Cole narrates a lost history of Nyanga in new book
Land invasion: Destruction after the raid on sand dune squatters
This month saw the launch of APC Honorary Research Fellow Josette Cole's new book, Behind and Beyond the Eiselen Line.
The book was launched in tandem with a commemoration service marking the 30th anniversary of the 1982 'Nyanga Squatters'' 23-day protest fast for the right to work and live in the Modderdam/Unibel, Crossroads, Nyanga and KTC areas of Cape Town.
It also contextualises an upcoming exhibition project of St. George's Crypt Memory and Witness Centre, which formed the focus of APC Megan Greenwood's MA research in 2010. Both projects foreground the APC's interest in the work that the past is made to do in South Africa's present-day civic arena.
Cole tells the story of the story of 57 men and women, from a piece of land on the edge of Crossroads in Nyanga, who came to St George's Cathedral in March 1982 to fast and seek refuge from forced removals by the apartheid government.
'Their story, and what happened before and after the fast, is a sober reminder and metaphor of critical social and political vault-lines and inequalities from the past that continue to haunt Cape Town, the Western Cape and South Africa in the present,' writes blogger Ebenaezer Appies. 'Above all, the story honours and acknowledges African women and men, who fought long and hard for a sense of place and belonging in Cape Town and those who bore witness and actively fought alongside them for justice and equality in an unjust apartheid time.'
The book is available at St. George's Cathedral Memory Witness Centre. For more information contact 1-5 Wale Street, Cape Town. (0210 424 7360 or crypt@sgcathedral.org.za