Page 99 - Bulletin 23- 2020

95

There were two issues that happened close together at this time that demonstrated the
discriminatory nature of the existing order. This almost certainly drove many coloured residents

into arms of the AME.

In 1900 the newly elected committee of Kalk Bay Primary School made a decision to exclude all
coloured children from the roll. It was a shocking decision and the DRC minister resigned from

the committee in protest. He was later to report that none of his coloured congregants had

appeared at the communion table in the quarter following the election of the new committee.
(See p 66 KBHA Bulletin 2.)

At about the same time the Anglican Church, for whatever reason, decided to racially segregate

children’s services. Racial discrimination had always been present in the churches but I believe it
was these two decisions, painfully received by loyal members of both churches, that provided the

fertile ground for the AME to establish itself in this area.

It was to be a short-lived presence in Kalk Bay. By 1906 the person who provided the £100
mortgage to buy the land, Mary Susan Hazell, had been paid only £5. Interest at 7% a year was

also unpaid. She went to the Supreme Court and an order was passed attaching the property
which was transferred into her name. Court papers show that of the eight people who had signed

the mortgage as trustees of the AME, only Dirk Poggenpoel and John Adams were in Kalk Bay.

The Church had faded away and with it its pastor and other supporters. It must have been a
humiliating situation for those who remained in Kalk Bay.

As we have seen, the property was transferred by order of the Supreme Court to Mary Susan

Hazell in 1911. She sold on in 1919 to Louis Ladan who built one of his standard Ladan Road
type houses. The house passed through several hands before being bought in 1925 by Miriam

Harris (b Silber) who owned it until 1949. Miriam was the wife of David Harris, brother of Jack
Harris of Harris Road. It is not clear if Miriam and David Harris lived in Ladan Road as they had

a shop in Wynberg and a house in Claremont. One of their sons is Emeritus Professor Frank
Harris CBE, F Med Sci., OBE, who lives in England. Their grandson Evan Harris is a

distinguished UK politician.

The 1924 photo shows Ladan Road and surrounds almost completed with one house still to be

built – right foreground of the photo. (Fig. 3.33).