Page 173 - Bulletin 21

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The Fishermen’s Flats Project

The entire project leading up to and including the building of the Flats and the Roman
Catholic Mission School is covered in detail in KBHA Bulletin No. 10. In brief, there had

been suggestions made over many years that Kalk Bay would be better off without fishing
and the community that went with it. Today it is hard to imagine what Kalk Bay would be

like without the community that has been here for nearly 200 years and adds so much to the

village.

The motivation for these suggestions was partly racial and partly economic – Die Land was
potentially among the most valuable land along the coast. By clearing out the fishermen, very

valuable sites would become available, expensive houses would go up and higher rates would
be collected.

In 1911 George Boyes, the Magistrate at Simon’s Town, wrote to the Minister of Railways

and Harbours saying among other things ‘The fishermen are of little or no economic value to
the Municipality’. Boyes was referring purely to the potential value of Die Land while

ignoring the enormous contribution made by these same fishermen to the reasonably priced
food source available to the people of Cape Town and its surrounds. For example, in 1913

Kalk Bay caught fish to the value of approximately £60,000 (Kirkaldy, 1988) of which 75%

was sold in the Peninsula. Sanity prevailed and the Minister would have nothing to do with
‘forced removals’.

Housing on Die Land became more over-crowded as the years went by and there were

occasional health scares. Infant mortality was very high. In line with other slum problems in
and around Cape Town, clearly something had to be done. In 1937 the City Engineer reported

on ‘slums’ in this area that could be dealt with in terms of the Slums Act. In 1938 he
produced a more extensive report suggesting that it was not possible to economically re-

house the whole community and that the best course was to move them to where economical
decent housing could be provided. There were suggestions of The Point, Glencairn, Clovelly

and finally Steenberg. He was aware of the difficulties a move like this would cause to men

who needed to be within sight of their boats and even suggested a subsidized night bus
service between Steenberg and Kalk Bay. There is no suggestion that Council were going to