Talking the Walk
Andrew Borraine on the Mother City

As part of a group of journalists from community newspapers in and around Cape Town invited on a walking tour of the City with Cape Town Partnership CEO Andrew Boraine, I enjoyed an expert insight and an opportunity to learn more about the Mother City – its history, its culture and its future, on a Cape Town Partnership walking tour; and telling stories on the way.

One story that Andrew told stood out - that of the origins of Adderley Street, the main street of Cape Town, that starts from the Heerengracht (Gentleman’s Canal) near the entrance to Table Bay Harbour and ends in Government Avenue. Four hundred years ago we would have been standing on the banks of the Camissa river, he explained, which comes off the mountain and runs right through town into the harbour, so called by the indigenous inhabitants of the Cape meaning ‘place of sweet waters’. It was the only place you could get fresh water in the summer months for livestock between Saldahna and Mossel Bay – that’s why Cape Town exists. The Dutch arrived and what they needed most for the passing ships of the East India Company was fresh drinking water because their sailors were dying of scurvy. They built a mud fort on the banks of what they renamed the Varsrivier (fresh river) at the spot where now stands the Grand Parade, and that’s where the issue of ‘who owns what’ began.

Within a year or so of building the fort, a number of the company decided they wanted to go into the private sector; to build taverns and B+B’s for the sailors and so forth. Jan van Riebeeck agreed provided it lay beyond 200 metres of the fort for security reasons. So they started developing the western side of the Varsrivier such that anything on the fort side was company property and the other side was the private sector. So the first citizens set up their homesteads on Hout and Castle Streets and, to this day, east of Adderley is public sector: the Magistrates Court, the Grand Parade, the Castle, the City Hall, Parliament, Caledon square and commercial on the other side. It’s been like that since 1653.

Then in the 1840s when the British had taken over the Cape and were busy sending convicts to Australia, they decided to send a convict ship, HMS Neptune, to the Cape arriving in Table Bay in 1848. Not wanting to become a penal colony, locals, both black and white, joined in their first non-racial protest ever and refused to let the ship dock. Local retailers refused to supply the ship and for three months it stayed out in the bay supplied only with fresh produce from the farmers of Stanford who broke the boycott. The locals appealed to a friendly MP in the British Parliament, Charles Adderley (who had never set foot in the Cape) for help in solving the problem, and he led a private member’s motion which eventually got the government to change its plans and send HMS Neptune on to Tasmania. To commemorate this in 1850, Adderley Street was renamed in his honour.

In closing, Boraine emphasised the importance of public spaces for public life: it is places like the station, the Parade and St Georges Mall, that truly connect people with the city in which they live, work and play, he said. It is clear that Cape Town is now a place to linger. It is developing a vibrant cafe society and thanks in part to the work of the Central City Improvement District security officers and social development workers, it is a safe place to be. > Close window