartheid. Former residents, who were forcibly resettled in townships on the outskirts of the city on account of being coloured, won their land back through the Land Restitution Programme in 2006. Some 86 families were planning to return. Based on fieldwork conducted intermittently between 2005 and 2008, this article analyses three different idioms through which former and current residents made sense of the pending return of the community. While those who supported it hailed the proposed redevelopment as a chance to right the wrongs of the past, to reverse the spatial legacy of apartheid and to put the new democratic South Africa into practice, others feared declining property prices and the development of ‘shanty towns’ on their doorstep. However, while relationships between former and current residents were fraught, various activities and events related to the return have resulted in new connections being forged between the returnees and the current residents. This article argues that the idiom of return as the reclamation of heritage served as a relatively uncontested and mutually intelligible frame of understanding to which both groups could relate.

Keywords:

• social memory
• heritage
• land restitution
• homecoming
• Protea Village
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

This article is based on fieldwork made possible by financial support from the Swedish international development cooperation agency and the Swedish National Heritage Board. I am grateful for comments by two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

In a similar vein Grundlingh (2004) describes the cautious and hands-off approach taken by the government when facing the centenary of the South African War of 1899–1902.

Some notable exceptions are the eGazini Outreach Project in the Eastern Cape, the District Six Museum in Cape Town and Lwandle Migrant Labour museum outside Cape Town.

Such classifications were based on the Population Registration Act of 1950, which divided the population into white, native (later changed to Bantu or African) and coloured groups (Worden 2001 [1994]:108). Later on further distinctions were made within the coloured group between ‘Indian’, ‘Malay’ and ‘Chinese’ subgroups.

The Group Areas Act of 1950, a central component of the apartheid system, prescribed residential segregation for the different population groups. See Shashikant Mesthrie (1993).

Formal interviews were semi-structured, conducted in English and recorded. Most were held in interviewees' homes, one in a workplace, and a few at Kirstenbosch and in the Protea Village grounds.

Heritage Day was introduced by the first democratic government as an inclusive public holiday when South Africans are expected to celebrate their diverse cultural heritage in a spirit of unity. Heritage-related events take place across the country on this day, which replaced the previous Shaka Day, commemorating the Zulu King Shaka. In 2007, a private initiative sought to launch the day as ‘Braai [barbecue] Heritage Day’ due to the widespread practice of holding informal barbecues. Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu endorsed the initiative (‘Tutu: One nation one braai’, Mail & Guardian 2 September 2008).

According to an estate agent in 2008 the ‘entry level’ for properties in Bishopscourt was R8-million, about €700,000.

Such objections were expressed at meetings and in minutes and newsletters issued by the two concerned residents' associations, as well as in the local media (see for example ‘Protea Village uncertainty’, People's Post 12 November 2006).

The case has involved a complex series of applications and counter-applications, which cannot be fully described here. At the time of writing in 2011 the court case was still unresolved.

At the time of writing, the majority of all land claims in South Africa were settled through cash compensation rather than restoration of land (Hall 2010).

For a more detailed account see McCormick (2005) and Shashikant Mesthrie (1998/99) or the unpublished theses by Baduza (2007), Banton (1995) and Hakimi (2010).

The church initially closed in 1968 but reopened in 1978 (interview, Cedric van Dieman 2006).

List of stakeholders, NM & Associates: Planners & Design ‘Environmental and technical feasibility study. Contextual analysis and design guidelines’, unpublished report, January 2004.

Compare Bohlin (2006) for a discussion of the ways in which land claims stimulated a reappraisal of local experiences of forced removals and contributed to the writing of new histories.

‘Healed village reaches out to others’, Southern Suburbs Tatler 27 February 1997.

FRA statement 2006.

A Bishopscourt Residents Association newsletter from 2008 provides bank account details for residents who wish to make a contribution towards the legal costs.

Interview, Edgar van Gusling, Kirstenbosch, 10 June 2008.

Interview, Heidi Carlse, Bellville, 3 June 2008.

Interview, PR (male, anonymous), Fernwood, 11 December 2007.

Ibid.

Interview, EW (female, anonymous), Bishopscourt, 10 June 2008.

Interview, Cedric van Dieman, Protea Village, 12 September 2006.

Interview, John Valentine, Kirstenbosch, 11 June 2008.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Interview, Cecil McClean, Protea Village, 28 May 2005.

Interview, TB (male, anonymous), Fernwood, 5 June 2008.

Ibid.

Interview, EW, Bishopscourt, 10 June 2008.

Interview, JR (male, anonymous), Fernwood, 8 June 2008.

The majority of the homes were indeed on the other plot that was returned to former residents. In the Arboretum area, however, the communal well, school, sports fields and a few residential structures were all situated.

Interview, EW, Bishopscourt, 10 June 2008.

Interview, TB, Fernwood, 5 June 2008.

Interview, Diane Paulsen, Retreat, 4 June 2008.

Interview, Heidi Carlse, Bellville, 3 June 2008.

One white resident, for example, supported the museum but believed he would feel ‘guilty’ and ‘out of place’ there (interview, TB, Fernwood, 5 June 2008).