Memories and Cultures in Cape Town

F ree download from HS R C Press EDITED BY SEAN FIELD, RENATE MEYER & FELICITY SWANSON FELICITY & MEYER RENATE FIELD, SEAN BY EDITED THE CITY IMAGINING MEMORIES AND CULTURES IN CAPE TOWN CAPE IN CULTURES AND MEMORIES Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa Press wwww.hsrcpress.ac.za C R First published 2007 S ISBN 978-0-7969-2179-6 © 2007 Human Sciences Research Council TThe views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not nnecessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the iinformation to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. Copy-edited by Karen Press TTypeset by Jenny Wheeldon Cover design by Fuel Design Cover photographs by M. Emilia Ciccone: (1) ‘Lwando’, Long Street, Cape Town 22006; (2) ‘Sisi’, Kloof Street, Cape Town 2006, with special thanks to Lwando and Sisi for the inspiration. ree download from H Print management by comPress F Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 www.eurospangroup.com/bookstore Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com Contents Foreword v Preface vii Introduction 3 Sean Field and Felicity Swanson DISRUPTIVE MEMORIES 1. Sites of memory in Langa 21 Sean Field 2. ‘So there I sit in a Catch-22 situation’: remembering and imagining trauma in the District Six Museum 37 Press Sofie M.M.A. Geschier C R 3. Between waking and dreaming: living with urban fear, paradox S and possibility 57 Renate Meyer 4.4 ‘The quickest way to move on is to go back’: bomb blast survivors’ narratives of trauma and recovery 75 Anastasia Maw 5. Where is home? Transnational migration and identity amongst Nigerians in Cape Town 93 Iyonawan Masade RESILIENT CULTURES ree download from H F 6. ‘Catch with the eye’: stories of Muslim food in Cape Town 115 Gabeba Baderoon 7. ‘Julle kan ma New York toe gaan, ek bly in die Manenberg’: an oral history of jazz in Cape Town from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s 133 Colin Miller 8. Da struggle kontinues into the 21st century: two decades of nation-conscious rap in Cape Town 151 Ncedisa Nkonyeni 9. Changing nature: working lives on Table Mountain, 1980–2000 173 Louise Green 10. ‘Language of the eyes’: stories of contemporary visual art practice in Cape Town 191 Thabo Manetsi and Renate Meyer 11. ‘Die SACS kom terug’: intervarsity rugby, masculinity and white identity at the University of Cape Town, 1960s–1970s 207 Felicity Swanson Picture credits 229 NotesN on contributors 231 Index 233 Press C R S ree download from H F Foreword We are often told that memory is important. So that we know where we come from as a basis for moving forward. So that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. So that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. And yet, how soon our memories seem to fail us. In the past, we were divided. The majority of people were excluded from the centres of power. It was selected individuals who were deemed worthy of commemoration throught museums, monuments, even street names. And now, even though we have embraced an ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ democracy, ‘the people’ still appear to be forgotten all too easily. Not just faceless, voting fodder, ‘the people’ are human beings who laugh, who cry, who hope, who fear, who suffer loss and who haveh dreams, who experience life and their environment with all of their senses: touch,t sight, hearing, smell and taste. Press Cape Town is still a city in the making. The question is, whose tastes, smells, feelings, C R sights and sounds will come to prevail in defining the character and experience of S thet city? Is our city merely a playground of the rich, with the poor experiencing whatw the city has to offer – even Table Mountain – merely as a backdrop to their daily struggles for survival? Is our city primarily geared towards tourists so that ‘the people’,p deemed to add little real value to the city, may be one-day, trickle-down beneficiaries?b TheT overriding strength of this book is that it places people – ordinary people – at thet centre of memory, at the centre of historical and contemporary experience, and thust at the centre of re-imagining and owning the city of Cape Town. It is as they speak – what they choose to say, what they choose to remain silent about, that we becomeb aware of the possibilities of the city, if it really did embrace all its people, in all of their diversity. AmongA other things, the speakers who participate in Imagining the City highlight ree download from H F thet ‘spices and fusions’ of their cuisine, their primal fear of terror (perhaps now transferable to feelings about violent crime), the history and significance of their musical preferences, their experience of Table Mountain as a haven yet also a place of hard labour. In doing so, these voices hint at the extraordinarily diverse, yet incredibly rich textures that flow under the radar of officialdom. Because of its diversity and its history, Cape Town is a complex organism. Its recent political history suggests that those charged with visioning and running the city will inevitably choose the easy, the obvious and the less challenging routes. On the underside of officialdom, however, are ‘the people’ with their diverse values, histories, musical preferences, experiences of nature, languages, cuisines, appreciation of sport and the arts, who will engage in ongoing conscious and v IMAGINING THE CITY: MEMORIES AND CULTURES IN CAPE TOWN unconscious struggles for hegemony of tastes, feelings, sights, sounds and smells. Democracy and popular culture intersect where people assert what is theirs, when they proudly celebrate themselves, and when they take ownership of their own lives and act accordingly. The value of this book – notwithstanding the limitations of books in terms of accessibility – is that it contributes to public discourse and debate about a vision for, and ownership of the city by affirming the memory (and chosen forgetfulness) of some of its inhabitants, and by hinting at the work that can, and should still be done in foregrounding memory and culture in the re-imagination of our city. MikeM van Graan Playwright and arts activist Press C R S ree download from H F vi Preface Imagining the City: Memories and Cultures in Cape Town traces the histories of people who live, work and creatively express themselves in the city. This book has been researched, written and produced by the staff and students of the Centre for Popular Memory (CPM) at the University of Cape Town. Our initial thinking for this book was partly shaped by the CPM’s previous book, Lost Communities, Living Memories:M Remembering Forced Removals in Cape Town. Soon after that book wasw launched we began to think about a more ambitious book, one that would conceptually interrogate memory, space and culture in the city. During the five yearsy of this book’s evolution our ambitions have been scaled down to the aim of producing a focused academic book that we hope appeals to broader public audiences as well. Nevertheless, our initial vision was not relinquished and this book reflects a commitment to giving young authors the critical space to think and write creatively about the histories of Cape Town. Press C WeW aim to show that Cape Town is so much more than its physical infrastructure R or landscape, or the stereotypes or clichés people use to describe it. As poet Stephen S WatsonW puts it in the anthology of writings about Cape Town that he has compiled, ‘As with any city that has been truly lived in, loved and at times suffered, it is a space coloured by memory, ambivalences, disaffections, obsessions. But this is whatw is meant by a city imagined…’ (Watson 2006: 9; his emphasis). In contrast to thet literary imaginings of Watson’s collection, this book presents oral and visual historicalh sources to demonstrate the profound significance of interweaving popular memoriesm and cultures of the city. What connects and holds these disparate elements togethert are people’s imaginative framing and re-framing of the city. Consequently, thist anthology is an implicit critique of how urban historians have constructed empirical approaches to the city’s history. ImaginingI the City is not only relevant to academic debates but also refers to ongoing contestations over city governance and identity. Crude generalisations about Cape ree download from H F TownT not being an African city are often located in the hurt and anger evoked by people’s experiences of discrimination. But the undeniable racism and xenophobia that exist in Cape Town will not be undone by the ahistorical Othering of the city. Taking a different view, this book approaches Cape Town as an ambiguously African city. The more provocative question, then, is: what particular kind of African city is it now and can it become in the future? In our view, Cape Town need neither mimic European cities nor copy ‘the image of other African cities’ (Hendricks 2005) and should not be evaluated in these absolutist terms.

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