| Give a gay
a paintbrush and he creates a miracle", says Brian
with a smile on his face. The ex-policemen and nowadays
one of the rare historical suburb-expert of the city of
Cape Town watches from the sunny terrace of The Village
Café to the houses in the area.
Purple, green, red, yellow, sky-blue and
baby pink are the merry colours of the small 'town cottages'
in the streets of the oldest and nowadays one of the most
trendy and developed parts of Cape Town, The Waterkant Village.
While it is lunchtime, The Village Café terrace is
crowded with locals, business people and tourists feast
on chef Russel's specialty, a Malay Curry with a good glass
of white wine to extinguish.
The Waterkant Village cannot be characterized
as a typical gay-area, but it was the Cape gay scene, that
rediscovered the area ten years ago and turned De Waterkant
from a poor suburb into one of the most trendy and colourful
areas of Cape Town.
During the day, it is magically quiet in
the rainbow village, but as soon as it is lunchtime or the
perfect moment for a sundowner, in a glance, the terraces
are fully filled. At Manhattans' for a nice cocktail, at
La Petite Tarte for the smallest self-made French pies of
Cape Town and at Dutch for a double 'uitsmijter' (2 fried
eggs on bread), surrounded in an orange décor of
tulips, bicycles and anything else that brand marks Dutch
glory. Stop by Gugu's for a fruity shake and healthy homemade
ciabatta's and at The Nose Bar for one of the best wines
from the estates. Locals meet each other on their 'stoepies'
in front of their houses for a daily chat. And for an exuberant
night (gay) people go out to the clubs 55, The Bronx and
Chilly and Lime.
Between the Cape mountain top of Signal
Hill and the business area of the city bowl lay the twenty
hilly streets of 'The Waterkant'. This fairytale area forms
a small but trendy and high fashionable village on itself
in the heart of the world city Cape Town. That is also why
it is hard to belief that trendy café's, bars and
restaurants, guesthouses, antique shops, fashionable furniture
shops, commercial companies and artists nowadays doing their
business here, while for almost two centuries this land
was known as a 'no go area' and in the very first beginning
was used as a graveyard for slaves and the poorest citizens
from town.
The international and dynamic character
of The Waterkant area has got an interesting and just by
a few insiders known history. The first inhabitants were
Scottish soldiers and not the Malaysian slaves as often
told in historical documents. The British defenders built
around 1800, when the English settled here permanently,
small houses with typical Dutch sliding windows and wooden
shutters. The house-fronts and 'stoepies' in front of the
homes are Malaysian ingredients, which they copied from
the Islamic coloured Bo-Kaap area that borders on The Waterkant.
The symmetry in the construction of the houses is (Gregorian
style) from British origin
The mosque, the Catholic chapel and the
Calvinistic and Lutheran church are the four (international)
cornerstones of The Waterkant Village. Even the different
colours between the cobblestones in the streets have got
their own story. While the Dutch took their own black coloured
boulders, the British used Signal Hill's massive stones
as pavement for the streets.
The Waterkant Village is the only Cape
quarter that architecturally survived through the years
of apartheid. In the sixties, according to the group areas
act and the entire city suburbs were divided in districts,
coloured and black areas were bulldozed and the population
was deported to the Southern suburbs (Cape Flats) beyond
the borders of the city. Although Edward Austen, a white
inhabitant of The Waterkant or then called District 5, could
not prevent the deportation of his coloured neighbours,
but he made a deal with the white government.
He bought all the houses in the Waterkant
and promised the coloured people to give back their properties
the moment the white regime was dismissed. That is the reason
why for example Mr Allie, after thirty years, could turn
back to his former area and was given back his supermarket
in Waterkant Village.
With her unique history, The Waterkant
Village has a very special and often unknown place in Cape
Towns history. She deserves everyone's visit. Not only the
trendy and high developed places as the lunchrooms, bars,
fashionable furniture shops and beautifully decorated architecture
that it has right now, especially the long historical, political
and social way the area has been through before it became
what it is now, makes the Waterkant Village so interesting.
Through the Cinderella of Cape Town blows a magic wind that
will tell you thousands of colourful stories…
//CBD
| // Bo Kaap |//
Waterkant | //Tamboerskloof
| //Gardens
| //Oranjezicht
| //Vredehoek
|
