I was awarded a small grant by the Heritage Management Organisation (Greece) through the Mellon Foundation.
Because our fishing community has no museum of its own, I had to re-imagine what a decolonial museum could look like. I began with a childhood memory — a glass jar filled with preserved snakes and other curiosities. From that memory, an idea grew: a museum that gives our community agency, co-created with fisher children and elders.
I wanted us to remember, retell, re-imagine, repair, and reclaim our stories.
I wanted a museum that is accessible both locally and globally — one that brings the archive back into our homes, where it belongs.
So the humble jar of preserve became a repository of archival materials, accessible through an augmented-reality app on iOS.
Here’s how it works:
Download the fisherchildAR app.
Purchase a jar of preserve from me.
Scan the image on the jar and experience the stories of Kalk Bay.
Every year we have a fund raiser which allows us to get the children to the beach, feed them lunch. Take them to museums and the aquarium, buy equipment. Next year since our founding we would like to make a contribution to senior committed youth leaders.
It has been an incredible year co-creating with the elders and children to make a virtual museum.
If you would like to support our project click the image below
Thank you! From the bottom of our hearts and our beloved ocean
Kalk bay has been voted one of the top 10 places to visit in the Cape. The indigenous small scale fishing community is one of the oldest in South Africa and created the sectors that we have today
“Die Land”
. The land where the fisher families live was first owned by the . A Jewish family from Latvia arriving in the 1920’s around the time as the Balfour declaration, 100 Years after the first communities settled. They built cheap corrugated iron dwellings and rented them to fishermen at exorbitant prices. This forced two families to share a dwelling. Many fishermen slept on their boats due to lack of space. Fishers were even forced to buy paraffin from them and got water from the mountain on Boyes drive.
Overcrowded dwellings with no electricity or water made for diseases, even leprocy and it quickly became known as the slum-lands, calling fishers “ a dirty drunken lot” by the gentrifiers looking to buy land. St James became the preferred choice to buy land. Now the Kalk Bay gentries are laughing all the way to the bank because their homes are worth more.
A small section was owned by Abdol Joseph who donated his part land to the Muslim community as a Kubbus (graveyard) to bury their loved ones.
There was much resistance and many letters written by Lizzy Gomez as well as Nicholas Menigo and a Fernandez and a petition signed by fishers including a letter to the Cape Times during 1925 and 1926 begging the British for a piece of land, not for free but to buy.
The Slums act was declared in 1934 by the British. Their reason; to upgrade areas in Cape Town. The Wolfsons were handsomely paid for their land. Fishers were asked to vacated to Retreat and again they resisted. They needed to be able to see their boats incase there were storms which is why the flats are situated where they are today.
Abdol Joseph was given a measly 50 pounds to exhume the remains of the families that were buried there. He was not compensated for his land. The community still speaks of restless ghosts.
Fifty four, one and two bedroom British government barrack flats, a school and a small clinic was build between 1945 and 1947 forcing many other families to find homes as there was not enough.
A waiting list was set up, forcing the widows and children of fishers to move out to make space for fishermen waiting to receive homes to be close to the sea. My grand mother was one of those women and was moved to Manenberg Heideveld with her five little girls, away from her family, community, place of worship, work and her children’s school. People who had been waiting for years on never got flats and some people skipped the queues, The problem of overcrowding was never solved because fisher families were large.
The land, a Park shared by St James RC Primary School for fishermen’s children (to which my mom and I both went, we even shared the same teacher), belonged to COCT. We never did own land. Though we were poor, we were one big happy family ,
growing up in a safe, matriarchal community. Held and loved by all mothers. We had the freedom of the mountain but not the white beaches. Fisheries beach was ours and for the people of the Cape flats. Our father brought home small fries. We learned cultural and custodial practices passed down over generations. There are seven generations of people living here, my daughter a seventh. We shared, food, mothers and stories and supported one another in times of need. In the 1950’s came Apartheid and then the communities were hit with forced removals. Kalk bay was declared a white area and all brown bodies received letters to say that they had a year to vacate. Many white people refused to sign the petition saying that we would devalue their properties. There group areas moved a third of our families to Steenberg, Retreat, Heathfield and the Cape flats. Windsor Road, by the Olympia Café was the hardest hit where the majority of people were brown including my own family. Imagine living in Kalk Bay for two hundred years, never to wake up hearing or smelling the sea again. Many of our Uncles slept on our floors. We were as many as 9 people sleeping in our one bedroom flat sometimes. They did so because they had to wake up at 3am.I missed my family and Aunts and uncles. I missed Uncle Jacky the shoemaker, who tinkered with his hammer and anvil and fixed the oilskins of fishers in exchange for a bunch of hotott and I missed plonking on the pianos at Sylvesters, once a forge owned by Christian Adam’s who made wagon wheels. It was a knock to the community. We were never physically segregated, but often as a child a wished too for the things a saw my neighbours bring home, or the things I saw inside the houses my mother cleaned. Having white people across the road humanised us for them. With the help of the Black sash and some white community members, the resilience of the community and the local churches who collected petitions, we received a 15 year respite but there was the threat of a harbour being build in Strandfontein looming over our heads. A lady from the Black Sash, Monica Richkins, to remember her name and think of the fact that she was rich, but very kindly paid her lawyers to fight for out right to live there. The fishers put tins on their boats and collected enough money after each catch and paid Monica Richkins back very single cent she gave. She didn’t want the money and so she opened the the first kindergarden, called Kalk Bay toddlers club in 1976 of which I was part of the first intake. I was three years old in 1976. Up until today it remains a grade R classroom. What a legacy she has left. Following that the Rates payers and Anglican Churches organised the fish and fun fair fund raiser with drum majorettes, food stalls, boats rides,marching bands, the Atchas and even a float going down Kalk Bay main road. Mr Ladan as King Neptune and a Queen and two princesses from the community. There was even a big wheel.
Activists in our community, Mymoena Poggenpoel, Valda Sasman Smith, James Edwards and Ivan Tiechardt formed a community who fought for flats to be sold to the fishers to stop widows from losing their homes. Much to the false rumours spread by the gentries claiming that we got them for free. The flats were sold to us in 1995.
There was a rule that the flats were not to be sold to anyone who was not part of the community. And of course that has lapse and the same fishermen’s families many of whom are pensioners in their 70’s and fishermen who often cant go out to sea are being forced to pay high tariffs because suddenly the value of their homes have increased due to gentrification.
Our first flat was sold by a woman who didn’t feel any connection to Kalk Bay once her husband died and wanted to move to her children in Ocean View. Members of the community begged her to sell to them but she went to the money and sold is to a white Afrikaner sculptor who illegally broke every heritage law and still his plans have not been approved. He even knocked on the neighbours door asking if they wanted to sell
Your families have benefited from the worn hands and impervious faces of our fathers and grandfathers so you could have and continue to have fish on your table!
