Cape Town - Some who had been violently uprooted from their homes and dispossessed as a result of the Group Areas Act as children or teenagers, now in their more senior years and accompanied by their younger family members, reflected in solemnity and joy as scores of people took part in the Newlands/ Claremont Heritage, Restitution and Environmental Justice Society’s annual Walk of Remembrance in commemoration of Heritage Day.
The annual walk was initiated by the society, with its pillars two of the oldest institutions in Claremont and Newlands – the Claremont Main Road Mosque and the St Saviour’s Anglican Church in Newlands, both celebrating their 170th anniversaries.
The majority of those joining were former members of the community and their families. Leading the march was the Young Guiding Stars Sacred String Band, one of the oldest Christmas Choir Bands, established in Harfield, Claremont, in 1932.
Commencing at Livingstone High School Hall, prayers were said and the walk thereafter was slow paced as families and friends reunited, reminisced and reconnected.
Inside the hall, there were several displays connected to the history of the communities, with an extensive exhibition on the late apartheid-era martyr, Muslim cleric and activist Imam Abdullah Haron.
Author and poet Richard Henry Buttress, 77, currently a Colorado Estate resident, was displaced from Newlands by the apartheid-era government, at the age of 13 or 14.
“It was in 1956, I think, when we found out that the Group Areas board had nailed an eviction notice on a big tree in Stoney Place in Newlands. And then the news spread and most of our people were heavily traumatised because now they had to search for other accommodation.”
Claremont Main Road Mosque Imam Rashied Omar said the society intended to identify different historical routes each year.
The walk is a third of its kind and was formally established in 2022 on Heritage Day.
St Saviour’s Anglican Church’s Reverend Keegan Davids said: “The story of South Africa is such a fragmented story, the story of divide, a story of exclusion and I think what a beautiful thing, when two institutions that are faith-based, that hold higher values can come together and begin to tell a new story, a story of connectedness, a story of shared humanity.”