Page 86 - Bulletin 14 2010

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By this time The Wanderer no longer maintained that the Ou Pad had been the natural route to
th
Simon’s Bay cut by DEIC engineers in the 18 century, and that it was South Africa’s first
highway. He swallowed the assertions of thirty years earlier and wrote in his column: “So let us
concede to the Chairman of the Divisional Council that a track over the mountain did exist and

might have been used on occasion to link Table Bay with Simonstown.” (The Argus, 7/12/1968.)

On 11 December 1968, the Administrator, N. J. Malan, while acknowledging the myth of the old

road, cut the ribbon and named and opened the Ou Kaapse Weg. The Argus cartoonist, Jackson,
provided a fitting epitaph a few days later. (Fig. 2.30.) A delightful recent painting by Fish Hoek

artist John English may represent the image that many have of the mythical Ou Pad. (Fig. 2.31.)

Jose Burman remained puzzled by the Divisional Council’s insistence on using the name Ou

Kaapse Weg for a road that had never existed. He suggested that, in absolute historic truth, they
could have named it the Zilvermyn Weg.

Over the years the modern road has admirably fulfilled its various roles. In the early 1970s it was
extended as the Glencairn Freeway over Brakkloof and down the north side of Glencairn Valley.

In this way, despite Wallace’s faulty research and incorrect reasoning, his mythical 10-mile long
Ou Pad became modern reality.