Central Library was formally opened on 29 July 2008 by the then Executive Mayor Helen Zille together with Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation jointly presiding at the Parade Street marquee-covered function. The City of Cape Town had taken a bold decision in 2004 to relocate the city library from the City Hall to its neighbor, the old Volunteer Drill Hall. The conservation and alteration of this building would fulfil the City's vision of establishing their library in its own identifiable and better equipped venue.
In the winter of 1977, one of the most severe of Cape winters, the South African government began a process of demolition of shacks in informal settlements (then known as squatter camps) which housed African people, mainly from the Transkei and Ciskei homelands. Most of the men in these settlements were in Cape Town legally and were legally employed. However, they were not content to live in hostels or other single quarters, and had brought their wives and young children to live with them, which was possible only in the informal settlements, but illegal. Some men and most of the women worked informally or were seeking work, and were in Cape Town illegally. The Western Cape was then a Coloured Labour Preference area and closed to all bantu other than those with specific permission to work there.
This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Society: it was founded in 1965 on the initiative of Eric Axelson (1913-98), Professor of History 1962-78 and Assistant Principal of UCT 1972-78. He was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
No sooner had Jan van Riebeeck arrived in Table Bay at the Cape on 6 April 1652, than he held a meeting on board ship on 8 April to discuss the construction of a fortress in accordance with his instructions from Die Here XVII, the Board of Directors of the Dutch East India Company. The land to be used had already been selected on 7 April so the inspection and measuring began immediately after the meeting and continued until 9 April when the demarcation of the site was complete.
Whenever and wherever new settlements are established, a supply of water is essential. Hence, Van Riebeeck's choice of the Liesbeek as a nucleus for expansion. As the settlement grew, keeping the river clean became a priority, especially as residents in Rondebosch and neighbouring areas were wholly dependent on the river and wells for water for domestic use and drinking.
The a nine-kilometre thread through the Cape Town suburbs of Bishopscourt, Newlands (past the Josephine Mill), Rondebosch and Mowbray, is a fascinating river. Firstly, it is most unusual for a river to have its source and mouth in the same city. The Liesbeek rises on the eastern face of Table Mountain; north of the South African Astronomical Observatory, it joins the Black River which flows into Table Bay. There are various theories about the name Liesbeek, but probably the most apt is the deriviation from the Dutch words lies meaning reeds and beek meaning stream.
The planting of vines at the Cape started a few years after Jan van Riebeeck had established an outpost of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) at De Kaapsche Vlek on the southern tip of Africa. In July of 1655, at van Riebeeck's request, three containers of vine cuttings and seeds arrived from the Company in Holland. The Dutch themselves were not producers of wine but acted as middlemen, shipping French, Spanish and Rhine wines to countries around Europe and England, so it was easy enough for the VOC administrators to send vine slips to the Cape. Thus arrived the first batch of vine cuttings, most likely vitis vinifera - the matriarch of the majority of old world cultivars and the primary source of wine and table grapes. There is no real certainty as to which specific cultivars were initially sent to the Cape, and for the following century there is a lack of clarity about exactly which grapes were grown here. However, experts seem to agree that Greengrape (Semillon), White French (Palomino), Steen (Chenin Blanc) and Hanepoot (Muscat of Alexandria) were the most likely cultivars first grown at the Cape.
The school's roots go back to 1841, when the St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Somerset Road started a mission school for the children of freed slaves in the inner city. The slaves had been freed in 1838 and that year the Church established a mission with Dr Adamson (Minister at St Andrews) and Rev. G W Stegmann (2nd Minister at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Strand Street) and started to work among the coloured slave population.
The Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Eole, by Charles Etienne Boniface, is a fascinating and largely forgotten text about an equally fascinating and largely forgotten shipwreck. The bare bones of the event are recorded in the South African Commercial Advertiser of Saturday, 29 May 1829 as follows: 'The Eole, of Bordeaux, from Calcutta and Bourbon, was wrecked about day-break, on the morning of Sunday the 12th of April, after much previous bad weather, near the mouth of the small River Guanga, about 30 miles to the westward of the Bashee.' Boniface's Narrative, published in November 1829, recounts the adventures of the eight survivors of the Eole from the time of the shipwreck until their departure from Cape Town five months later. The text passed almost unnoticed at the time of its publication and, like the shipwreck itself, has subsequently received very little attention from historians and scholars.
In 1920 the South African Government granted part of the Welgelegen Estate (the Mowbray end of the Rhodes Estate) to the University of Cape Town. On this site the University built the Wernher and Beit laboratories - better known as the Anatomy and Pathology blocks - as the first move in establishing a new medical school.
The study of genealogy is the history of a family, which reflects many of the social and economic conditions experienced by each generation. Researching dates and places of births, deaths and marriages, makes sense of events in history, e.g. the trek boers, the influx of settlers, miscegenation between whites, slaves, and Khoekhoe, to name but a few.
For Capetonians lucky enough to have been born at or near one of Villages of Liesbeeck Helen Robinson's book sheds new and different light on what must be, to them, pretty familiar ground. For the story of the indigenous peoples, the Free Burghers and the wild almond hedge are all part of the history and legend of the city's southern suburbs - an oft-told tale, one might say.
Almost 300 years ago a Scot from Aberdeen built a modest home on the slopes of Signal Hill. Andrew Thomas, or Andreas Tomasz as the Dutch authorities decided to call him, acquired this strip of land in 1708. Why he chose to ask for land so far up the [western] slopes and isolate himself from his fellow citizens on the floor of Table Valley is one of the mysteries that attend the person of Andrew Thomas? At that date, the little town, hardly worthy of the name, huddled near the shores of Table Bay with only one or two farms sited beyond the Company's Gardens that ended with what is now Orange / Annandale Street. The fact that even in 1708 the property was known as De Schotsche Kloof indicates that it was so named by Thomas, a true son of Scotland, who was determined to remember his native land in his adoptive country. This name is still in use.
Although far removed from the violence of the Boer War, Rondebosch had a role to play for in this suburb the British hospitals were situated to provide care and treatment for victims of the conflict. These institutions were No.3 Military Hospital and its neighbour, the Portland Hospital.
Springfield Convent, Wynberg, [see Map 1] is a well known primary and high school in the Cape peninsula. Since 1871 the Irish Dominican Sisters, owners of the property from that date, have played an important part in education. The property is vast with beautiful gardens and shady oaks while the school buildings are in keeping with modern trends.
Place names usually derive from three main sources. Descriptions of local features such as 'Klipfontein' [Stone-source], 'Zeekoevlei' [Hippo-Marsh], 'Baviaanskloof' [Baboon Pass], probably form the largest class. Personal names some of which stem from early inhabitants, form a second category, for example, Jan de Jonker who in 1691 owned the area still known as Jonkershoek. Origins of names of similar character often elude researchers : Simon van der Stel's 'Constantia' has never been solved; and who was 'Krom Antonie' [Hunched Anthony] whose name was given to a river in the Piketberg area? Names have been applied to honour a person specifically and these are usually obvious : 'Warden' in the Free State; 'Colenso' in Kwazulu-Natal; 'Upington' in the Northern Province, and so on.
Up to 1853, the [Roman] Catholics in the Cape peninsula had one church available in which to attend Sunday Mass, St Mary's Cape Town, the Cathedral of today. In that year, Bishop Raymond Griffiths, who was in charge of the Catholic Church at the Cape, leased a cottage in St Andrew's Road, Rondebosch, on the site of the present Dutch Reformed Church where he installed his brother, Fr Joseph Griffiths, as priest of the Rondebosch Mission. Here he lived and Mass was said while a permanent church was under construction.
Rondebosch [see Map 1] is the oldest suburb in the Cape peninsula. By the beginning of the 18th century nine free burgers were established on farms in the area. On the east of the Liesbeek River lay, from north to south, Rygersdal, Ecklenburg, Rodenburg, Rouwkoop and Louwvliet, while over the river and on the mountain slopes were Zorgvliet, Rustenburg, Groote Schuur and Westervoort. Today three of these names remain attached to properties, namely, Rustenburg, Groote Schuur and Ecklenburg (now incorrectly named Ecklenberg), but all diminished in area.
May Arderne Tredgold, affectionately and universally known as Dick, died on 14 January 1991, secure in the knowledge that her dearest and lifelong wish - the publication of the story of her family, The Ardernes and Their Garden - had become an established fact in December last.
In these days of self-service and supermarkets, even to call to mind the gracious times of home deliveries comes as a shock to the elderly and they are unknown to the present generation.
