Page 103 - KBHA BULLETIN 4

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indeed, Kalk Bay was one of the few places in the country that managed to successfully fight

off the ‘group areas’ and keep its community intact.

Eventually, I did find people in Kalk Bay who directed me to families who had been forced to
move under the GAA. Most of them live in Heathfield, Retreat and Steenberg, and for the

next few months I conducted interviews in these suburbs as well as in Kalk Bay. In these
various interviews I was told almost incompatible versions of how the GAA had affected

Kalk Bay. I often had the feeling of somebody telling me the ‘real’ story, only to go to the

next interview and hear an equally convincing, but completely different narrative.

My experience reflects the extent to which memories become true to the person holding

them, providing details and observations of past events that seem utterly convincing. Social
anthropologist Elizabeth Tonkins has said that to remember is to paint a ‘social portrait’ in

the sense that what we remember, as well as what we leave out, and the way in which we talk
about it, all point to fundamental values and assumptions that we hold about the world, how it

should ideally be, our own and others’ place within it, and so on.

This view of memory as a social, selective, and creative process that is embedded in specific

cultural and historic contexts constitutes the main focus of my thesis. What I will do here,
however, is mainly fill in some of the ‘gaps’ in the general perception of Kalk Bay’s past,

and, more specifically, challenge the commonly held belief that Kalk Bay was unaffected by
the GAA.

Socio-economic conditions in Kalk Bay

As historian Alan Kirkaldy points out, the GAA proclamation of Kalk Bay must not be seen
as a sudden, unprecedented event that disrupted an otherwise harmonious existence of the

fishing community in Kalk Bay. Informal segregation was part of village life since the onset

of colonialism, and as the popularity of Kalk Bay as a seaside resort grew, property rates
rose, and accommodation for the fishing community became scarce. Since many of the early

fishermen did not purchase the properties they rented for generations, despite often being able
to afford to do so, they subsequently ‘lost’ them as they were bought by newcomers. Most

fishing families today tell stories about their forefathers believing that they owned a piece of
land, but losing it when finding out that the ‘sale’ was not properly registered. Although it is

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