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Simon’s Town was a late addition to my South Africa itinerary. In fact, I didn’t know about this seaside town until I was already in the Western Cape. But it was here that I finished my trip, and I could not have asked for a better closure.
Now, I had a fairly specific intention when I came to South Africa. It was to learn more about its apartheid history. I chose Cape Town instead of Johannesburg, so that I could have Robben Island in my itinerary. Besides, it would also allow me to go all the way down to the famous Cape of Good Hope, the rounding of which had changed the fate of so many nations, and world history. And I added a third reason, since I was coming in spring: to see the desert bloom.
But I had a few days left before my flight back. And I considered just staying in Cape Town. After all, the trip had been long. Perhaps I should simply spend my last days at Sea Point, by the sea that I loved.
But something stopped me. My rule of thumb is to choose a secondary location in a country, for a first visit. A small town or rural location, after the major city, just to have a better context. And even though I had just gone to Namakwaland, it was more of a tour rather than slow travel.
Moving around Table Mountain to Sea Point felt as though it might be like travelling to Kuala Lumpur, and then staying in Mont Kiara. I thought, it was probably no added context at all.
How I ended up in Simon’s Town
But that brought up a new problem. If I were to choose a second location, where should it be? Even just within the Western Cape, there were simply too many possibilities.
Should I choose a national park location? But the Western Cape is full of national parks, both terrestrial and marine. What about a historical town? Yet, even if I focused on the European settler history (since I had devoted the bulk of my trip to the perspective of native and coloured groups), there was still a diverse selection of Dutch, British, and even French settler history.
Should I pick a tourist town?
Most people go to Stellenbosch, or Franschhoek. But so what? Since when did I choose destinations based on ‘most people go there’?
A local on couchsurfer recommended Langebaan. It’s by the coast, and supposed to be beautiful. And I do, after all, love marine landscapes. Or I could go along the southern coast to Hermanus. It’s closer, and you could go on whale cruises from there.
Yet they seemed so far. If I just wanted a seaside town, Hout Bay was much closer.
A different name drew my attention on the map. Or even… Simon’s Town.
Should I focus on what I came for in the first place?
The thought intruded upon me, that I should stick not to Cape Town, but to my reasons for coming to Cape Town. I felt that I was done with apartheid history. And how could I improve on Taryn’s tour of the Northern Cape flora?
But I visited the Cape of Good Hope only briefly, on an Xplorer bus day tour. It was short, for a place so significant. I remembered thinking then, that I should consider exploring one of the towns along the Cape peninsula.
Now, without a car, it didn’t seem easy to explore the peninsula from the peninsula. In fact, it was easier to find tours from Cape Town. But what if I tried anyway?
Drawn to Simon’s Town
I looked through the towns again, on the map. I remembered Fish Hoek from the Xplorer bus to Cape Point. A very Dutch-looking town with, unsurprisingly, fishing.
But then I remembered passing by Simon’s Town as well. In fact, the bus tour stopped at a place next to it, where we could see the African penguins in Boulders Beach. On Simon’s Town itself, the tour commentary mentioned the navy, and its interesting British architecture, but had nothing else to say.
Yet even though I only saw it in passing, Simon’s Town did indeed seem familiarly British. And somehow, it just felt right. The name seemed to lift from the map every time I looked. Go here.
Little did I know, that the Simon’s Town Museum was going to be one of the significant destinations of my trip. And that, contrary to my initial assumption, the universe was not yet done giving me the apartheid lessons I had come for.
Checking into Simon’s Town
I wasn’t sure how else to travel to Simon’s Town without renting a car, so I kept it simple. My Uber dropped me off at the Central Hotel Guest House, an old hotel right on St George’s Street. It had a charming facade, with a balcony gallery on the first floor that doubled as the canopy for the ground floor footpath that ran across all the establishments on the street.
The rooms were upstairs, and open out to the gallery. They were spacious, with colonial-style furnishing that made you feel like you might be a guest in its heyday.
Well, I told myself as I settled in. Simon’s Town has a museum, after all. So there must be something here. And besides, there’s a naval base, and though it is long since my navy reservist days, that’s sort of a connection. Worst case scenario, even if I find nothing of interest, at least I would get a few quiet days in a seaside town that reminded me faintly of England.
The reception had several pamphlets. Among the tourism pamphlets I took, one was an attractions map, and another had the town history. The man who received me confirmed that the hotel was among the oldest in town, and quite historical.
But Simon’s Town was more than historical – there was whimsy as well.
Oh, keep the windows closed, he cautioned. If the baboons come, don’t let them in.
The what now? Apparently, Simon’s Town has resident baboons. I guess, it’s sort of like how places in Malaysia might have resident macaques?
Sure enough, I saw one crossing the road from the balcony that same evening, amusingly assisted by a crossing guard! Later that night, I could hear them invade an alley.
Wag ‘n bietjie…
There was still several hours of daylight, and the weather was fine. By then, I knew not to take it for granted in August. So I went out straight away – towards the sea, of course – but I decided to first walk all across the front of the block before crossing the street. Glancing up a lane before I crossed, I paused.
Is that… a mosque?
Perhaps there was more to Simon’s Town than I initially assumed, I mused. But the sea was pulling at me, so I put a pin in it and pledged to explore the kloof later.
Simon’s Town has a boardwalk centre at its main pier. I entered it and found some shops and tourism charters. Passing through quickly, past the restaurants, I found myself at the waterfront.
In the middle was a leafy enclosure with a craft market. But it was a colourful bench that caught my eye. It was surfaced with mosaic, and said “WAG ‘N BIETJIE“2. The words beneath it were in English though, and made me pause again.
But that was not all. As I wandered the area, I found more historical plaques. Yet one topic came up again and again. 1967 appeared in the town chronology that marked Simon’s Town being a municipality, and when it got a railway station. It was etched on an older plaque along the main street. On the Memory Wall nearby, this same history was prominent.
This history seemed so important here. A lingering loss. Unlike say, District Six, you wouldn’t know about it unless you physically came to Simon’s Town. But if you were in Simon’s Town, you absolutely could not miss it. It brought to mind the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood in Cape Town, which was basically covered in murals supporting Palestine, but you would probably not know unless you went in person.
A homeless man accosted me as I contemplated the wall. Unlike most homeless people in Cape Town, he looked white – or possibly ‘coloured’. I could smell the alcohol on him; but while he was clearly drunk, he didn’t seem hostile.
Like the homeless in Cape Town, despite his circumstances, he still addressed me as though he were a regular local. Upon discovering that I was a tourist, he tugged at my arm to show me the exhibits on the Memory Wall. And while I couldn’t quite get what he was trying to say, I could tell it was a mixture of despair at his situation, but that his town’s history was nevertheless very important for me to know.
What an intriguing little town.
The intriguing race dynamics in Simon’s Town
I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but from the very first day, Simon’s Town came across truly multiracial. But, I thought, Cape Town was also diverse.
On my walk to find the start of Simon’s Town Historic Mile, I passed by a Muslim-owned superette. A trio of white young lads passed in front of it, stopping to greet the young man out front – perhaps the son of the owner – like they were best bros. They invited him to go somewhere, but he declined, saying he had to mind the store.
And there was the staff at Minari Korean Kitchen, who casually told me they kept a separate halal-only griddle for certain dishes.
I tried to figure out what it could be over the next few days. And maybe it was really down to the body language. Like the white customers – clearly regulars – who chatted with the black cashier at the waffle place like they were neighbours. Not just friendly, but like they might actually hang out, ‘ask-after-family’ close.
And I guess maybe the pattern that my mind noticed was that there was no pattern. The body language is like one community. They had the same manner to one another, irrespective of any race combination. So much so that I thought it might distinguish longterm Simonites from those who were new to town.
Simon’s Town Museum
Somehow a seashore smells ‘right’ when it smells of kelp, I thought to myself. That was a consolation, for the beach wasn’t very inviting in the dreary weather of the day.
But I went down anyway, as I could never resist the shoreline.
I had considered going on some kind of cruise on my second day, having discovered that Simon’s Town also does marine cruises. But the weather forecast was just bad enough to eliminate the marine life cruises during my days there.
Perfect for a visit to Simon’s Town Museum, though.
It was also fine enough for walks, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and walked all the way to the railway station, so that I would also be walking the Historical Mile on the way back.
Long Beach was just by the Simon’s Town station. So despite the gloomy weather, I went down to the sand for a while.
But the sun was getting high, and I hastened to the museum, in case it might close early on the weekend.
A short walk later, I arrived at the old Residency building that now houses the museum. It was open – but I had one hour.
“You can come again on Monday,” said the man inside. The ‘real’ museum people weren’t there, he explained. He was just helping out that day.
For the most current opening times and entry fees, visit the Simon’s Town Museum website. The website is also a good introduction to the history of Simon’s Town if you want to get an idea of the museum exhibits.
Before Simon’s Town
Simon’s Town Museum was not very big. But it was comprehensive. The exhibits covered different eras of Simon’s Town, though the museum sections didn’t seem too clearly separated, and I found myself crossing eras as different displays caught my attention. But as I’m writing this, the museum seems to be closed for refurbishment, so maybe the new layout will have a more distinct flow.
Nonetheless, the history museum didn’t begin with the founding of the anchorage of Simon’s Town. It began instead with the natural history of the Cape.
False Bay, which the Cape of Good Hope enclosed with Cape Hangklip on the opposite side, is relatively young, geologically speaking. The Cape peninsula was an island a couple of million years ago, and there was no bay at all, and none of the southern African capes, during the Last Glacial Maximum just 20,000 years ago.
The museum explained how the San (Khoikhoi3) adapted to their landscape. And that really, whether you thought the Cape was abundant with food or not, depends on whether you insisted on growing crops as though in Europe.
Exhibits described the abundant marine ecology in False Bay, as found at the start of the European arrivals. Bluefin tuna of up to 250kg were caught regularly. Today, many of the species are seldom seen outside of marine reserves.
On land, once upon a time, four of the Big 54 animals were found in the region, alongside others such as hippopotamus and hyenas. Most did not survive the new settlers of the late 17th century. The ecocide forced the Khoi into farm labour, or be hunted themselves.
The backup anchorage of the VOC
Of course, the main part of the museum covered the history of Simon’s Town following the establishment of the VOC settlement as an alternative anchorage, being safer from winter storms compared to Cape Town. Thus began its long and diverse settlement history.5
Like most VOC settlements in the Cape, its original purpose was to supply the demand for meat, vegetables, and wine for the ever-growing VOC trading fleet sailing the new route to Asia. The Dutch-German settlers6 soon expanded into Khoi land, establishing farms and corrals with the labour of enslaved people trafficked from Southeast Asia, the Bengal coast, Madagascar, and West Asia.
‘The most strategic outpost of the Empire’ was a dangerous thing to be, mere decades before the upheavals that disrupted the power balance between Europe’s global thallasocratic empires. For the French revolution was about to take place, and the subsequent Napoleonic wars further re-arranged alliances in Europe.
Fearing French influence in the critical shipping bottleneck at the Cape, the British pre-emptively invaded. All the way in the southern tip of Africa, Simon’s Town was captured twice during this period of European turmoil. It stayed in British hands after 1806, when it became a Royal Navy base.
Simon’s Town saw more conflict in the Anglo-Böer wars. Böer prisoners were sent to camps in the Cape, some of which were around Simon’s Town. Those who refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown were shipped away to camps far away, to Bermuda, Ceylon, and St. Helena. Just as the VOC had once exiled Indonesian rebels of colonial rule to the Cape.
The Cape Malays of Simon’s Town
The founding history of Simon’s Town was why it once had a Malay Quarter7. Many of the enslaved people brought over to build the town as well as do other skilled labour, were taken from the Malay archipelago, mainly across what is now Indonesia.8
But slaves were also emancipated every so often. This resulted in a population of “Free Blacks” in Simon’s Town, who were not necessarily literally black nor even Africans, but were typically exiled or freed Malays9 and mixed race people.10
Although religions other than Dutch Protestantism were illegal, some Malay slaves managed to continue practicing the Islamic religion in secret.11 So when the British took Simon’s Town and lifted the ban, the Malay population established a mosque and practiced openly.
Among notable Malay historical figures in Simon’s Town was the “Tuang”12 of Antonie’s Gat, Sultan Kaharuddin from Sumbawa (in present day Indonesia). A spiritual Sufi adherent and political leader, he was banished with his son in the mid-1700s for resisting Dutch colonialism. They were exiled to Simon’s Town and imprisoned in the very same Residency that now houses the museum. But they escaped.
Sultan Kaharuddin hid in a cave near Cape Point, where his captors never found him. His cave hiding place is now known as Antonie’s Gat, after the name the Dutch gave him, and which is still the surname of his descendants.
The British period turned Simon’s Town into a proper naval town. This also meant even more racial diversity, for the Royal Navy had a diverse crew.
This was the period when the Royal Navy took on crew from the African coastlines: the Kroomen from the West African Kru tribe (disappointingly, the etymology is unrelated to the word ‘crew’), and Muslim Siddis from East Africa. Although they served under contract, with most returning home, many married local women and remained at the Simon’s Town naval base.
Thus a population of black people arrived in Simon’s Town, who were never enslaved. And although a racial hierarchy remained, perhaps it still contributed to why Simon’s Town developed more egalitarian racial relationships in the decades prior to apartheid, than elsewhere in South Africa.
1967 apartheid evictions: The determination to remember
But I kept making beelines to the exhibits related to the forced removals of Simon’s Town. In the museum, I finally found some answers to the ubiquitous memorials around town, but which were conspicuously absent from tourist-oriented descriptions of Simon’s Town. And this is a shame, because the apartheid history of Simon’s Town is quite unique.
During the era of the Group Areas Act, the towns and cities of South Africa were partitioned into race-specific areas. Desirable areas were typically zoned for “whites”, and any “black” or “coloured” peoples living there were removed by force. Many towns and cities were simply forced to segregate into these “group areas”. However, black residents were more likely to be entirely removed to “townships” far away.
While there was a lag time to carry out these removals – because the apartheid government needed time to create the townships, however poorly planned – in the 1960s they eventually came to Simon’s Town.
But Simon’s Town was not just partitioned. Their black and coloured communities were removed straight away, and re-settled far away. And it was because the town was not racist enough.
The resistance of Simon’s Town
The removals to the township of Ocean View13 was not the original apartheid plan. The original plan was actually a segregated town plan. But Simon’s Town did something special. The entire town population – irrespective of racial “group” – objected to segregation. They formed a united front to protest it.
Doubtless, the people of Simon’s Town at the time did not realise that their simple act of humanity was exactly what apartheid feared most. But I’d just visited Robben Island, and still remembered Craig’s lecture. The moment I realised that the Simonites instinctively banded together across race, I thought, oh no.
Indeed, the apartheid government decided it was too dangerous to merely partition Simon’s Town. They worried that Simonites would still mix with one another, instead of splitting into separate communities. Particularly since the protest was led by the white residents. I wonder if the naval base being there would add to their embarrassment, if apartheid should be ignored in Simon’s Town14.
So they took the coloured and black communities and sent them far away. The only coloured community who was somewhat spared were the Indians, and only because the “Indian township” designated for them was full. Instead they were told to vacate their homes and live above their shops. Apartheid ended before another township was found for them.
You could say that Simon’s Town was punished more, precisely because they were good people. Ironically, in hindsight, had they pretended to be racist to each other, they would have suffered a smaller injustice.
Mourning, guilt, and the dream of return
I think this special history explains why the evictions of Simon’s Town remain so visible. After all, after such removals, the white residents remain. And in Simon’s Town, those white residents had also protested. Having failed, they refused to let their neighbours be forgotten, even if apartheid newcomers to Simon’s Town didn’t care.
To this day, this harrowing history is apparent in the town memorials. Every year, Simon’s Town holds a heritage day reunion where the evicted families return to be with their old friends and neighbours again.
Many still fight for the right to return home. There was a TV playing a documentary about an evicted mother and daughter, returning to see the ruins of their old neighbourhood in Red Hill. But, as with District Six, it was not so very straightforward.
The baboons of Simon’s Town
One particularly interesting exhibit captured the juxtapositions I took away from Simon’s Town Museum. It was a story by a Simon’s Town resident, about the town’s baboons. I would have reproduced it if I had to, but fortunately the museum website archives it more conveniently.
The story captured life on the slopes of the town back then, and the way they lived with the baboons. It was not really pleasant, for the baboons pilfered food and sometimes harassed the children. And yet the author described the baboons with kind insight. She remembered with empathy the heartbreaking time when the medical researchers came to trap the baboons for experiments by South Africa’s famous heart transplant team. And how they stopped after protests by the townspeople.
She remembered how they missed the baboons, in the new township. And how the baboons re-appeared, having followed them there somehow. But also the tragic fate that awaited them, because the nearby white area didn’t know how to coexist with the baboons, didn’t want to know, and killed them.
A telling quote explained her indulgent attitude towards the mischievous baboons. “The very rich had now encroached and invaded their immemorial territory where they had roamed long before the Strandloopers, the San, the Dutch and British invaders.” Simply put, she respected that they were there before her.
I thought, the story was a microcosm of two worldviews of problem solving: of adapting and coexistence, vs zero sum aggression. It reminded me essentially, of the choice we as humanity face today, as we grapple with planetary crises: are we custodians, or exploiters?
Return to Simon’s Town Museum
I had questions about the lost neighbourhoods. As a sustainable traveller, I also began to wonder about the town’s businesses – which ones valued the town history, and which ones would rather the original Simonites “move on”? Because if you’ve been around long enough, you know this is probably happening.
But the man there repeated his advice: come back and see Cathy, the manager. So I did.
Cathy herself is white, of course, since she’s still there. “The people white enough to stay,” she remarked, her voice holding a tinge of pathos. She thought the government had not been too helpful in restitution efforts, even though other places have received some restitution. There were cases where people submitted documents proving original residency, but they were “lost”. So, many former residents’ families remain in legal limbo.
A new kind of ‘removal’ looming over Simon’s Town
But I also learned something else. Years after apartheid ended, while its former residents are still trying to reclaim their place, even the original white community of Simon’s Town is facing their own kind of removal. For apartheid had turned Simon’s Town into desirable seafront real estate, and the resulting gentrification is edging out the remaining original Simonites.
After the end of apartheid, the town suddenly began attracting very rich people who buy up homes just to go there for holidays once in a while. Some have “lived” there for 20 years, and yet are rarely seen in the neighbourhood. As with other places where this happens, homes became unaffordable for the next generation in their own hometown, forcing youth migration.
It answered the question I’ve had over the last few days wandering the kloof. Why were there no children playing in the neighbourhood? Why were there no normal community rhythms – no school runs, no neighbourly weekend chats over the fence? Indeed, the town seemed dead but for tourists.
Greenwashing the wounds of apartheid?
I come from a country and region where sometimes, profit pits planet against people, or vice versa. So of course, I recalled the marine eco-tours at the pier and wondered, were they supportive of the town’s historical identity, or if they thought it was bad for business to remember? Does the value of the town’s location for holiday homes and tourism have something to do with why restitution is so slow for the former residents? Was some developer waiting for them to die off?
My heart sank in doubt. It would be macabre if its tourism brand is ‘sustainable’ nature tourism, while at the same time the last of the original Simonites were edged out of it.
Why, would they even still have crossing guards for the baboons then?
It was a delicate question to balance. So I decided to ask Cathy something simpler. She took the map I brought from the hotel and marked which businesses were historical. And she also marked the ones which were new, but supportive of the town’s historical projects. It is what I will use to write my Simon’s Town guide soon.
After all, profit does not have to divide people and planet. You could celebrate both the outstanding nature in a place, as well as its outstanding history.
As a marine lover, of course I would want to highlight the Cape’s incredible marine natural heritage.
Yet I also want people to learn – from the direct descendants – about the Simonites’ incredible and heroic solidarity in the face of apartheid. That there was a place in South Africa, where a diverse community so loved one another that they refused to be split.
Recommended reading:
Simon’s Town Museum has a gift shop with many history books. I asked Cathy for her top recommendations. She suggested a book of poetry16, and this history book.
Joline Young. An Uncomfortable Paradise: A History of Dispossession and Slavery in Simon’s Town. 2023.
a An Uncomfortable Paradise is primarily a book about the author’s findings from her research into the lives and history of enslaved peoples who came to Simon’s Town. However, the way it was composed made it very interesting reading.
In order to put the findings in context, the book also takes you through the historical eras of the Western Cape. For much the same reason, it also touches on Dutch colonial history in territories where the slaves were taken from, giving nuance on how slaves were acquired and why.
Thus this book gives a good understanding of what slavery meant in the Western Cape, the paradoxes and grey areas that sometimes existed, the challenges of abolition during the British period, and how people relations evolved afterwards.
Additionally, this book will have a special interest for Malaysians and Indonesians. Since a large part of the enslaved population were Cape Malays, there are many anecdotes of their resilience under slavery.
Footnotes:
- For more on the Simon’s Town mosque, see its page on South African History Online.i
i South African History Online. (2017, January 11). The Simon’s Town Mosque. South African History Online. https://sahistory.org.za/place/simons-town-mosque ↩︎ - I didn’t know it at the time, but this phrase is Afrikaans for “wait a moment”. ↩︎
- It seems the original indigenous peoples specific to the Cape are interchangeably referred to as the San, Khoi, Khoikhoi, or Khoisan. In reality, ‘San’ is just an academic term that covers hundreds of genetically and linguistically related tribes and ethnics, who all lived in the region from below the Zambezi Basin, to Angola, Tanzania, and the southern coast of Africa. The |Xam were the original Cape San, but they were exterminated by the end of the 20th century through acts of genocide.ii
There is also controversy over the term ‘Khoisan’. The present-day San people claim it is incorrect16. While there may be some usefulness to them as pseudo-racial umbrella termsii, these were not names of the people themselves, but were only the creation of the German anthropologist, Leonhard Schultze.iii
ii Mohamed Adhikari. 2014. The Anatomy of a South African Genocide. The extermination of the Cape San peoples. UCT Press.
iii Zimmerman, A. 2001. Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany. The University of Chicago Press.
↩︎ - ‘Big 5’ refers to the African lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and buffalo. ↩︎
- Simon’s Town was established in 1743 at Simon’s Bay more than 50 years after it was surveyed and named by Simon van der Stel, an early Dutch East India Company governor of the Cape Colony. Although Simon’s Town’s early history was similar to other VOC Böer settlements, its name foreshadowed its exceptionally diverse and close future community, within an otherwise apartheid national society. For Simon van der Stel had an Indian grandmother, and was the first Commander of the Cape of mixed non-European ancestry, as well as the first not born in Europe.iv
iv South African History Online. (2016, November 15). Simon van der Stel. South African History Online. https://sahistory.org.za/people/simon-van-der-stel
↩︎ - Interestingly, although the VOC was the Dutch East India Company, not all VOC employees were actually Dutch. Some were actually from elsewhere in Europe, notably Germany. Many of these German VOC employees later became farming settlers in the Cape Colony.a ↩︎
- “Malay” was already a common term used in the 16th century as an umbrella race for all Malay-speaking Southeast Asians. The term encompassed all ethnics in the Southeast Asian archipelago speaking Malay as a trade language, even if not as a first language, especially in colonial usage. That is the sense it is used in the South African historical context. ↩︎
- This continued until the ban on slave imports from the archipelago in 1767. The ban was instituted because male Malay slaves were more prone to fighting back when physically abused, thus injuring whites, even though the punishment was death by the wheel. Bear in mind that at the time, any white person could lash a slave with a cambuk at any time for any offence – such as singing at night.a ↩︎
- Freed Malays often settled by the coastline, and did seafaring jobs. They were notorious for helping runaway slaves, particularly those from Madagascar or Mozambique, who were more prone to escaping because of the proximity of their homeland. Somehow, they seemed to have gotten into relatively little trouble for it.a ↩︎
- Mixed race people with European ancestry were classified as ‘Bastards’ or ‘Bastard Hottentot’ (if the other parent was a Khoi), regardless of whether they were born in wedlock, and irrespective of whether the non-European parent were Christian. ↩︎
- From the research in Joline Young’s book,a it seemed that some Dutch slave owners may have secretly tolerated it as well. ↩︎
- This is almost certainly the honorific ‘Tuan’, which literally means ‘master’. Although he was from Sumbawa, and the records did not seem to indicate that people from the Malay Peninsula’s northeast were typically among the enslaved, the dialect shift to ‘Tuang’ is interesting to me as a Malaysian. The substitution of ‘n’ to ‘ng’ at the end of words is a particular feature of the Terengganu dialect. ↩︎
- Note: there was no ocean view, at Ocean View. ↩︎
- I wonder how it must have felt to the navy veterans from Simon’s Town. After all, they had only just fought against Nazis, and then returned to find evictions and white lebensraum come to their own town. ↩︎
- A Malay proverb, meaning only a person who understands value can tell what’s of value. Literal meaning: only a jeweller knows the gems of value.
Having learned Simon’s Town’s unique apartheid history, I was shocked that it wasn’t universally regarded as a valuable part of the local character, which should be embraced rather than ignored by some like it was embarrassing. In fact, it is a source of honour for Simon’s Town! ↩︎ - Steyn, M. Voices: Simon’s Town Heritage Poems.
This is a collection of poems by local resident Melanie Steyn. However, each poem is accompanied by commentary that adds historical context. Unfortunately, you can only get this booklet at Simon’s Town Museum. Fortunately, Melanie also publishes the same poems on her blog, though the context commentary has slight variations from the booklet. ↩︎
Carbon offset information to Cape Town, South Africa
A return flight between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town via Dubai produces carbon emissions of approximately 5,987 lbs CO2e. It costs about $48 to offset this.
The apartheid history of Simon’s Town is its hidden gem, not its liability. Hopefully, people will come to their senses. Who agrees with me?
thanks for educating me about apartheid history
you’re welcome. this history is important to (at least the original) Simon’s Town, and one of those stories I learn in travel that I feel I must pass on, because the people there want it known. it’s also the first apartheid story i heard where the community – unanimously – united in opposition to being split apart. i think that’s an important story.
Simon’s Town sounds like the perfect ending to your travels through apartheid history. And, such a unique story of community.
i really thought the final story would be the one from robben island, which would also have been a good closer. but this is better, or rather, better as its companion. because my robben island tour guide’s message was that the prison was an essential experience to forge the post-apartheid founding leaders into one community, and it was because of the pressure of survival. but here we have (had?) in simon’s town, a community that had already gone through that, and their first reaction to apartheid separation was to come together. it’s an incredible story, even though they didn’t win (yet).
We have visited a few times in South Africa but missed this part of the country. Simon’s Town looks like an interesting spot to visit. We would have been drawn to the water. But would not want to miss all the history in this town.
exactly! we can have both – we should have both!
to be honest, i was very tempted to go on a whale watching trip myself. but i think i was meant to learn these stories. the weather turned and the forecast meant there would be no boats going out for the entire time i was there. so the temptation was removed for me. but it did mean missing out on the marine tours.
Thanks for this comprehensive guide to Simon’s Town. We visited years ago but didn’t learn anything about the Apartheid history of the town. This year we have dedicated a day in Johannesburg to learning about this history.
Oh, maybe many of the Historical Society exhibits are relatively recent then. Or maybe I just can’t help but read whatever is there to read haha – and my pattern recognition does the rest. It really is a history to be proud of, it doesn’t matter that they didn’t succeed.
This isn’t my comprehensive Simon’s Town guide though :) I guess this one is about learning who Simon’s Town people are. I’m writing the guide to the place right now, hope to publish it soon.