Let the bones speak – historical mass grave at Simon’s Town is shrouded in secrecy

It so happens that the sash window on the first floor of the home of Saber and Razia Hoosen provides a bird’s-eye view of Erf 4995, a 1,958m² patch of vacant land on the corner of Waterfall and Palace Hill roads in Simon’s Town.

From the window, the Hoosens – whose family have lived in the area since the late 1800s – also have a broader view of this corner of False Bay, home to the SA Navy.

On a clear day, yachts and boats drift by in the basin. In spring, southern right whales frolic in the deep waters. Tourists flock to the little village with its “Victorian-style” architecture.

It is a developer’s dream.

Which is probably why Michael Bester snapped up the prime patch of land in 2004 for R3.5-million. As far back as 2006, Bester’s proposal, as submitted to the Simon’s Town Architectural Advisory Committee (ACC), had been to build “low-cost housing” – 23 flats – ostensibly for navy personnel, selling at R1-million per unit, according to ACC minutes.

The ACC, back then, concluded it could not recommend the approval of the development for various reasons, including that the height of the flats had increased from three to four storeys and that the new building would tower over the old brewery building, dating from before 1830.

Bester, an Anglican deacon, architect and developer, later secured the go-ahead from Western Cape Heritage and the Cape Town City Council. In 2006, nine archaeological test pits were supposedly excavated by SRK Consulting Engineers, supervised by the Cape Archaeological Survey. All the pits seemed to have missed a mass grave that’s possibly 300 years old.

In April 2015, Tommy Brummer Town Planners as well as Bester’s company, Regent Blue Sayers Lane (Pty) Ltd, fulfilling a requirement for the go-ahead for the development, published in the Western Cape Provincial Gazette with regard to the rezoning of Erf 4995 from General Residential Subzone GR1 to General Residential Subzone GR2.

“Any objections, with full reasons therefore, may be lodged in writing at the office of the above-mentioned district manager,” read the ad. The deadline was a month later, 11 May 2015.

It would be safe to say the Western Cape Provincial Gazette is not a widely read publication. It is, however, available on the Western Cape government’s website, but without being alerted to the existence of Bester’s advertisement, few who might have been interested would have seen it.

The Hoosens told Daily Maverick their family had not been contacted or provided with an opportunity to object to any aspect of the development.

Fast-forward to 2019 and the “Sayers Lane Development” has morphed into something else. A three-storey, modern block of 25 “Sectional Title 1- and 2- bedroom apartments” as well as “a fabulous townhouse on three levels with outstanding sea and mountain views”.

The publicity puffery for the apartments extols these features for prospective buyers of the units, which will sell for between R2-million and R4-million.

“Fishing, surfing, diving and swimming are popular sports in the area, there are also bowling greens, a country club with golf course and the yacht club”.

But it was here in April 2019 that some 167 skeletons were unearthed as the site was being prepared for the development. Bester then paid for a team of archaeologists to excavate the site.

It is a find that has subsequently created mistrust and suspicion among historians, residents and academics because of the manner in which it has been handled by Bester, the archeologists paid by the developer to excavate the bones, and Heritage Western Cape, which gave the go-ahead for the block of flats.

While all the official boxes might have been ticked according to the letter of the law, the massive potential cultural and historical value of the find, has been underplayed and shrouded in suspicion, rumour, hostility and deep mistrust.

The spirit of excitement, curiosity and inquiry that should greet such a treasure of a find and which could help to augment SA’s rich history and culture is noticeable by its absence.

You would think the first thing you would do, if you cared about the history and culture of a country with a deeply contested past, would be to be open about it, call a press conference, explain or set out what you think you have found, how you will deal with it and what will happen to the bones of those who perished and were buried there hundreds of years ago.

But since the unearthing of the mass grave, the dig has been fenced off and closed to public view and access. The fence has been cladded to prevent any curious onlookers and a note, tied with cable ties to the fence, warns that: “Entering this site without permission is a criminal offence.”

The sign states that the site “is protected under the National Heritage Resources Act” and “a permit for the removal and reburial of human remains was granted by Heritage Western Cape, work undertaken on this site is being done by experts under the authority of that permit. Any human remains exhumed will be reburied at the Simon’s Town Historical Cemetery in Simon’s Town and any artifacts recovered will be kept in the Simon’s Town Museum”.

Archaeologists on site, assisted by volunteers, were urged to remove, as quickly as possible, all skeletons and other artefacts so that the heavy earthmoving machinery could move in and begin prep work for the luxury development.

The Hoosen family once owned two of the 20 single-storey, lightweight cottages that were built by the Royal Navy in 1813 and that stood on Erf 4995 before being flattened by apartheid bulldozers in the 1970s. Most of the cottages, records show, were occupied by Muslim families.

The family’s current home, which is heritage-protected and borders what was once Sayers Lane, was spared demolition during the implementation of the Group Areas Act in the late 1960s.

In 1965, the residents of Loyulo township in Simon’s Town were forcibly removed to Gugulethu, while in 1967, coloured families, many of them Muslim, were moved to Ocean View, Retreat, Grassy Park and Heathfield. The home was officially restituted to the Hoosen family in 2007 and they have lived there ever since.

David Erickson, a Simon’s Town resident and member of the town’s Architectural Advisory Committee as well as its Historical Society, told Daily Maverick the mass grave had not been uncovered back in 1813 as the cottages had shallow foundations.

The gravesite, said Erickson, could be dated back to a hospital built by the Dutch East India Company between 1760 and 1765. The mortality rates from disease on board VOC ships were “appalling” and had necessitated its construction.

“In 1782, for example, 10 East India ships left the Netherlands carrying 2,653 men. Of these, 1,095, or 43%, died before reaching the Cape, where 915 survivors were admitted to hospital.”

The hospital, which would have been built using slave labour, was taken over by the British in 1795 and converted into barracks for troops at the Simon’s Town garrison.

Heritage activist Patric Tariq Mellet told Daily Maverick the bones could be dated by tests. While archaeologists at the excavation have suggested the bones were of VOC employees, there is no public evidence of this.

However, said Mellet, there could be a number of other scenarios excluding the remains of VOC officials.

“Most seamen in those days were a mix of Asians (Lascars) and Africans as well as Europeans. There were 19 wrecks in the area from the 1770 to 1822. This could also account for mass graves.”

Mellet added that Simon’s Town was one of five bases used by the Royal Navy between 1840 and the 20th century “to police the high seas for slaver ships, and to seize the ships and take the slaves as ‘prize slave cargo’.”

“These ‘liberated Africans’ as they were more formally known (alongside the term ‘prize slaves’), once brought either to Aden, Zanzibar, Simon’s Town, St Helena Island or Senegal, were then branded and had to undergo 14-year apprenticeships, later reduced to five years. Such vessels and ‘cargo’ are known to have been towed to Simon’s Town until the 1860s.”

Erickson, who hails from England, said he had lived near the Barbican in London and had been part of the City of London Heritage Society.

“We did a lot of work establishing things like the considerate contractor scheme. Contractors were pleased to join the scheme: it was good publicity for them. The Museum of London had a parent team attached to this and we negotiated with them when important archaeological discoveries were made at building sites.”

Archaeologists were given six to eight weeks’ “breathing space to allow them to go in, take a look and see if there was anything new that had been uncovered”.

“The attitude here is, ‘we don’t want you here’ and to erect screens,” said Erickson.

Erickson is opposed to Bester’s development as it is, he says, architecturally out of tune with the historical and cultural ethos of Simon’s Town.

Responding to queries from Daily Maverick, Bester said the “exhumation of skeletons at Erf 4995 Simon’s Town is being conducted under the authority of a permit issued by Heritage Western Cape”.

He added, “It allows the removal of the bodies and the reburial at Simon’s Town Cemetery. The original application, together with a report containing the research showing the most likely origin of the skeletons, is publicly available on Heritage Western Cape’s website. When the work is completed, as is required by the permit, a further report detailing what was found will also be available on the Heritage Western Cape website.

“No public statement will be made until the work is complete and the report is compiled,” said Bester.

While Cape Town might be a number one tourist destination as well as an alluring seaside town for foreigners to buy expensive luxury properties, its violent history is never far away.

In 2003, 2,000 human bones were unearthed during the excavation of Prestwich Place, a prime spot in Green Point. After protests, construction was halted, the bones were identified by archaeologists as belonging to slaves and later removed to an ossuary at the Prestwich Place Memorial.

But the manner in which the City and developers approach sensitive archaeological finds or sites of remembrance continues to rub. There is, unlike Europe, little visible honouring of the city’s real still buried history and past.

In summer, the pristine Atlantic beach of Clifton is packed with tourists and local sunseekers but few are aware that in 1794, 2oo drowned slaves washed up on that same beach.

The São José Paquete Africa, a Portuguese slaver carrying 400 people from Mozambique to Brazil, ran aground off Clifton in the early hours of the morning, 2am to be exact, on 27 December.

The surviving 200 slaves were sold off in Cape Town the following day.

Today there is nothing to mark or commemorate the tragedy.

It is any wonder then, that South Africa, in its modern pursuit of tourism, and income and its desire to create exclusive playgrounds for the moneyed, is a country still struggling with memory against forgetting? DM

* On 3 September the Simon’s Town museum announced it would hold a meeting at the museum on Saturday, 7 September at 12.30 to discuss the remains that have been found at the Sayers Lane development.