Property, Housing and Neo- Apartheid Segregation in Hout Bay
Chapter Three Selling the Mountain: property, housing and neo- apartheid segregation in Hout Bay Figure 3.1. The global property market comes to the fishing village In July 2009, an article in the Sunday Times, the leading national newspaper, claimed that the Sentinel Mountain in Hout Bay was on the property market by auction, and that enquiries had been made by ‘talk show host Oprah Winfrey, hotel magnate Sol Kerzner, Donald Trump jnr as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’. In addition, the article continued, ‘the new owners could, if they wished ... name the peak after themselves as the Sentinel was not a registered trademark. Auctioneers had reportedly turned down two offers, including one for R15 1 million’ (News24 2009). Not surprisingly, alarm spread through Hangberg, the major settlement on the Sentinel Mountain. On 16 July 2009, the morning of the auction, a crowd of 300 protesters from Hangberg gathered outside the site of the sale, the Chapman’s Peak Hotel, led by the Hout Bay Civic. According to Isaac James, a Hout Bay Civic leader, they wanted to ‘sit down with the auctioneers' to convince the owners to halt plans to sell the prized real estate (News24 2009). However, once it was clear that the auction was proceeding, the protest became confrontational. Some protesters began to throw stones, and the police opened fire on the crowd, showering them with rubber bullets and teargas. This confrontation quickly brought the auction to a halt. In the aftermath of this event, it transpired that it was not the whole of the Sentinel Mountain for sale, which would have included Hangberg on its lower reaches.
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