Walk of Remembrance confronts apartheid’s erasure in South Africa

On September 24th, the Newlands/Claremont Heritage, Environmental Justice and Restitution Society (NCHERS) will hold its fifth annual Walk of Remembrance in Newlands and Claremont, South Africa.

The walk aims to counter the comfortable celebrations of Heritage Day by remembering the forced removals of residents from these areas during apartheid. NCHERS was founded by members of St Saviour’s Anglican Church and the Claremont Main Road Masjid, recognising the shared history of a once-integrated community.

The dispossession of Newlands and Claremont began with colonial conquest in the 17th century, but intensified in the 1960s with the Group Areas Act, which emptied neighbourhoods and scattered residents to the Cape Flats. The walk will stop at three locations. Draper Square, Stegman Road Masjid, and the Cape Town Athenaeum, to honour the lives and institutions that once flourished there, including the memory of Imam Abdullah Haron, killed in detention in 1969 for resisting apartheid.

The route also acknowledges the intellectual resistance offered by the Teachers’ League of South Africa and the Non-European Unity Movement, who advocated for non-collaboration and a rejection of racial categories. NCHERS believes remembering the past is a form of resistance and a step towards restitution for those displaced, and intends to hold authorities accountable for the moral debt of dispossession. Following the walk, Dougie Oakes will speak about anti-apartheid resistance through sport at the Newlands Cricket Experience Museum.