Page 4 - Bulletin 10 2006

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THE STORY OF THE FISHERMEN’S FLATS, KALK BAY

Mike Walker

Introduction

The story of the Fishermen’s Flats is a centrepiece in the long struggle of the organic
fishing community and their descendents to retain their place in Kalk Bay. Security of

tenure was finally achieved only in the early 1990s when the City Council sold the flats by

sectional title to their occupants.

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The story reviews the conditions of general insecurity that existed during the 19 and early
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20 centuries, and more specifically as a result of the application of the Slums Act of 1934.
A protracted process then ensued of resistance, negotiation, and investigation of alternative
sites for housing the scattered False Bay fishing communities. Ultimately, the Fishermen’s

Flats were built concurrently with numerous other public housing schemes on the Peninsula
during the war years.

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19 and 20 Century Insecurity

Uncertainty and insecurity existed from the very beginning for the fishermen at Kalk Bay.

The early fishing community c.1850 were mainly penniless Filipinos who were either
shipwrecked along the False Bay Coast or deserters from the Yankee sugar ships anchored

in Simon’s Bay. Emancipated slaves joined them about the same time. All of them, being

of little means, became tenants to local landlords who owned large tracts of land that had
been granted by the Dutch prior to 1795, or had been purchased after the arrival of the

British. Tenancy was an uncertain form of tenure as there was no legislation to protect the