LANDSCAPES OF DISPOSSESSION, stories of the Hardekraaltijie cemetery, told by people from Tiervlei-Ravensmead

157pp., b/w & colour illus., hardback, d.w., Fanele, Johannesburg, 2024

ISBN: 9781431435326

Oral accounts by 29 descendants whose ancestors are buried in the Hardekraaltjie cemetery, which was opened in 1910 and closed in 1947.

In the 1950s, residents of the Tiervlei area were forcibly removed under the Group Areas Act, with many of them resettled in Ravensmead, a suburb of Cape Town designated as a residential area for people classified Coloured.

Hardekraaltjie cemetery extends across sections of land owned or controlled by Stellenbosch University, Tygerberg Hospital (the Western Cape Government Health Department through the Department of Public Works), and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). This book emerges from a commitment by Stellenbosch University's Hardekraaltjie restitution project, founded to develop a restitution process through engagement with members of the community and other stakeholders.

Text in English and Afrikaans.

Marietjie Oelofsen manages the dialogues programme at the Stellenbosch University Museum. She is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at Stellenbosch University. She was the co-editor (with Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and Friederike Bubenzer) of These are the Things That Sit with Us (2019).
Chefferino Fortuin is a heritage and restitution activist and a committee member of the Impact Assessment Committee of Heritage Western Cape.