Plans to commemorate Cape Town’s history of the dispossessed, after a burial ground with thousands of remains, including those of slaves, was unearthed at an inner city construction site in 2003, have been stalled amid bureaucracy even as construction of a luxury residential property at that site gets under way.
The memorial in the Prestwich area in Green Point was recommended by an independent tribunal, which last year rejected objections to construction of The Rockwell residential development at the former burial ground. The tribunal’s stipulation that the Cape Town city council, in consultation with the South African Heritage Resource Agency (Sahra), ”construct a suit- able memorial park or garden in an appropriate site in the Green Point area” was endorsed by Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan a year ago.
More than five months of discussions between the city council, Sahra and the Prestwich Place Project Committee, which had unsuccessfully objected to construction, have yet to bear fruit. Sahra says it is awaiting the council’s response on how traffic and infrastructure will be affected at one proposed memorial site before embarking on a public participation process.
Last month the agency declared, as provisionally protected, the Green Point burial grounds area — which stretches from Prestwich in Green Point to the Tana Baru kramat, itself threatened by development, in Bo-Kaap.
Current memorial proposals include interring some of the remains in a wall at the property development; the re-interment of remains at Tana Baru, the kramat where remains of slaves, Chinese indentured labourers, Khoi and San have also been found; and the developer’s proposed memorial mural at The Rockwell residential development.