On Sunday 27 November 2022, we held a picnic in the Company’s Garden forming part of the concluding day of the See Studio and Festival. We carved out a space where we reclaimed, critiqued, and challenged Cape Town’s green spaces as colonial infrastructure. We talked about the depletion of water resources caused by colonialism and contested the notion of the garden as a point of supply. We created a canvas artwork as a fabric of investigation and drew a bird’s eye view map of Cape Town, a colonial mapping tool for locating and territorialising (Image 1).
We superimposed strands of plants on the colonial map, which challenged the space’s scale. The plants represented rewritten stories of encounters between humanity and nature. We shared our memories of our week and wove them with memories of the city. Our fellow researchers and attendees were encouraged to draw their memories and write their thoughts and reflections on the canvas. This essay comprises short critical reflections, sown as seeds for conversations about our daily environments from a decolonial lens (Images 2 & 3).
“The Sea is History”
Ports have played a crucial role in the history of European imperialism. At sea, the first myths and tropes were invented about the people and land that colonisers wanted to conquer and exploit. As a symbol of trade, the Cape Town port has disguised the violent history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), emphasising harmonious exchange by framing the port as a stopover to the East Indies. However, it was also the first point of arrival for those forced to work in extremely adverse conditions and who, over time, built this city into what it is today. This reminds us of the many difficulties in trying to unfold the lived experiences of the enslaved. We must look to the sea for answers, as Caribbean poet Derek Walcott wrote:
“Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History.”
(Poets Academy of America, n.d.)
Walcott’s words echoed in maritime archaeologist Jaco Boshoff’s presentation at the See Conference (2022). For several years, Boshoff and his team have been investigating the sunken São José slave ship off the Cape Town coast. Over two hundred enslaved people drowned on their way from Mozambique to Brazil, and the loss in and around the Cape is undeniable. Much like Walcott’s (Poets Academy of America, n.d.) poem, history can be retraced in Cape Town’s other bodies of water, particularly the Camissa River, a founding site for the Khoe community (Image 4).
The Camissa River represented community and spiritual connection for the Indigenous Khoe and San people. Its name comes from ǁkhamis in the Kora language, which means “sweet drinking water for all”. The river was more than a source of drinking water; it was a portal to Indigenous spiritualism and to the ancestors.
Water Always Finds its Way: Sweet Drinking Water for All?
The Camissa River became a contested site when the VOC marked it for establishing the Company’s Garden. The garden was a revered supply point for fresh produce. But for many, it is as violent as any other colonial-built space. Rewriting nature as isolated and highly regulated spaces alienated people from their practices and land. The water that once connected the mountain, the sea, the plants, and the people was intercepted. So, how did this “sweet drinking water for all” become the VOC’s property and is drinking water really for “all” in Cape Town?
We drew a line on the canvas representing the Camissa River, dividing the fabric into two sides (see Image 5). We sewed the fabric together, without erasing the line, uniting as the Khoe once did. The VOC buried the river to create dams on Table Mountain. The water could only be accessed through a well in the Company’s Garden, and access was highly regulated, excluding the Indigenous people of Cape Town. Since then, nature and its regulation have been used as a colonial mechanism to further violate Indigenous livelihoods, and knowledge systems that were richly connected to the ecology became precarious. Environmental elements such as mountains, forests, oceans, and rivers were, and still are, considered sacred for their mystical healing properties and their intermediary role in connecting supreme beings and ancestors to Indigenous people. Since colonialism, they have been exploited as infrastructure for profit. But these natural spaces are rebelling, reclaiming their balance.
Untold Stories of the Port Jackson Willow and Wild Fennel
What is planted in the earth remains: history lives and grows in the present and future. It can shape the city and its surrounding landscapes in unexpected ways. By understanding why certain plants were planted and their role in people’s lives and memories, we can challenge official history. The plants we see in our surroundings carry stories excluded from historical writings; they are the witnesses and traces of the past.
Due to the increasing development along Cape Town’s harbour, roads were needed to connect new parts of the growing city. During the See Studio (2022) walking lecture on Table Mountain, Khalied Jacobs, an urban designer and activist, guided us through the cityscape. He explained how spatial planning was imposed on the land, and we observed the different urban patterns that tell us about the residents’ lives. In between the patches of green and reaching us to the top of the mountain, was a small tree, inconspicuous at first sight, but omnipresent on closer inspection.
The Port Jackson willow connects Cape Town’s harbour to another colonial port: Sydney, Australia. In 1848, it was transplanted to prevent loose sand from covering the road from Cape Town city centre to the suburb of Bellville. Soon after, the tree was planted along the coastline to bind the sand. Due to this initial success, settlers planted it on a large scale, transforming the pre-existing dune ecology into an “infrastructure ecology”, where roads and railways were prioritised to transport human labour and goods for profit. Even the tree was not safe from the exploitative nature of settler colonialism. While its roots bound the road, the tannin-rich bark led to optimistic speculation about the prosperity it could bring as an export product. This promise soon perished when it failed to compete with another tannin-producing plant, black wattle (De Beer, 1987).
Thus, numerous Port Jackson plantations were abandoned in search of new business ventures. But this neglect didn’t stop its roots from growing. In contrast, it followed the river valleys deep into the interior, draining more water as it grew. In 1983, the tree was declared invasive, as it caused devastating damage to the natural environment. Removing the tree with all its roots is a difficult task. It reminds us that ecological colonialism still exists. We can’t escape our history and when we deal with nature out of self-interest, future generations pay the price. Much like tackling the root of the Port Jackson willow, we should critique the botany around us and our landscape, as it has been constructed and perhaps needs to be carefully reassessed (De Beer, 1987) (Image 6).
District Six is a site of displacement and resistance. Its residents were forcibly removed in the late 1960s. The district was declared a White area, aimed at further racialising and segregating spaces. Although the announcement was met with protests, residents could no longer claim their right to live there. The first demolitions began in 1968, and the only buildings left untouched were places of worship. Today, only stones remain in the open field that mark the streets and the outline of what used to be a house.
During the See Studio (2022) city tour, Educator Mandy Sanger took us through the district, mentioning how new real estate developments fragment the neighbourhood, making it harder for future generations to read the history of this important place. But the plotted land of the former District Six was not empty: wild fennel flourished in the field and on the pavement. While the bulldozers tried to erase the residents’ memories, they did not anticipate the persistence of the plants. Wild fennel grows globally and is harvested extensively since it is easy to identify. It has a strong, liquorice scent. The abundance of wild fennel in the district reminds us why ethnobotany is important for studying the relationships between people, communities, and indigenous plants to help reconstruct lived experiences.
Nature Shall Find its Place: The Myth of the Colonial Garden
The history of the Company’s Garden in feeding the first generations of settlers and experimenting with potential cash crops is a common feature repeated throughout the Dutch and British empires. Colonial gardens advertised as a calm and peaceful oasis, represent the epitome of “controlled nature”. What is left untold is the relentless maintenance that is required to keep this nature “controlled” through forced labour, which ultimately defines the colonial garden and, by extension, the plantation system.
Based on Enlightenment ideals of progress and scientific supremacy, these constructed landscapes proclaimed that colonial settlers were better custodians of the land than the Khoe and the San people. Planting became a scientific strategy of territory, and its seedlings produced trophies of colonisation. Considered exotic in their habitat, plant cuttings were shipped to other colonial ports. They became a symbol of the success of the colonial project, showcased at Kirstenbosch Gardens. This global infrastructure, founded and shaped by the botanical sciences, produced policies through which we have classified the natural environment, including its people. The coloniser and the colonised were connected not only by the sea but by green spaces, which created the researcher, the spatial study, and the specimen.
Then came the social construction of race, which deeply affected the people who were separated and categorised in this classification of human ecology. Colonialism created the idea of labour, marginalisation, and elites based on race and origin. As the scale of the world became smaller, the arrogance and greed of the imperialists grew. Unfortunately, the planetary colonial garden is not a metaphor. This is why thinkers such as Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing prefer Plantationocene to the more common Anthropocene, emphasising that our climate crisis is rooted in specific historical conjunctures (Mitman, 2019).
As part of rescripting natural spaces, the land was engendered. Cape Town, the Mother City, was a fertile land that gave to the Fatherland – as the Netherlands was called in many correspondences. These nouns form an image of Cape Town’s key role in this exploitative exchange, from recreating familiar landscapes in the wilderness of Cape Town to build a new home, to using plants as tools to create a new identity.
Don Mattera (1974), a poet, thinker, and prominent activist against apartheid and discrimination against Black people in South Africa, wrote a poem in which people can dismantle the myths of the colonial garden as the foundation of a nation’s history interconnected with botanical science:
The Protea is not a flower
It is a dome of fluttering flags tombs of Afrikaner relics
and monuments of ox-wagon
dipped in blood
It is the flight of the Blackman’s spear
flung in hostile fear
of lost possession
Conquered manhood and broken pride
It is the tears
of my bonded people
falling on Pretoria’s marble steps
the victims of subjugation
The Protea can never be a flower
Not while the soul of South Africa struggles to be set free.
This poem speaks of weaponising plants and green spaces to justify violence against Black and Indigenous people. It critiques fabricating the Afrikaner identity and ethno-nationalism, through symbolising the protea as South Africa’s national flower. It reflects territoriality, as spaces like the Company’s Garden and Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden were created to facilitate these claims of scientific expertise over foreign lands.
The careful grafting of a botanical image onto a wider nation mirrors a form of taming the wild. Natural spaces such as bodies of water became infrastructural possessions to be rerouted or buried. The symbiotic nature of plants and natural systems was harnessed for the colonial operation. The dismantling of the Indigenous and innate nature severed our connection: like the Camissa River, our natural flow has been buried. I wrote this poem, “The Traveller, the Bird, and the Grain”, hoping we can make room for people to reclaim their space in nature (Image 7). Like our approach to our work, the poem zooms in from the foreigner’s perspective to the bird’s eye view, and then to the scale of the seed.
The Traveller, the Bird, and the Grain
These spaces, although springing green,
have been painted white.
My laughter is echoed by glares.
My joy is misplaced.
My expression unwelcomed.
I got the message, this is not my nature,
And I need to take it in good nature.
This is not my place to claim.I am only here to appreciate.
Take in the nature.
I look up, an escape.I follow the guide, stumbling on my steps,
He sets it straight, telling us how the garden saved
a species of bird.
He says, the bird is indigenous to this space.
Bird! Is this your nest?But Bird this is not your home,
But who am I to speak, this is also not my home.I want to tell the bird that he is like me,
But this reality stomps.
I, A foreigner.
You, A traveller.
worlds apart.
Him from the sky and I from clay.The bird found home,
in this imagined space.
A nest and a bird bath,
After the bloodbath.The Bird and I know,
that spaces like these were homes of people.
Who heard the bird sing and never needed to claim
the notes.The birds crow, they found the people but the home remains
the people gone.And here I stand, at the gate of Eden,
For a ticket to walk this space of evil;
And Like the river that was buried,
the grief of millions routes the ground,
the sea takes in our tears.
The blood has dried brown.
The Mud has settled.
Why was I made of clay?Why are my veins lined with their past pain.
I must look up,
My eyes swallow back the tears.I was not born from the last rain,
I am ancient and present,
You cannot separate me from my people,
my people from this soil.And maybe you were upset that the earth,
Had painted some of us to his shade.So you decided our colour was no longer part of the palette.
But YOU cannot change what nature has created.
We are after all no mistake.But here we are again,
Centuries of violence separate us.
At the initial meeting point,
the birth of this place.
The construction of this race.And Maybe in another world we will meet again,
A traveller, a bird, or a grain,
All sharing this earth without this pain.
Kawthar Jeewa and Sara Frikech participated in the See Studio 2022. It was led by Zahira Asmal and produced by The City in partnership with Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Research Centre for Material Culture, with support from the Creative Industries Fund and DutchCulture.
References:
Academy of American Poets. n.d. The Sea Is History by Derek Walcott. Available: https://poets.org/poem/sea-history [2023, February 20].
De Beer, H. 1987. Port Jackson willow. Farming in South Africa: weeds. Available: https://www.arc.agric.za/arc-ppri/weeds/Pages/default.aspx [2023, February 20].
I See You. 2022. See studio. Available: https://iseeyou.capetown/activities/see-studio/ [2024, August 24].
I See You. 2022. See festival. Available: https://iseeyou.capetown/activities/see-festival/ [2024, August 24].
Mattera, D. 1974. Six poems. Index Censorship. 3(4):19–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03064227408532368.
Mitman, G. 2019. Reflections on the plantationocene: a conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing [Podcast, 18 June]. Available: https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/ [2023, February 20].
Photographs by Kawthar Jeewa unless stated.
Note: The views expressed by individuals and organisations are their own and do not reflect the views of The City. If you find any errors or historical inaccuracies, please contact the editor.