Page 17 - Bulletin 12 2008

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After municipal amalgamation in 1913 horses and mules continued to play an important
role as draught animals in the collection of solid and liquid wastes in the enlarged City

Council area. All the stables of the amalgamating municipalities continued to function
and there were eight in total: Cape Town, Sea Point, Maitland, Mowbray, Rondebosch,

Claremont, Wynberg and Muizenberg. A wide variety of rolling stock (mainly slop,

scotch, and refuse carts and wagons) was in use with pneumatic tyres gradually
replacing the old iron-tyred wood-spoked wheels. At Muizenberg during the 1920s –

30s the rolling stock numbered some 25 – 30 carts and wagons, with some 40 mules.
The municipal fire tender housed in Atlantic Road, Muizenberg was also drawn by

horses. In all the city’s stables there were some 400 – 450 horses / mules employed in
these ways at this time. The horses were well cared for and frequently won top prizes at

the annual Rosebank Show held on Rhodes Estate. (Figs. 1.9 & 1.10).

The numbers of municipal horses declined in the 1940s and 50s as motorised vehicles

replaced them, and the stables were converted to handle motorised trucks. But the

green-painted domed refuse cart, pulled by one horse and carrying one street sweeper,
was still a familiar sight in Main Road Kalk Bay and Muizenberg in the late 50s.

For many years the margins of Zandvlei were a municipal tip conveniently situated

opposite the stables, and the horses may have been set free to graze on the sweet grasses
there. The unconsolidated reclaimed land was unsuited to building purposes and

eventually in the 1950s the present Muizenberg Sports Fields were laid out there. In the

1930s land at Raapkraal, near Westlake Golf Course, was also being used as a tip.

Conclusion

It is hard to imagine that little over a century ago many routine and emergency tasks that
could not be performed by the steam engine and railway depended on raw horsepower:

the horse-drawn fire brigade, the doctor arriving in a horse and trap, and in major

emergencies a horse-drawn ambulance would arrive.