From Tiervlei to Ravensmead: Tracing heritage in a place of continuity and dispossession - a place of both in-situ and ex-situ displacement during apartheid

Fortuin, Chefferino

From Tiervlei to Ravensmead: Tracing heritage in a place of continuity and dispossession - a place of both in-situ and ex-situ displacement during apartheid

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment

Abstract

This project is more than an academic exercise, it is a project of memory and identity amid a fast-moving, changing society. It does not only concern safeguarding the marginalised community's heritage but also how we record, acknowledge and transfer it to future generations before it withers away. The preamble to the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) (1999) states, in part, that its purpose is to “encourage communities to nurture and conserve their legacy so that it may be bequeathed to future generations ... it promotes new and previously neglected research into our rich oral traditions and customs.”1 This study considers whether the NHRA promotes and facilitates research into ‘new and previously neglected oral traditions and customs' with regard to the part of Tiervlei, which has been renamed Ravensmead. The history and heritage of the marginalised communities in the northern suburbs, particularly Ravensmead, Elsiesrivier and Bellville South below the railway line, is largely undocumented 28 years into the unified democratised South Africa. The heritage of the former white proclaimed areas such as Parow, Goodwood and Bellville have been well preserved above the railway line since the apartheid era and the process continues. This study was conceived while I was researching my lineage and family identity, beginning with my mother and her late grandparents. They were landowners in Tiervlei in the 1930s according to deeds records when they moved there from Ceres. This research is in the conservation and heritage discipline, exploring intangible and tangible heritage, the legislation and its theories and ideology. The purpose is to find ways of exploring the heritage of the undocumented and previously marginalised community known today as Ravensmead. It also considers how heritage can be made visible and safeguarded in the present, given the country's history of erasure, land dispossession, fragmentation and forced removals. 1 Republic of South Africa, 1999. National Heritage Resources Act (No 25 of 1999). I have reported the interviews in the language of the interviewees, using colloquial phrases to give a voice to the community, thus reflecting the ‘public voice of the marginalised'. Field (2006, pp31-42) maintains that marginalised communities lack access, resources and empathetic listeners and my intention in this dissertation is to offer them this access. The study traces the intangible and tangible heritage of the community as a place of both continuity and dispossession and of displacement under apartheid. The community was subjected to dispossession in two distinct ways, either in-situ or ex-situ, which is a not a prominent discussion in the displacement landscape in South Africa. In-situ dispossession represents people remaining in a place or experiencing a prolonged multi-stage process of removal. Ex-situ displacement is the expulsion of people from their homes, communities, social and family relations and livelihoods.

Keywords

In-situ, ex-situ, heritage, displacement, apartheid

Reference:

Collections

Masters

Full item page