Creative Cape Town has focused strongly on promoting the story of slavery in its recent annual and map. It has recognised that while slavery has played such a central role to the city for its first 200 year and its effects are ongoing in the contemporary city, there are many citizens today who don’t know about this part of our history. Slaves outnumbered settlers two to one and in a very real sense built the city we know as Cape Town today. The engagement with the story of slavery has great relevance for healing our society. It also has potential for tourism, as many visitors come to South Africa for our freedom story without knowing the full extent of South Africa’s long history of brutalization of the other.
The Cape Town Partnership has supported the efforts of an important network who has committed itself to commemorating slavery on an annual basis on the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves (1 December 1834). This year the group will meet at the Prestwich Memorial on the corner of Somerset and Buitengracht Roads on Saturday at 1.30pm to discuss plans for the commemoration event for this year. The discussion takes place at a workshop entitled “Slavery Then and Now.” The Prestwich memorial is an important site for the debate on slavery in the city as it represents a series of hard fought battles on the issues in questions. For more resources on slavery in the Cape see, amongst the various articles on the web, Patric Tariq Mellet’s blog on the slavery in the cape, and a resource on slavery sites from the provincial government.
