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REMEMBERING THE GROUP AREAS PROCLAMATION OF KALK BAY

Transcript of presentation to

the Kalk Bay Historical Association’s AGM, 28 March 2000

Anna Bohlin

Introduction

For the last two years and a half I have worked on a PhD thesis in social anthropology that

focuses on landscape and memory with particular reference to the Group Areas proclamation
of Kalk Bay in 1967. During this fieldwork I have conducted some sixty interviews with

current and former residents of Kalk Bay. I would particularly like to thank some of those
who moved from Kalk Bay because of the proclamation for coming here tonight. I am very

grateful for this opportunity to present some of my work to them, and to the rest of this
audience.

Background of the study

Having previously done fieldwork at the District Six Museum, where I had experienced the
role played by the museum as a gathering point and a place for commemoration for people

who were forcibly removed, I began to wonder how the Group Areas Act (GAA) was
remembered in smaller communities where no such facilities exist.

A friend introduced me to Kalk Bay, and told me how, when he was a boy, the GAA
proclamation forced his family along with other families to leave Kalk Bay, although the

majority of the fishing community managed to remain. I decided to interview people who

were forced to move in this way, as well as those who stayed, and compare their perceptions
and memories of the Proclamation. Given that Kalk Bay is a small and closely-knit

community, I expected the task to be relatively straightforward. I was therefore surprised
when I was told by one person after another in Kalk Bay that the GAA proclamation had

been ‘pretty much a non-event’, that nobody was forced to leave because of it, and, that

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