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Social history, public history and the politics of memory in re-making ‘Ndabeni’’s pasts

<p>It has been over a century since African people were forcibly removed by official decree in 1901, from the Cape Town dockland barracks and District Six, to Uitvlugt, a farm where a location of corrugated iron &lsquo / huts&rsquo / had just been constructed. This occurrence followed an outbreak of a bubonic plague in Cape Town in 1901, which became predominant among the Africans who worked at the docks, and who were in direct and constant contact with the main carriers of the disease, i.e., the rats coming out of ships from Europe. The outbreak resulted in African being stigmatised as diseased, and being banished to the outskirts of the city. Since then, knowledge about this historical occurrence has been continuously produced, presented and communicated in many ways. It has featured in many representations through memory, heritage and history.In 1902, the new residents of Uitvlugt gave the location the name kwa-Ndabeni. Ndabeni was a nickname that the residents had given to Walter Stanford who had chaired the commission that recommended for the establishment of the location in 1901. The prefix kwa- was added to the name so that it meant in Xhosa language, the place of Ndabeni. In that way, the residents, who at that time did not consider the location as a potential place of their permanent abode, named it in a way that disassociated them from the place.</p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UNWC/oai:UWC_ETD:http%3A%2F%2Fetd.uwc.ac.za%2Findex.php%3Fmodule%3Detd%26action%3Dviewtitle%26id%3Dgen8Srv25Nme4_2045_1305012450
Date January 2010
CreatorsSambumbu, Sipokazi
Source SetsUniv. of Western Cape
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis and dissertation
FormatPdf
CoverageZA
RightsCopyright: University of the Western Cape

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